- Location
- United States
[x] D. Have Aisha try to find the healing elixir the mysterious girl talked about, while you repair the boundary field.
Salted Spires (A Cradle Quest)
- Thread starter KittyEmpress
- Start date
Well, I'm glad that we ditched Semi. It's not like Lokahi can't work with Semi later on, though I'm not too fussed about it. If he's very upset by the actions of a 5 year old then he has some issues.
A pure Cloud breathing technique will benefit the clan much more than a general one that can be spread around.
Something that occurred to me is that cycling this way is a good use of the limited resources in the area.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Semi would still be of great help as Lōkahi progress and personalizes their path. This is especially true if Lōkahi wants to add another madra type to it.
I hope that Semi is able to reflect on how they mistreated the outcaste.
If the technique is good enough, it has the potential to upset the balance of power between the families, which could have unfortunate effects.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Going to be closing the vote and starting to write.
I'm not unhappy, but I'm surprised by what a landslide this vote was.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I mean...the winning choice is pretty specifically trying for triage? That doesn't seem super 'Young Master' to me. We're literally stabilizing the patient and then trying to save their life? It's arguably reckless, but I'm not mostly seeing this interpretation.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
We are repairing a formation that will probably keep everyone else out of the giant pile of treasure while telling someone else that they should stabilize the patient. Said stabilization requires constantly spending madra since they aren't a healer. All this to give us both the chance to find this elixir. We might use it to heal the wounded girl. It's even likely if she's still alive by the time it is found. But we are also quite likely to use that time to loot anything else we find of value before the field is broken down from the outside, or we can't carry any more.
I'd prefer that as well. If we're gonna specialize in Proclamation of the Sky then that should give us enough versatility.
- Location
- A beautiful new land, at once alien and familiar.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I think Cloud/Dream could be a really powerful combo with our Proclamation technique. And also it would be cool as hell. Otherwise Storm seems like a natural path for Lōkahi at the moment but I hope we don't go that way despite how cool it would be, because I think lightning powers get enough screen time in media, I want to try something more unique here. For that I like Pure Cloud or Cloud/Dream.
Although I did just consider now Storm/Dream and maybe that would be cool too...
Although I did just consider now Storm/Dream and maybe that would be cool too...
Well, we just met a Shadow artist, what about Cloud / Shadow? They would have extremely potent techniques. Maybe even a certain magic book with a cohesive set?
CedeTheBees
Probably high right now
- Location
- Somewhere
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Honestly not a bad idea. It's hard to find a cloud without a shadow so I doubt we'd have trouble finding sources of their auras together. Path of the Dark Horizon?
- Location
- A beautiful new land, at once alien and familiar.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
How would Shadow interact with Cloud/Proclamation do you think? Shadow sounds cool but I'm concerned about it's lack of solidity.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Canon has structures of shadow all over the place: strings, blades, and so on. It even has benefits from being 'a thing made of shadow' sometimes, like said blades mostly ignoring armor and instead only interacting with what the user wanted to cut. I think Cloud/Shadow could be interesting!
Gratitude
New
- Pronouns
- She/Her
"I'm going to finish the script." You didn't have proper scripters tools, you didn't carry brushes or prepared inks, but you had what you needed here. Something to write with, and something to write in; your own finger and a pool of blood that was already being used. The script wasn't easy to parse, it had a lot of words that were more complicated than what you were used to working with. But only the length of a sword slash was carving through the script, and you could still read most of the characters from where they were cut. "She wanted this done before she looked for healing." You dipped your finger in the blood, and a part of your felt sick, but another part felt fascinated at the warmth to the thick liquid, "She said there was an elixir. So we'll find it after."
"You're being st-" Another crash of a weapon blast hit against the island. Or perhaps it was an arc of lightning from the Storm-Wall, still angry at being breached. Either way, Aisha was cut off, "Ugh, if I leave you here..." She said it out loud, as she turned back to the girl in her arms.
You couldn't channel any madra into your Enforcer technique, so you couldn't perfectly still your body. Not in the way you normally would. So instead you pressed your finger against the obsidian black slate wall of the control room just above where the mysterious girl was working, as hard as you could. So you couldn't shake, as you spread the blood in what seemed to be the characters within. You moved slowly, precisely tracing the pattern beneath as you filled the damage.
A damage script-line could do many things; most of those were much more catastrophic than what you were seeing here. Generally if you just ripped a tenth of a script off, you'd either completely end a script's functionality or you'd cause an unexpected accident such as an explosion when it's activated - or immediately, if it was already active. You've heard that's most common with weapon scripts that are improperly maintained. However, this script seemed to have been built with redundancy that meant the script as a whole wouldn't fail, and that parts of it could be omitted from the whole to non-catastrophic ends.
That same redundancy meant that as you finished each script-word of repair, you felt the power surging through these scripts again. It was far beyond anything you had ever felt before, oppressive in a way that made you lose your breath, like you'd been struck in the chest. It felt like the madra used to power these scripts might literally consume you, and you tried to jerk away to no avail. The power didn't feel malicious, but your brush with it left you quivering more than your Mother's unveiled anger, like a void that simply was, so grand and of such depth that it could accidentally snuff out a life. You pulled your hand back but it stayed stuck, as an eternity passed, the script itself pulling you closer to it, your mind spiraling with possibility and futility both.
Except, no such eternity passed, a crash of lightning hitting the island and shaking the building it struck releasing you from your imprisonment. As you pulled away with your eyes wide and your palms sweating, you looked towards where Aisha was still stabilizing the patient, and she barked out, "Are you almost done? I only have a couple more minutes here - if we are lucky." The blood that had slowed to a thin trickle under the emergency infusion of Life madra hadn't sped back up, nor had it expanded the stain forming on Aisha's grey-white robes.
"Y....yeah." You shook your head, as you lifted your hand again. Your mother's words echoed through your head - were your actions here informed? Did you think this through? You weren't sure, but you had already started - just like with your cycling technique that you never accepted being incomplete, you weren't willing to leave this job unfinished. So you began to write again, swallowing down fear.
Luckily, the oppressive feeling didn't return even as you finished your working on the second character, nor as you began the third. Whatever it was that threatened to swallow you up had let you go, or judged you beneath its notice, or... maybe you'd just imagined it, as you stared at the scriptlines so intertwined and complicated that they made your head hurt.
The sign of your success came as another lightning bolt struck the fallen cloudship - but rather than shake the ship, rather than the sound of explosion around you as it struck ground, no explosion followed; the thunder struck and rung in your ears, but there was no sound of impact to the ship itself.
