Eternal_0bserver
(Unverified Bookworm)
- Location
- Earth, Northern Europe
[X] the Caleninian Empire
Witch's Lament: A Claymore Quest
- Thread starter rdc30
- Start date
- Mature Fantasy Action
[X] the Caleninian Empire
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They
Getting some very Ichigo Inner Hollow vibes from this.
Does Ariella know of any more Abyssal Ones or is it just Delphine?
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They
Can't remember if this has been asked or not but is the island from the Claymore anime on this world?
rdc30
While you learned to write, I studied the blade.
Yeah, it's the same world.
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They
Typo. This is in the character information sheet.
Book I - Chapter 1: Ariella - Part II
rdc30
While you learned to write, I studied the blade.
[X] the Caleninian Empire
As far as assigned Regions compare to one another, you can think of no worse place to be assigned than the Caleninian Empire, especially as the Single-Digit Warrior that is responsible for leading the majority of local hunts for active Awakened Beings. You had hoped to be assigned to your homeland of Bortisia or, failing that, at least a neighboring state with a reliable trading company connected to the city of your birth, which would have allowed you to at least dispatch a letter to inform your family that you still yet lived. You are not quite sure if the Organization has a policy against assigning Warriors to their homelands or if Warriors are even expressly forbidden from interacting with their old families, but, while the fact that you were assigned to a Territory halfway around the world might very well be nothing more than a coincidence, you have also noticed many strange events surrounding your forced recruitment that is starting to test the limits of what you can reasonably attribute to chance.
Most of the other girls in your generation were orphans, slaves or children whose parents directly sold them to the Organization for a handful of coin and you would imagine the same is true for every generation of Warriors, but, as far as you have been able to gleam, not a single other girl in your generation was nobility like you were and it is easy to understand why. After all, in any sane world, the orphaned heir of a noble family is usually raised as the ward of another noble family, while any noble family sufficiently destitute to the point that they must sell off their children for coin can usually find a wealthy lowborn merchant family seeking to purchase their way into nobility. On the other hand, you can certainly imagine that children of noble birth being sold into slavery, while certainly not a common occurrence, is still the most likely manner by which a highborn girl makes her way into the Organization, but that would only occur under unique circumstances that typically involve attempting to ransom the girl of a destitute family or because the family conspired to remove a troublesome heir from the line of succession, neither of which applies to you.
At least, you would certainly hope that to be case for you, because, to your knowledge, you had not caused any irreconcilable succession crisis and your family is certainly not so destitute as to be unable to pay a ransom, which would appear to suggest that your captors never informed your family of your captivity and most likely sold you to the Organization immediately after your capture. If you were able to somehow make your way back to your ancestral homeland, you might be able to leverage the political consequences of the Organization murdering or kidnapping the daughter of possibly the second most powerful family in all Bortisia on her own land in order to avoid an otherwise guaranteed execution, but you are not so foolish as to believe that would protect you from the wrath of the Organization. You also have to consider the ramifications of forcing the hand of your family into choosing between you and all the deaths which will certainly result from the Organization withholding the service of Warriors from your lands in the future, an exchange that you cannot in good conscience agree to.
Of course, all of this is based on the by no means guaranteed assumption that your family would still accept you after what you have become, which, to be fair, is not a topic you particularly enjoy contemplating.
Regardless of your personal concerns, however, there is also the present state of the Caleninian Empire to consider and it would not be remiss for any Warrior assigned to the Region to believe that they had done something to antagonize the Organization for them to warrant being sent to such a dangerous environment, even, or perhaps especially, for a Single-Digit Warrior. Looking back on it now, it is hard to believe that, before your capture and forced hybridization, the Caleninian Empire was still seen as one of the great powers on the continent, even after their humiliating defeat to King Charles I of Lacrirori. Under the reign of the current Empress Aurelia, the Legions had spent considerable effort importing high-quality warhorses to expand their cataphract corps, financed a massive expansion to the Imperial Arsenal to increase production of new heavy arquebuses and even secured an alliance with the Rumiumese Republic, which you distinctly remember had been distressing news for your parents, who believed that the two states sought to reform the Coviatean Empire. Nowadays, however, many are beginning to doubt the Second Empire will even survive the decade as every neighboring state they had wronged in the past seizes this opportunity to finally claim their vengeance. That is, of course, provided the massive hordes of Yoma rampaging through the countryside, so emboldened and overwhelming that they no longer even bother with subterfuge, or the increasing number of powerful Awakened Beings, migrating into the region and battling each other for the most plentiful feeding grounds, do not depopulate the land before its enemies can deliver the killing blow.