"I'm done." You righted yourself as quickly as possible, looking over at Aisha, "How is...?"
"She's gonna start dying soon." Aisha didn't mince words as she said that, "I hope whatever you just did is worth it to her." You could see the beads of sweat and the way Aisha's gaze wasn't as focused as before; using madra was tiring, and using it to do something unfamiliar was twice as such. "I'm just about out." She said it with gritted teeth, as the blood started to flow more freely again. "She's lucky that tooth's still lodged in, or she'd be dying faster."
"She said there was an elixir. We just have to find it!" You hurried to your feet, becoming a little dizzy from standing too fast, but practically throwing yourself out the door. "If she thought she could get to it quickly, it has to be nearby!" You were a master of puzzles, or at least you thought of yourself as one. And that seemed like the logical thing to puzzle out.
The first room you opened nearby seemed to be some sort of armory. Except that most of the racks of weapons were empty - probably grabbed when the now dead defenders prepared for a fight. Still, some armor was hung; armor made of stone and steel, stuff too heavy to get into in a hurry, thicker than the padded onyx armor of the dead guardians. A couple footlockers also laid within, so you rushed in to check them.
Aisha had already laid the mysterious girl back down, and you could hear her rushing past you to the next room; there was no need for you both to be in the same room after all. You had to use all your strength just to open the first footlocker, but all that was in it were some undercloths - not literal underwear, but what you might wear if you were going to put on the heavy suits of obsidian colored armor and didn't want to chafe. The next footlocker was much the same. A waste of time.
"Not here!" Aisha called out as she left her room.
"Me neither!" It wasn't technically a correct call out, but she understood you clearly, as she went into another room.
Aisha had already cleared one room; what looked like a barracks of sorts, and entered the next, so you ran past both of those. "What do you think this elixir looks like!?" She yelled out towards the doorway, and you could hear her even over the thunder, now that the strikes were not blowing apart bits of the cloudship.
"I've never had one! I don't know!" You figured it had to be some sort of bottle. Right? The next room you entered was... sparse, but clearly a bedroom. You didn't have the most decorated of rooms yourself, but you at least had all sorts of drawings of ideas for things you wanted to make one day, cloud-rails, automated cloud bridges to save people's energy (and because you hated walking), automated cloud stairs because... yeah, a lot of what you dreamed of making were ways to not have to do physical activity.
This bedroom was practically empty. The bed looked comfortable, but not homey, there was one bit of gemlike ornamentation, but otherwise it was a functional bed. The rest of the room was similar - the dresser was clearly well made and it was scripted with care, but it was boring. Functional. The room as a whole lacked life, like it had never been touched. If it weren't for the fact that the bed was clearly unmade in a hurry, you might have thought it was an empty guest room. The dresser pulled open to show multiple dresses like the one the mysterious girl was wearing, all in shades of black and/or purple. The next had more clothes. But digging through her underwear wasn't helping you at all.
The writing desk was functional, boring, not like the drafting table your Mother had in her room, which was covered in dozens of splotches from ink gone awry, and always covered in a dozen blueprints for something she wanted to make, "I found a locked desk!" You called out, as you tried to open the drawer in it. It was the first thing you'd found that was locked in your search; even the armory was unlocked with treasures ready to be taken.
Aisha took a few moments to get to you, and as she placed one hand on the desk, she pulled the drawer as hard as possible with the other. Scripts started to alight, scripts that would mean bad things, like explosions and burning the contents of the drawer. You jumped to help - maybe you could find a way to turn the script off? Maybe you could alter i- she stopped pulling, and suddenly the half-melted sword was brought down on the desk, stabbing into the center of the script. The backblast of breaking the script by force should have exploded - but Aisha was as much a scripter as you were, and she was one who specialized in weapons and explosive devices in her apprenticeship.
The explosion happened, but she let go of the sword before it did. The explosion shot upwards, fire and destruction madra channeling straight up in the direction the sword was stabbed from - had Aisha stabbed in any way indicating the directions you were standing, that would have aimed at you. But she knew better, and instead it melted a hole in the roof. "Stop gawking!" You noticed that she didn't get through it completely without pain - the hand that had gripped the drawer and tried to pry it open was bleeding, as if the desk itself had eaten away at her skin while she touched it.
The firestorm ended soon enough, and the top of the desk had been burned away with it. But the contents of the drawer were safe; papers that seemed important, lovingly folded. A stamp with a symbol you didn't recognize. A small half-silver dagger that looked ceremonial.
And a small halfsilver bottle that you grabbed, "This has to be it!" The bottle was scarcely as large as two of your fingers next to each other around, and one of your fingers in height. And you had very, very small hands.
"That doesn't make sense! Halfsilver would destroy the madra in the elixir, and ruin it." Aisha seemed confused by the make of the bottle, "Whatever, just go feed it to her before she dies. I really don't wanna be responsible for her dying."
You both rushed back, but you were the one with the bottle. The top of it unscrewed easily as you got into the room, and you could instantly tell that the phial wasn't simply halfsilver. While the outside of it was clearly made of halfsilver, the same renowned metal of madra destruction that was in your parasite ring, the inside of the cap - and bottle - was instead a beautiful gold that reflected white in the light of the flames. Goldsteel, often called the opposite of Half-Silver. While Half-Silver rejected and destroyed all madra it touched, Goldsteel was compatible with every madra type. It never disrupted any type of madra, and thus was the metal of choice for soulsmithing tools.
You wished you had more time to think on how someone could perfectly create a bottle that was goldsteel on the inside and halfsilver on the outside without accidentally alloying or damaging one or the other. But instead you had to stick the phial in the bleeding girl's mouth, her skin now truly devoid of color. Already pale skin looking positively deathly as the liquid touched her lips.
"...Is it working?" You didn't see anything, as it went into her mouth. "Why isn't working?"
"I don't know. I'm not a Jade." Aisha couldn't stand still, instead pacing near the edge of the bed. She was trying to stay calm, but she wasn't any more prepared for this than you were. "I could only sense her lifeline before because my madra was touching it directly." Aisha started to undo the girl's elaborate dress, giving you a view of more injuries on her - burns, tree like lightning burns, and worse.
You frowned, turning back to the girl who was clearly your age. So small like you, with a fang the size of your forearm still impaled in her. You looked over to the pool of blood, to the half-fixed scripts that you finished up fixing, to the dried blood on the tips of your fingers. "I... is this my fault?" You asked it more softly than you meant to, your voice a squeak. You reached over to try and remove the fang from the girl's body, but it was lodged in far harder than you could possibly move. You just wanted to let her body be without such a gruesome reminder.
"No." Aisha rubbed her forehead with her skinned hand, leaving blood there, "It's mine. I should have just gotten her to a healer." Her voice cracked as she spoke to you on blame. "We shouldn't have come here at all."
You stared down at the girl in front of you, at the still body. And you felt sick to your stomach in a way that you didn't feel when you saw the dead guardians or dragons lining the mansion-ship. Those deaths were just, you know, dead when you got there. But this one you talked to, you saw in desperation. And you couldn't help her. And it made you feel queasy.
"Don't... you... dare... vomit on... me." The girl's lips parted, and blood escaped as she spoke. Blood that had been pooling in her mouth now spilled out as she turned her head to the side. Her amethyst eye hadn't lost its sparkle at all as she opened it, but the blackened orb that took the place of a normal eye had lost some of its luster, looking like dull stone instead of void-like blackness.
"You're alive!" You said it suddenly, your heart pounding out of your chest.
"Oh thank the heavens." Aisha let out a breath as she watched the young girl taking labored breaths. "I would have hated to have to explain to your Mom why you were traumatized..." She pushed away from the wall, and moved closer to the girl, "Don't... don't move too fast. I don't know what's in that elixir bu-"
"But nothing." The girls labored breathing had already stopped. Her uninjured arm reached up, and she placed her hand on the large fang piercing through her shoulder.
"Wait, don't touch tha-" Aisha started to talk, she moved to stop her.
But the girl didn't pay any mind to the oldest girl in the room - she grit her teeth as she pulled it out, her strength clearly far exceeding yours as she did - dark hands sprouting out of the shadow of her hand on it, pushing against her own wounded shoulder as the fang was pulled and pushed at once. No blood spilled as she pulled it out, as she tore the fang from her own shoulder. Nor did she make a noise of protest to the pain. The flesh had already knit beneath it - and the wound had closed shut without healing her arm as it connected to her shoulder. Instead the limb hung limply to the side, dangling without any sign of movement. The purple eyed girl stared at it dispassionately.
"Wait... what's... happening?" You didnt understand the body that well. The wound was clearly closing, so why wasn't it healing her arm properly? What was happening?
"Her arm was without blood for too long. It's simply dead. You can't heal what's dead. We took too long." Aisha ran her hand down her face, as she sighed.
"...I'm sorry." You bowed to the girl, a simple but deep bow that turned your body to ninety degrees. The kind you would only use if you felt you'd done something very wrong, "I finished your script before we started looking. If we had healed you first..." You were going through what you could have done, and you weren't sure why you focused on the script first. Now, because of you, this girl was going to lose her arm forever.
The tiny girl, smaller even than you, young enough to beg for their mother without shame pushed herself up with her good hand, standing under her own power as the elixir did its work, "For a pair of ignorant barbarians, you've done well enough. My arm will be replaced, my family will create something even better than flesh if need be." As she said this, a shadow blade cut the remainder of the now vestigial, dead arm clean off her body with only the smallest wince, the elixir closing the refreshed wounds with a swiftness that would rival the greatest healers on the Spires, "But I doubt all of your greatest minds would be capable of replacing anything within this ship." You stared at the limb that fell to the ground, the little squeaky voiced girl speaking with a poise that could only be practiced, even as she removed her own limb.
"You stand before Akura Gratitude. You would be in your right to bow and scrape, but I will forgive the momentary impropriety as I am sure you are simply overcoming shock." Whatever Elixir you had given the girl wasn't just healing her body. It was refilling her spirit, and you started to feel a crushing power around you as Akura Gratitude scanned you. "So long as you right yourself." Her spirit suddenly came unveiled as she spoke, and scanned you.
"You're... a Jade...?" You spoke through gritted teeth, as an unveiled Jade pried open your spirit with her Jade senses. You'd been around an unveiled Jade before, but Tama's pressure felt nothing like this. This was a predator's power looking down at you. You froze up, looking down at the floor.
"And you are not even an Iron, and yet you have the temerity to stand in an Akura's presence." She stepped closer to you, and she lifted your chin with her finger. You weren't sure what temerity even meant, but it was clearly something that Gratitude did not like you showing. "You have committed many crimes on this day. You have invaded the sovereign territory of the Akura clan. You have stolen our treasures. You have looted our dead. You have looked at the body of an Akura without permission. You have touched the body of a true Akura without her permission. You have looked an Akura in the eyes without being granted leave. You have refused to prostrate yourself amongst your better." The Akura smiled an amused smile as she listed the crimes, "These are crimes punishable in totality by death."
Aisha was trying to move, but shadow hands were holding her down - the Jade pressure was not enough to stop the Iron on its own, but the hands bound her tightly to where she was. "We saved your life!" Aisha tore against the shadow binding, that was seeping over every inch of her body - but she was slowly pulled down to a kneeling bow even as she fought with all her power.
You couldn't even speak, under the crushing pressure that could snuff you out. You felt truly weak in the face of the purple eyed girl.
"It is so." The Akura nodded. And as she did so, the shadows disappeared as readily as they appeared, a veil replaced and allowing you to escape your confinement and fear. "It is said I was named to display that which my Great-Grandmother forsaw as important to my success. And I will not question her Sight." Aisha stood back up, taking a deep breath, "You broke many a law, but you have atoned with your service. I will ensure that my family spares you, even if they should find out the extent of your crimes. Even though you failed to do so fully." A glance towards the stump of a shoulder that she now had.
You suddenly burst out a question, "Who are you!?" Today had been a... strange day. You'd watched a flying ship fall from the sky, seen the bodies of dragons, saved a girl who should be dead, and now she was talking like you should know her.
"Surely I have not crash landed in a backwater so remote to not know of the Akura clan?" The girl's eye twitched as she asked that, without getting any reply, "I asked a question." She was suddenly much less intimidating, as her guise of haughtiness turned to confusion, annoyance, maybe even worry?
"I've never heard of your family." You shook your head as you said that, "But uhm, I'm Lōkahi Soft-Storm, since you uhm, introduced yourself. And she's my uh... adopted cousin, Aisha Soft-Storm. It's good to meet you, uh.... Akura?.... Gratitude?" You weren't sure how to call her name. Gratitude was a feeling, not a name. You'd never heard of someone named that.