Compared to all these complications and more, the presence of the Abyssal Queen herself, paradoxically, rests quite low on your list of immediate concerns, since she usually prefers to hunt along the shoreline, depopulating entire vibrant coastal cities in a matter of hours and rarely leaving enough survivors or lingering long enough for the Organization to amount a proper response to. Not that the Organization would ever undertake such an arduous plan, of course, since, as the ranking Warrior in charge of a Region where the Abyssal Queen operates, the Councilors made it quite clear to you that the standing policy of the Organization is to avoid confrontation with the Awakened former Number One Warrior they created and, ultimately, unleashed onto the world.
It was already widely accepted among the educated populace, since long before you were born, that the Abyssal Queen is some manner of Yoma, possibly one that migrated from a distant land, where Voracious Eaters can grow to such obscene power due to the lack of the Organization and Warriors keeping their population in check. How the populace react should they ever discover that the creature that had terrorized the land and devoured so many innocent victims was once a Warrior of the Organization?
Occasionally, you toy with the idea of revealing this information to the world, but then you realize that, while the Organization would likely suffer irreparable damage, if not outright destruction, you would also be condemning all your fellow Warriors to the pyre through no fault of their own, not only for little benefit, but likely to the detriment of the world, since it would allow Yoma and surviving Awakened Beings to operate unchallenged. Besides, while you despise the Organization from both a personal and moral standpoint, you do admit that it would be unreasonable to blame them for the creation of the Abyssal Queen and the other Awakened Beings, since, while you might not have the actual statistics on hand, you would certainly estimate that the overall number of lives saved from Yoma by the creation of Warriors still far outweighs the saves lost to Awakened Beings
Sighing in resignation, you carefully unclip the faux-front choker made from the same strange black fabric as your uniform from around your neck and gently pull it out from under the front of your uniform, wincing slightly in pain as the movement agitates the sensitive flesh surrounding the massive wound it is specifically designed to conceal from the public, before placing it on top of your bundled up cape to spare it from coming into contact with the disgusting wooden surface of your sleeping platform. Gingerly probing the base of your neck to gauge the state of the torn stitching, you grimace in frustration when you note that one of the metal staples designed to hold the two halves of your mutilated body together had partially torn through your reinforced flesh and, while the tear itself has already healed over, the staple is now anchored out of position, which, in turn, has torn several lines of stitching along the wound that were applied onto your more vulnerable Human flesh in order to seal the permanently open incision and prevent bleeding. Judging by the relatively little amount of blood and the looseness of the wound itself, you can safely choose ignore it for now and mend it once you are ashore as part of your weekly personal maintenance, but you were never one for procrastination, especially since you have more than enough idle time right now to fix the problem and, should you be trust into combat immediately upon landfall, you would prefer not to fight in this state, even if the disturbingly talented butchers of the Organization designed your body to continue operating under much worse conditions.
Reaching over toward the small leather satchel that you had been using a makeshift pillow, you quickly rummage through your rather depressing collection of personal possessions, not that you necessarily place undue value on material goods, of course, but there are some things that you would like to buy once you make landfall. Chief among them would be a small and sturdy mirror that you can use to inspect your neck and help you make the necessary repairs or adjustments in the field, because, considering the present state of the Second Empire, you have doubts as to whether you can consistently find accommodations that provide you with a mirrored vanity once every week.
You quickly locate the small medical kit the Organization provided you with and taught you have to operate shortly before your departure, making sure to carefully set it on top of your cape before you finally unclip and unroll it to avoid possible contamination from Goddesses know what manners of foul contagions plague the surface of this half-rotten ship. Inside the opened bundle, you immediately identify the various metal instruments and other medical supplies the Organization prepared for you specifically, since everything within must be able to withstand your corrosive blood. It takes you a moment to identify the pouch you sought, since this is the first time you have had to perform this operation yourself, but, eventually, you manage to retrieve the small package of thick metal stripes with sharpened ends strong enough to pierce through your hardened flesh as well as a set of medical pliers to help you fashion them into staples, once they have been properly positioned. You grimace in annoyance when a quick accounting of the number of staples the Organization supplied you with numbered to only twenty, not even enough to be considered a full replacement set, since you would ideally have at least thirty staples running from the tip of your throat down to your lower pelvis to properly secure the wound during extreme physical activities such as combat, but, in hindsight, you are hardly surprised, since the staples are forged from the same strange metal as your blade and the Organization likely has an extremely limited supply, considering the fact that they did not even forge your armor from the metal.