"Do... I need to go back to threatening you?" The young girl looked absolutely taken aback at you introducing yourself in this situation, "I am not someone you can befriend." Her eye twitched again, "And certainly not someone you will ever speak familiarly to. You will address me as 'Honored Akura' or 'The Most Gracious and Honored Gratitude', or not address me at all. I do not know how you are so ignorant, but the Akura clan are humanity's protectors. My great-grandmother is the only reason the Dragons have not enslaved all the humans in the world!" She surely seemed to believe that at least, "Simply meeting an Akura is more than you could ever hope for! Don't tell me... did we somehow make it to Iceflower? But we had only just gotten away from the isles of Ashwind..." You had thrown her off more than you ever meant to.
"Oh, uhm. Thank you? For uhm, protecting humanity. I guess?" You scratched your neck awkwardly - you weren't a student of Outcaste history or knowledge, so this was all just a tide of information that you had no basis for, "I don't know what an Iceflower is though. You've reached Salted Spires, though. We... don't have any Dragons here. Well, except the dead ones in your house." A pause, "...Sorry, should I not mention those?"
"I'm... what? Salted Spires?" She said the name, and closed her eyes, "No... no, I've studied every known continent, island, tribe... I've had every landmass crammed into my head by tutors who have lived longer than a tortoise." She furrowed her brow, "Your home must have another name. A translation, perhaps, to an older tongue? Or from an older tongue?"
"Oh..." You looked to Aisha, "...Is there another name for here?"
The teenager shrugged, she had kept quiet from the Akura after the threats had ended. Unlike you, she wasn't reckless enough to talk to a Jade who had just displayed a will to kill you both as flippantly as you did. "I... cannot say I've ever heard any."
"How could there possibly be anywhere in the world entirely unmapped?" Gratitude had long since lost her superiority, as she looked between the two of you, but she straighted back up, and she used her remaining arm to smooth back her jet black hair out of her face, "...No. It doesn't matter. I will not be here for long. Aunt Charity will come for me when the family realizes we were betrayed and are missing."
You looked at Aisha... and she looked at you... and you looked back... and you could tell Aisha wasn't going to be the bearer of bad news here, "...Uhm. So... I mean, maybe you're right, Ms.... uhm, Honored... Akura. But... no one really... enters Salted Spires, unless they're... a Jade or weaker."
"Then it will only be easier for my family to rescue me." She nodded as you talked about how weak the people here were, or at least as she interpreted it in that manner.
"No... I uh... well, maybe you should... come with me? Uhm, to just... look at the Spires. And so I can... explain?" You didn't know how else to explain things, but showing Gratitude the hundred mile tall Stormwalls that surrounded the islands in every direction seemed like the easiest way.
"Do not ever presume to suggest a course of action to me again, Kokohi." She hadn't even bothered to remember your name. Or maybe she was doing it on purpose to seem like she didn't bother to remember your name. "But I suppose I should survey the surroundings. I am not, however, joining you. You are simply joining me in my surveance of the territory." You would not think she was your age by how she talked; how many people had drilled vocabulary, self control, diction, ettiquette,haughtiness, and just speech in general into someone your age to make them this way?
-----------
Some of your people were gathering around the edges of the ship, you could see people probing the barrier you had repaired with techniques or weapons, only to have their techniques returned to them and their weapons damaged. But none of them seemed to see you, despite you being able to see out of the barrier field.
"So... those are... uh, well, we call them the Fog Walls. Or the Stormwalls. But uh, as you can see, they surround Salted Spires. And they uh, don't let anyone in or out." You started to talk as Gratitude walked out the doorway, her face having gotten more solemn with each body you stepped past. But that solemnity disappeared as she stared at the walls taller than even the walls of the Akura capital. "I mean, sometimes people crash here, when they have accidents at sea. But uhm, the only survivors are always lower than Gold. The Walls don't... let anyone else in. Is this uh... this Aunt Charity a uhm... Lord or something? Because... I don't think even those can come here. We've never had one in five hundred years, at least..."
Balled fist gave way to deep breaths, and you saw that Gratitude had closed her eyes as you spoke to her. And as she breathed deeply, she clearly was calming herself down from something. And you... waited. Patiently. Because, well, you didn't have much choice. You'd hate to die because you interrupted her.
"Okay. Sure. The world is large, and full of mysteries." Akura Gratitude had regained her center, clearly, because she was speaking with authority again, "Say that I believe you, Dokihi. That there is no way in to this..." She motioned towards the nearest spire, and the people who gathered on the shore, "Wonderful example of an oddity. There must be a way out, correct?"
"Oh, yeah! Leaving is uhm, well, it's simple. Well, sort of simple." You'd never really considered leaving the Stormwalls before, but you at least knew how. Everyone knew how. You were warned as children not to attempt it until you were at least Lowgold because only Lowgolds could survive it, "A strong Lowgold can push open an exit path, and leave. But uhm, some weaker ones get swallowed by the storm. And uh, so does anyone else who tries... earlier."
You thought that you were going to send Gratitude into a despair, at knowing she'd have to reach Gold before she could leave. But the young girl looked at you, and then at the Stormwall... and then she nodded, "So all I have to do is reach Gold. That shouldn't take more than a year, even with how weak this place feels. Fine. Now tell your people I am not here to hurt them, but that I will if they keep attacking my ship. I may only be a Jade, but this ship houses weapons that can kill Truegolds. And I do know how to use them."
Aisha had stumbled out after you, her hand now wrapped in ripped pieces of her own robe. She clearly wasn't willing to rob even the underclothes in the armory from Gratitude. "So you're just going to... stay in here? For a whole year? All alone? No... company?"
"You're foolish to question an Akura, but you are also correct. You will not be given leeway in the future." She looked at Aisha with a sharpness to her eyes, "I will need a manservant. A lady cannot be expected to prepare meals, wash clothes, or clean." Her gaze turned over to you, "You will do. You have proven yourself intelligent enough to follow orders by obeying my will to defend this ship." She was still looking down on you, despite also looking (slightly) up at you, "Swear an oath to serve my needs for the duration I am stranded, and I swear you will be rewarded beyond anything your paltry home can offer you. And once I leave this place, you can return to your life amongst your ignorant people, empowered by your service."
"Uhm. Wouldn't.." You didn't wanna question her, but you weren't dumb enough to swear an open ended oath like that, "Wouldn't that oath bind me to you forever, if you... decided to stay?"
She had a disgusted look on her face, "How dare you think I would ever try to trick you. If I wanted you to serve me for the rest of your life, I would tell you to swear as much - and you would be lucky for it. Fine. Swear to serve me for a period not exceeding a year, or when I advance to Gold, whichever should come first. I hope you are not considering saying no to this generous offer, I'm certain you will find that serving the Akura clan is a beneficial arrangement."
You looked at her, and your memory flashed to all of the valuables you saw. More halfsilver and goldsteel than you'd seen in your entire life was used for sconces and doorhandles. Scripts that were beyond your wildest dreams were everywhere. The elixir you fed her had healed her from death's door to practically unharmed - besides the missing arm, which presumably would have been healed had you been faster - in a matter of minutes. Your imagination soared with all that she might offer you.
But also, a part of you didn't want to accept being looked down on and made into a servant. You were not a prideful person, you'd never defend yourself against an insult that was true. But that didn't mean you were prideless either. This girl thought she was better than you, better than your whole home. If you accepted, would you ever be able to deny that?
No one could force an Oath on you. And despite her haughtiness, Gratitude didn't seem intent on trying. You had to make the choice.
[x] A. "I swear to serve you for a year, or until you reach the stage of Gold."
[x] B. "No, I will not make that oath. I won't serve you."
"You're being st-" Another crash of a weapon blast hit against the island. Or perhaps it was an arc of lightning from the Storm-Wall, still angry at being breached. Either way, Aisha was cut off, "Ugh, if I leave you here..." She said it out loud, as she turned back to the girl in her arms.
You couldn't channel any madra into your Enforcer technique, so you couldn't perfectly still your body. Not in the way you normally would. So instead you pressed your finger against the obsidian black slate wall of the control room just above where the mysterious girl was working, as hard as you could. So you couldn't shake, as you spread the blood in what seemed to be the characters within. You moved slowly, precisely tracing the pattern beneath as you filled the damage.
A damage script-line could do many things; most of those were much more catastrophic than what you were seeing here. Generally if you just ripped a tenth of a script off, you'd either completely end a script's functionality or you'd cause an unexpected accident such as an explosion when it's activated - or immediately, if it was already active. You've heard that's most common with weapon scripts that are improperly maintained. However, this script seemed to have been built with redundancy that meant the script as a whole wouldn't fail, and that parts of it could be omitted from the whole to non-catastrophic ends.
That same redundancy meant that as you finished each script-word of repair, you felt the power surging through these scripts again. It was far beyond anything you had ever felt before, oppressive in a way that made you lose your breath, like you'd been struck in the chest. It felt like the madra used to power these scripts might literally consume you, and you tried to jerk away to no avail. The power didn't feel malicious, but your brush with it left you quivering more than your Mother's unveiled anger, like a void that simply was, so grand and of such depth that it could accidentally snuff out a life. You pulled your hand back but it stayed stuck, as an eternity passed, the script itself pulling you closer to it, your mind spiraling with possibility and futility both.
Except, no such eternity passed, a crash of lightning hitting the island and shaking the building it struck releasing you from your imprisonment. As you pulled away with your eyes wide and your palms sweating, you looked towards where Aisha was still stabilizing the patient, and she barked out, "Are you almost done? I only have a couple more minutes here - if we are lucky." The blood that had slowed to a thin trickle under the emergency infusion of Life madra hadn't sped back up, nor had it expanded the stain forming on Aisha's grey-white robes.
"Y....yeah." You shook your head, as you lifted your hand again. Your mother's words echoed through your head - were your actions here informed? Did you think this through? You weren't sure, but you had already started - just like with your cycling technique that you never accepted being incomplete, you weren't willing to leave this job unfinished. So you began to write again, swallowing down fear.
Luckily, the oppressive feeling didn't return even as you finished your working on the second character, nor as you began the third. Whatever it was that threatened to swallow you up had let you go, or judged you beneath its notice, or... maybe you'd just imagined it, as you stared at the scriptlines so intertwined and complicated that they made your head hurt.
The sign of your success came as another lightning bolt struck the fallen cloudship - but rather than shake the ship, rather than the sound of explosion around you as it struck ground, no explosion followed; the thunder struck and rung in your ears, but there was no sound of impact to the ship itself.
"I'm done." You righted yourself as quickly as possible, looking over at Aisha, "How is...?"
"She's gonna start dying soon." Aisha didn't mince words as she said that, "I hope whatever you just did is worth it to her." You could see the beads of sweat and the way Aisha's gaze wasn't as focused as before; using madra was tiring, and using it to do something unfamiliar was twice as such. "I'm just about out." She said it with gritted teeth, as the blood started to flow more freely again. "She's lucky that tooth's still lodged in, or she'd be dying faster."
"She said there was an elixir. We just have to find it!" You hurried to your feet, becoming a little dizzy from standing too fast, but practically throwing yourself out the door. "If she thought she could get to it quickly, it has to be nearby!" You were a master of puzzles, or at least you thought of yourself as one. And that seemed like the logical thing to puzzle out.
The first room you opened nearby seemed to be some sort of armory. Except that most of the racks of weapons were empty - probably grabbed when the now dead defenders prepared for a fight. Still, some armor was hung; armor made of stone and steel, stuff too heavy to get into in a hurry, thicker than the padded onyx armor of the dead guardians. A couple footlockers also laid within, so you rushed in to check them.
Aisha had already laid the mysterious girl back down, and you could hear her rushing past you to the next room; there was no need for you both to be in the same room after all. You had to use all your strength just to open the first footlocker, but all that was in it were some undercloths - not literal underwear, but what you might wear if you were going to put on the heavy suits of obsidian colored armor and didn't want to chafe. The next footlocker was much the same. A waste of time.
"Not here!" Aisha called out as she left her room.
"Me neither!" It wasn't technically a correct call out, but she understood you clearly, as she went into another room.
Aisha had already cleared one room; what looked like a barracks of sorts, and entered the next, so you ran past both of those. "What do you think this elixir looks like!?" She yelled out towards the doorway, and you could hear her even over the thunder, now that the strikes were not blowing apart bits of the cloudship.
"I've never had one! I don't know!" You figured it had to be some sort of bottle. Right? The next room you entered was... sparse, but clearly a bedroom. You didn't have the most decorated of rooms yourself, but you at least had all sorts of drawings of ideas for things you wanted to make one day, cloud-rails, automated cloud bridges to save people's energy (and because you hated walking), automated cloud stairs because... yeah, a lot of what you dreamed of making were ways to not have to do physical activity.