Sighing again in frustration, you reseal the spare staples back into the medical kit before reaching down to where you had arranged your your armor pieces and unclipping one of your pauldrons from the upper armor assembly before placing it on your makeshift sleeping platform and angling it so that you can use the metallic surface as a rudimentary mirror to help you with the procedure. The dim and flickering lighting provided by the single dying candle would have made it impossible for even a trained physician to perform this operation properly, but your enhanced vision allows to make out enough of the blurry reflection to proceed. Taking a deep breath, you are somewhat surprised to realize just how tense and nervous you are, especially over a procedure that the Researchers routinely performed on you and the other Trainees, but, know that you think about it, perhaps you were always this nervous and afraid, but the Organization had broken you so severely that you had become somewhat desensitized to it. Now that you have to make the conscious decision to mutilate yourself, however, instead of having that choice forced on you, you find yourself hesitating and you can even sense a faint trembling in your arm as you bring the pliers up to the misaligned staple.
Taking several deep breaths to steady your nerves as best you can, you have to remind yourself that this is a routine procedure that will become your reality for the foreseeable future and that, while you might despise what you have become and the depths you must sink to in order to survive, you cannot allow despair to claim you as it has claimed so many of your fellow Warriors. Steeling your resolve, you focus your attention on the blurry reflection of your stigma and carefully direct the pliers-...
"Need help?"
You flinch as the unexpected interruption startles you out of your concentration, before your brain finally catches up to reality and you feel your eyes widen slightly in surprise as you glance to see Louise staring at you, her face still set in that same blank expression with only her right eye visible. The prompt so was unexpected, in fact, that, for several awkward seconds, you and Louise simply stare at each, you a rather embarrassing look of surprise, while Louise maintains her usual lack of expression with such consistency that you briefly wonder if, perhaps, the girl suffered some manner of injury to her face before or due to the surgery which precluded her from making any expression.
"Oh, I...yes, I suppose," you respond awkwardly before finally manage to gather your wits about you and your expression softs into a sincere smile. "Thank you."
As always, the other girl does not respond and her expression, lack thereof, does not change in the slightest as she nimbly rises to her feet, her body uncoiling from her sitting fetal position like a serpent in one smooth motion, before she makes her way over to you. To your surprise, however, when you offer her the pauldron, so that she might hold it for you in a better position and angle to catch the limited light and provide you with a better reflection you use to guide your hand, she simply brushes it aside dismissively before holding out her hand for the pliers. You hesitate at that, because you would expect that Louise of all people would realize how dangerous your blood can be to anyone without a specialized protective equipment and while you can control the flow of blood to lower the risk, you still have nightmares of the horrific injuries the other girls in your suffered in their effort to save you.
"Are you certain?" You ask hesitantly, wavering between outright rejecting her help or acquiescing to her request, even though you know it could very well result in her getting injured for your sake. "It is quite a simple procedure, really, one which I can perform easily myself," you point out quickly, making one last effort to dissuade her, even though you somehow doubt the other girl is the type of person who can be swayed so easily. "You need not trouble yourself on my behalf."
"Just hand it over," Louise replies icily, a hint of annoyance finally breaking through her stoic façade for the first time, as far as you can recall, that is not due to pain or fatigue during training.
You are so surprised by her reaction that you do not even protest when she finally reaches down and plucks the pliers from your slackened grip before climbing up onto the makeshift bed and kneeling in front you to inspect the broken stitching. You barely have time to redirect the flow of blood away from your the area before you have to bit down on the inside of your cheeks hard enough to draw blood in order keep yourself from screaming in pain as Louise tightens the pliers around the dislocated side of the staple and begins to twist it out of your flesh before she can reinsert it into its proper position. The mysterious metal the Organization used to create the staples is so strong that even such a thin strip of it is still enough to force Louise to release her Yoki to a level where the color of her eyes have shifted into the unsettling shade of yellow and her pupils into the dark slit-like pupils characteristic of Yoma to simply allow her to slowly bend the staple into an angle where she can slide it out of your flesh. No matter how many times you undergo the procedure or how resilient the rest of your body becomes, you can never seem to build up any pain tolerance in the area around the stigma, even though you know far too well from injuries to the rest of your body that your pain threshold has risen to such an absurd degree that amputations, broken bones and otherwise major traumatic injuries now barely even cause you much discomfort.
After what feels like years of having a shard of metal grinding through your flesh, you finally release the trembling breath you had been holding as Louise finally manages to unhook the staple, allowing you to instantly close the wound, leaving only a lingering sense of pain that you are not not quite sure is real or simply a lingering phantom in your own mind. You barely have a moment to catch your breath, however, before you feel Louise's spare hand close around your throat, making your heart skip a beat before you realize she is holding the stigma closed in order to properly anchor the staple. Thank the Goddesses for small mercies, however, because while the removal process was agonizing and seemingly unending, it only takes Louise a second to align the staple properly before you feel a sharp, painful sting that quickly fades as the metal pushes up out of your flesh before your accelerated healing secures it in place, while Louise begins the exhausting task of bending the realigned staple back into its locking position. Once she is confident that the staple is properly secured and unlikely to came loose again, Louise begins to relax her grip on your throat slowly to ensure that it is not too tightly placed to risk tearing again during extraneous physical activity, before she finally leans away, satisfied with her handiwork, and turns her attention toward the medical kit, exchanging the pliers for your suturing tool and a roll of special stitches created from the same black fabric as your uniform.