This bedroom was practically empty. The bed looked comfortable, but not homey, there was one bit of gemlike ornamentation, but otherwise it was a functional bed. The rest of the room was similar - the dresser was clearly well made and it was scripted with care, but it was boring. Functional. The room as a whole lacked life, like it had never been touched. If it weren't for the fact that the bed was clearly unmade in a hurry, you might have thought it was an empty guest room. The dresser pulled open to show multiple dresses like the one the mysterious girl was wearing, all in shades of black and/or purple. The next had more clothes. But digging through her underwear wasn't helping you at all.
The writing desk was functional, boring, not like the drafting table your Mother had in her room, which was covered in dozens of splotches from ink gone awry, and always covered in a dozen blueprints for something she wanted to make, "I found a locked desk!" You called out, as you tried to open the drawer in it. It was the first thing you'd found that was locked in your search; even the armory was unlocked with treasures ready to be taken.
Aisha took a few moments to get to you, and as she placed one hand on the desk, she pulled the drawer as hard as possible with the other. Scripts started to alight, scripts that would mean bad things, like explosions and burning the contents of the drawer. You jumped to help - maybe you could find a way to turn the script off? Maybe you could alter i- she stopped pulling, and suddenly the half-melted sword was brought down on the desk, stabbing into the center of the script. The backblast of breaking the script by force should have exploded - but Aisha was as much a scripter as you were, and she was one who specialized in weapons and explosive devices in her apprenticeship.
The explosion happened, but she let go of the sword before it did. The explosion shot upwards, fire and destruction madra channeling straight up in the direction the sword was stabbed from - had Aisha stabbed in any way indicating the directions you were standing, that would have aimed at you. But she knew better, and instead it melted a hole in the roof. "Stop gawking!" You noticed that she didn't get through it completely without pain - the hand that had gripped the drawer and tried to pry it open was bleeding, as if the desk itself had eaten away at her skin while she touched it.
The firestorm ended soon enough, and the top of the desk had been burned away with it. But the contents of the drawer were safe; papers that seemed important, lovingly folded. A stamp with a symbol you didn't recognize. A small half-silver dagger that looked ceremonial.
And a small halfsilver bottle that you grabbed, "This has to be it!" The bottle was scarcely as large as two of your fingers next to each other around, and one of your fingers in height. And you had very, very small hands.
"That doesn't make sense! Halfsilver would destroy the madra in the elixir, and ruin it." Aisha seemed confused by the make of the bottle, "Whatever, just go feed it to her before she dies. I really don't wanna be responsible for her dying."
You both rushed back, but you were the one with the bottle. The top of it unscrewed easily as you got into the room, and you could instantly tell that the phial wasn't simply halfsilver. While the outside of it was clearly made of halfsilver, the same renowned metal of madra destruction that was in your parasite ring, the inside of the cap - and bottle - was instead a beautiful gold that reflected white in the light of the flames. Goldsteel, often called the opposite of Half-Silver. While Half-Silver rejected and destroyed all madra it touched, Goldsteel was compatible with every madra type. It never disrupted any type of madra, and thus was the metal of choice for soulsmithing tools.
You wished you had more time to think on how someone could perfectly create a bottle that was goldsteel on the inside and halfsilver on the outside without accidentally alloying or damaging one or the other. But instead you had to stick the phial in the bleeding girl's mouth, her skin now truly devoid of color. Already pale skin looking positively deathly as the liquid touched her lips.
"...Is it working?" You didn't see anything, as it went into her mouth. "Why isn't working?"
"I don't know. I'm not a Jade." Aisha couldn't stand still, instead pacing near the edge of the bed. She was trying to stay calm, but she wasn't any more prepared for this than you were. "I could only sense her lifeline before because my madra was touching it directly." Aisha started to undo the girl's elaborate dress, giving you a view of more injuries on her - burns, tree like lightning burns, and worse.
You frowned, turning back to the girl who was clearly your age. So small like you, with a fang the size of your forearm still impaled in her. You looked over to the pool of blood, to the half-fixed scripts that you finished up fixing, to the dried blood on the tips of your fingers. "I... is this my fault?" You asked it more softly than you meant to, your voice a squeak. You reached over to try and remove the fang from the girl's body, but it was lodged in far harder than you could possibly move. You just wanted to let her body be without such a gruesome reminder.
"No." Aisha rubbed her forehead with her skinned hand, leaving blood there, "It's mine. I should have just gotten her to a healer." Her voice cracked as she spoke to you on blame. "We shouldn't have come here at all."
You stared down at the girl in front of you, at the still body. And you felt sick to your stomach in a way that you didn't feel when you saw the dead guardians or dragons lining the mansion-ship. Those deaths were just, you know, dead when you got there. But this one you talked to, you saw in desperation. And you couldn't help her. And it made you feel queasy.
"Don't... you... dare... vomit on... me." The girl's lips parted, and blood escaped as she spoke. Blood that had been pooling in her mouth now spilled out as she turned her head to the side. Her amethyst eye hadn't lost its sparkle at all as she opened it, but the blackened orb that took the place of a normal eye had lost some of its luster, looking like dull stone instead of void-like blackness.
"You're alive!" You said it suddenly, your heart pounding out of your chest.
"Oh thank the heavens." Aisha let out a breath as she watched the young girl taking labored breaths. "I would have hated to have to explain to your Mom why you were traumatized..." She pushed away from the wall, and moved closer to the girl, "Don't... don't move too fast. I don't know what's in that elixir bu-"
"But nothing." The girls labored breathing had already stopped. Her uninjured arm reached up, and she placed her hand on the large fang piercing through her shoulder.
"Wait, don't touch tha-" Aisha started to talk, she moved to stop her.
But the girl didn't pay any mind to the oldest girl in the room - she grit her teeth as she pulled it out, her strength clearly far exceeding yours as she did - dark hands sprouting out of the shadow of her hand on it, pushing against her own wounded shoulder as the fang was pulled and pushed at once. No blood spilled as she pulled it out, as she tore the fang from her own shoulder. Nor did she make a noise of protest to the pain. The flesh had already knit beneath it - and the wound had closed shut without healing her arm as it connected to her shoulder. Instead the limb hung limply to the side, dangling without any sign of movement. The purple eyed girl stared at it dispassionately.
"Wait... what's... happening?" You didnt understand the body that well. The wound was clearly closing, so why wasn't it healing her arm properly? What was happening?
"Her arm was without blood for too long. It's simply dead. You can't heal what's dead. We took too long." Aisha ran her hand down her face, as she sighed.
"...I'm sorry." You bowed to the girl, a simple but deep bow that turned your body to ninety degrees. The kind you would only use if you felt you'd done something very wrong, "I finished your script before we started looking. If we had healed you first..." You were going through what you could have done, and you weren't sure why you focused on the script first. Now, because of you, this girl was going to lose her arm forever.
The tiny girl, smaller even than you, young enough to beg for their mother without shame pushed herself up with her good hand, standing under her own power as the elixir did its work, "For a pair of ignorant barbarians, you've done well enough. My arm will be replaced, my family will create something even better than flesh if need be." As she said this, a shadow blade cut the remainder of the now vestigial, dead arm clean off her body with only the smallest wince, the elixir closing the refreshed wounds with a swiftness that would rival the greatest healers on the Spires, "But I doubt all of your greatest minds would be capable of replacing anything within this ship." You stared at the limb that fell to the ground, the little squeaky voiced girl speaking with a poise that could only be practiced, even as she removed her own limb.
"You stand before Akura Gratitude. You would be in your right to bow and scrape, but I will forgive the momentary impropriety as I am sure you are simply overcoming shock." Whatever Elixir you had given the girl wasn't just healing her body. It was refilling her spirit, and you started to feel a crushing power around you as Akura Gratitude scanned you. "So long as you right yourself." Her spirit suddenly came unveiled as she spoke, and scanned you.
"You're... a Jade...?" You spoke through gritted teeth, as an unveiled Jade pried open your spirit with her Jade senses. You'd been around an unveiled Jade before, but Tama's pressure felt nothing like this. This was a predator's power looking down at you. You froze up, looking down at the floor.
"And you are not even an Iron, and yet you have the temerity to stand in an Akura's presence." She stepped closer to you, and she lifted your chin with her finger. You weren't sure what temerity even meant, but it was clearly something that Gratitude did not like you showing. "You have committed many crimes on this day. You have invaded the sovereign territory of the Akura clan. You have stolen our treasures. You have looted our dead. You have looked at the body of an Akura without permission. You have touched the body of a true Akura without her permission. You have looked an Akura in the eyes without being granted leave. You have refused to prostrate yourself amongst your better." The Akura smiled an amused smile as she listed the crimes, "These are crimes punishable in totality by death."
Aisha was trying to move, but shadow hands were holding her down - the Jade pressure was not enough to stop the Iron on its own, but the hands bound her tightly to where she was. "We saved your life!" Aisha tore against the shadow binding, that was seeping over every inch of her body - but she was slowly pulled down to a kneeling bow even as she fought with all her power.
You couldn't even speak, under the crushing pressure that could snuff you out. You felt truly weak in the face of the purple eyed girl.
"It is so." The Akura nodded. And as she did so, the shadows disappeared as readily as they appeared, a veil replaced and allowing you to escape your confinement and fear. "It is said I was named to display that which my Great-Grandmother forsaw as important to my success. And I will not question her Sight." Aisha stood back up, taking a deep breath, "You broke many a law, but you have atoned with your service. I will ensure that my family spares you, even if they should find out the extent of your crimes. Even though you failed to do so fully." A glance towards the stump of a shoulder that she now had.
You suddenly burst out a question, "Who are you!?" Today had been a... strange day. You'd watched a flying ship fall from the sky, seen the bodies of dragons, saved a girl who should be dead, and now she was talking like you should know her.
"Surely I have not crash landed in a backwater so remote to not know of the Akura clan?" The girl's eye twitched as she asked that, without getting any reply, "I asked a question." She was suddenly much less intimidating, as her guise of haughtiness turned to confusion, annoyance, maybe even worry?
"I've never heard of your family." You shook your head as you said that, "But uhm, I'm Lōkahi Soft-Storm, since you uhm, introduced yourself. And she's my uh... adopted cousin, Aisha Soft-Storm. It's good to meet you, uh.... Akura?.... Gratitude?" You weren't sure how to call her name. Gratitude was a feeling, not a name. You'd never heard of someone named that.
"Do... I need to go back to threatening you?" The young girl looked absolutely taken aback at you introducing yourself in this situation, "I am not someone you can befriend." Her eye twitched again, "And certainly not someone you will ever speak familiarly to. You will address me as 'Honored Akura' or 'The Most Gracious and Honored Gratitude', or not address me at all. I do not know how you are so ignorant, but the Akura clan are humanity's protectors. My great-grandmother is the only reason the Dragons have not enslaved all the humans in the world!" She surely seemed to believe that at least, "Simply meeting an Akura is more than you could ever hope for! Don't tell me... did we somehow make it to Iceflower? But we had only just gotten away from the isles of Ashwind..." You had thrown her off more than you ever meant to.
"Oh, uhm. Thank you? For uhm, protecting humanity. I guess?" You scratched your neck awkwardly - you weren't a student of Outcaste history or knowledge, so this was all just a tide of information that you had no basis for, "I don't know what an Iceflower is though. You've reached Salted Spires, though. We... don't have any Dragons here. Well, except the dead ones in your house." A pause, "...Sorry, should I not mention those?"
"I'm... what? Salted Spires?" She said the name, and closed her eyes, "No... no, I've studied every known continent, island, tribe... I've had every landmass crammed into my head by tutors who have lived longer than a tortoise." She furrowed her brow, "Your home must have another name. A translation, perhaps, to an older tongue? Or from an older tongue?"
"Oh..." You looked to Aisha, "...Is there another name for here?"
The teenager shrugged, she had kept quiet from the Akura after the threats had ended. Unlike you, she wasn't reckless enough to talk to a Jade who had just displayed a will to kill you both as flippantly as you did. "I... cannot say I've ever heard any."
"How could there possibly be anywhere in the world entirely unmapped?" Gratitude had long since lost her superiority, as she looked between the two of you, but she straighted back up, and she used her remaining arm to smooth back her jet black hair out of her face, "...No. It doesn't matter. I will not be here for long. Aunt Charity will come for me when the family realizes we were betrayed and are missing."
You looked at Aisha... and she looked at you... and you looked back... and you could tell Aisha wasn't going to be the bearer of bad news here, "...Uhm. So... I mean, maybe you're right, Ms.... uhm, Honored... Akura. But... no one really... enters Salted Spires, unless they're... a Jade or weaker."
"Then it will only be easier for my family to rescue me." She nodded as you talked about how weak the people here were, or at least as she interpreted it in that manner.
"No... I uh... well, maybe you should... come with me? Uhm, to just... look at the Spires. And so I can... explain?" You didn't know how else to explain things, but showing Gratitude the hundred mile tall Stormwalls that surrounded the islands in every direction seemed like the easiest way.
"Do not ever presume to suggest a course of action to me again, Kokohi." She hadn't even bothered to remember your name. Or maybe she was doing it on purpose to seem like she didn't bother to remember your name. "But I suppose I should survey the surroundings. I am not, however, joining you. You are simply joining me in my surveance of the territory." You would not think she was your age by how she talked; how many people had drilled vocabulary, self control, diction, ettiquette,
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Some of your people were gathering around the edges of the ship, you could see people probing the barrier you had repaired with techniques or weapons, only to have their techniques returned to them and their weapons damaged. But none of them seemed to see you, despite you being able to see out of the barrier field.
"So... those are... uh, well, we call them the Fog Walls. Or the Stormwalls. But uh, as you can see, they surround Salted Spires. And they uh, don't let anyone in or out." You started to talk as Gratitude walked out the doorway, her face having gotten more solemn with each body you stepped past. But that solemnity disappeared as she stared at the walls taller than even the walls of the Akura capital. "I mean, sometimes people crash here, when they have accidents at sea. But uhm, the only survivors are always lower than Gold. The Walls don't... let anyone else in. Is this uh... this Aunt Charity a uhm... Lord or something? Because... I don't think even those can come here. We've never had one in five hundred years, at least..."
Balled fist gave way to deep breaths, and you saw that Gratitude had closed her eyes as you spoke to her. And as she breathed deeply, she clearly was calming herself down from something. And you... waited. Patiently. Because, well, you didn't have much choice. You'd hate to die because you interrupted her.
"Okay. Sure. The world is large, and full of mysteries." Akura Gratitude had regained her center, clearly, because she was speaking with authority again, "Say that I believe you, Dokihi. That there is no way in to this..." She motioned towards the nearest spire, and the people who gathered on the shore, "Wonderful example of an oddity. There must be a way out, correct?"
"Oh, yeah! Leaving is uhm, well, it's simple. Well, sort of simple." You'd never really considered leaving the Stormwalls before, but you at least knew how. Everyone knew how. You were warned as children not to attempt it until you were at least Lowgold because only Lowgolds could survive it, "A strong Lowgold can push open an exit path, and leave. But uhm, some weaker ones get swallowed by the storm. And uh, so does anyone else who tries... earlier."
You thought that you were going to send Gratitude into a despair, at knowing she'd have to reach Gold before she could leave. But the young girl looked at you, and then at the Stormwall... and then she nodded, "So all I have to do is reach Gold. That shouldn't take more than a year, even with how weak this place feels. Fine. Now tell your people I am not here to hurt them, but that I will if they keep attacking my ship. I may only be a Jade, but this ship houses weapons that can kill Truegolds. And I do know how to use them."
Aisha had stumbled out after you, her hand now wrapped in ripped pieces of her own robe. She clearly wasn't willing to rob even the underclothes in the armory from Gratitude. "So you're just going to... stay in here? For a whole year? All alone? No... company?"
"You're foolish to question an Akura, but you are also correct. You will not be given leeway in the future." She looked at Aisha with a sharpness to her eyes, "I will need a manservant. A lady cannot be expected to prepare meals, wash clothes, or clean." Her gaze turned over to you, "You will do. You have proven yourself intelligent enough to follow orders by obeying my will to defend this ship." She was still looking down on you, despite also looking (slightly) up at you, "Swear an oath to serve my needs for the duration I am stranded, and I swear you will be rewarded beyond anything your paltry home can offer you. And once I leave this place, you can return to your life amongst your ignorant people, empowered by your service."
"Uhm. Wouldn't.." You didn't wanna question her, but you weren't dumb enough to swear an open ended oath like that, "Wouldn't that oath bind me to you forever, if you... decided to stay?"
She had a disgusted look on her face, "How dare you think I would ever try to trick you. If I wanted you to serve me for the rest of your life, I would tell you to swear as much - and you would be lucky for it. Fine. Swear to serve me for a period not exceeding a year, or when I advance to Gold, whichever should come first. I hope you are not considering saying no to this generous offer, I'm certain you will find that serving the Akura clan is a beneficial arrangement."
You looked at her, and your memory flashed to all of the valuables you saw. More halfsilver and goldsteel than you'd seen in your entire life was used for sconces and doorhandles. Scripts that were beyond your wildest dreams were everywhere. The elixir you fed her had healed her from death's door to practically unharmed - besides the missing arm, which presumably would have been healed had you been faster - in a matter of minutes. Your imagination soared with all that she might offer you.
But also, a part of you didn't want to accept being looked down on and made into a servant. You were not a prideful person, you'd never defend yourself against an insult that was true. But that didn't mean you were prideless either. This girl thought she was better than you, better than your whole home. If you accepted, would you ever be able to deny that?
No one could force an Oath on you. And despite her haughtiness, Gratitude didn't seem intent on trying. You had to make the choice.
[x] A. "I swear to serve you for a year, or until you reach the stage of Gold."
[x] B. "No, I will not make that oath. I won't serve you."
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
[x] B. "No, I will not make that oath. I won't serve you."
This is very risky and she's aware of it. She also is mostly concerned about the consequences for Lōkahi getting hurt.
Lōkahi is really pushing himself when it comes to these scripts.
I like that Lōkahi's thoughts immediately go to his mother's advice and that he's hesitating because this is a very stressful time.
This is a life and death situation.
This goes to show how much more advance Akura stuff is.
Lōkahi is starting to understand the context of deaths because of this.
Ah it's become necrotic, also that amputation is impressive to be able to do that especially as a kid. Ah she's a total brat.
I'm really beginning to regret saving her.
She drinks the Akura juice.
It's unknown to the rest of the world that's good to know.
The benefits aren't worth the loss of freedom.
[x] B. "No, I will not make that oath. I won't serve you."
Yeah no. We've done more then enough for Gratitude and she isn't really showing a lot of it.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
[x] A. "I swear to serve you for a year, or until you reach the stage of Gold."
It is actually a fairly good deal. Soul oaths have to be reciprocal and bind stronger the greater your advancement.
We aren't even iron yet breaking it would barely even be damaging. I am surprised she is even asking unless she plans on immediately stuffing us full of pills to quickly advance.
I will admit that she is very abrasive, but this honestly really is the opportunity of a lifetime.
It is actually a fairly good deal. Soul oaths have to be reciprocal and bind stronger the greater your advancement.
We aren't even iron yet breaking it would barely even be damaging. I am surprised she is even asking unless she plans on immediately stuffing us full of pills to quickly advance.
I will admit that she is very abrasive, but this honestly really is the opportunity of a lifetime.
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