"Thank you for your assistance, your help is greatly appreciated," you inform Louise with an genuine and grateful smile, even though her expression remains otherwise unchanged as she leans back to begin the comparatively easier, if only marginally less painful, process of removing and replacing the stitching. Using the much more precise tweezers of the suturing kit, Louise begins by removing the torn stitches one at a time and replacing them before moving on to the next one. In all, by the time she finally returns everything to the medical kit before hopping off the makeshift bed and, wordlessly, returning to her original position on her own sleeping platform, with her hugging her legs up against her chest and her chin resting against her knees, as though this entire process had never even occurred.
"Masterfully done, I am truly in your debt," you praise as you gently probe the new stitching around your throat, flexing the muscles slightly to test the tightness, before allowing your blood begin flowing through the area again to test to the seal. "Should you ever require assistance in the future, do not hesitate to call upon me," you swear graciously as your smile grows upon the realization that the placement of the stitching and staple are noticeably more comfortable than those performed by the Researchers right before your departure. For her part, Louise does not acknowledge your offer in the slightest, but then you never expected her to react and, that aside, it would be the height of hubris to make such oaths merely in the hopes of some manner of emotional validation. Regardless of your faith in your fellow Warrior, however, you still make sure to perform one final inspection of your neck with your pauldron, before you reattach it to the rest of the armor assembly and turn your attention toward the medical kit to confirm that everything is properly accounted for before you roll it back up and return it to your pouch.
Pushing yourself to your feet with only a slightly exaggerated groan of relief, you make sure to stretch out your limbs, while you mentally calculate the rough position of the ship, assuming it maintained proper heading and barring any major irregularities in wind. You and your fellow Warriors had boarded the old, beaten ship, a decommissioned or salvaged war galley that might have once been considered a formidable warship a hundred years ago during the time of the First Empire, from the private docks of the Organization's stronghold on Molimivoma Island. As one of the few remaining states on the continent where the slave trade is still legal, the Republic of Runium has become the center of this despicable institution and the Republic's capital city of Polum is now so associated on this trade that its massive harbors have become a vile den of scum and villainy, filled with pirates, coastal raiders and professional slaver guilds. One look at this disgusting rotting heap of a ship and its unsavory crew allowed you to deduce that the Organization had hired pirates to deliver you to the mainland and the only business these scum could have with the Organization is bringing young girls to be butchered and mutilated into half-breed abominations like you were. It took every bit of your willpower to not deal out justice on the spot and, even now, after a week of travel, the only means by which you can alleviate the disgust you feel, both at the slavers as well as yourself for abiding their continued existence, is to remain blow decks, in the same cells that, just weeks ago, were likely filled with young girls just like you all those years ago when you came into the possession of the Organization.
As always, the Organization never even deemed to inform you of exactly where it is that this accursed ship is actually meant to deliver you to, but you estimate the voyage must be coming to an end soon, since no sane captain or crew would dare to sail far into Caleninian waters with the Abyssal Queen so near, which means that the ship will likely dock somewhere in the Duchy of Erorumia, but you have no way to confirm your theory without directly speaking to the crew, which is something you had been avoiding this entire trip for fear of losing control. Now that you consider it, however, you realize with a slight sense of shame that you had actually not spoken to the other Warriors, since you and Louise were the only two who chose to remain below decks, so perhaps it might be better to spend these last few hours of idleness getting to know your fellow Warriors better.
As far as assigned Regions compare to one another, you can think of no worse place to be assigned than the Caleninian Empire, especially as the Single-Digit Warrior that is responsible for leading the majority of local hunts for active Awakened Beings. You had hoped to be assigned to your homeland of Bortisia or, failing that, at least a neighboring state with a reliable trading company connected to the city of your birth, which would have allowed you to at least dispatch a letter to inform your family that you still yet lived. You are not quite sure if the Organization has a policy against assigning Warriors to their homelands or if Warriors are even expressly forbidden from interacting with their old families, but, while the fact that you were assigned to a Territory halfway around the world might very well be nothing more than a coincidence, you have also noticed many strange events surrounding your forced recruitment that is starting to test the limits of what you can reasonably attribute to chance.
Most of the other girls in your generation were orphans, slaves or children whose parents directly sold them to the Organization for a handful of coin and you would imagine the same is true for every generation of Warriors, but, as far as you have been able to gleam, not a single other girl in your generation was nobility like you were and it is easy to understand why. After all, in any sane world, the orphaned heir of a noble family is usually raised as the ward of another noble family, while any noble family sufficiently destitute to the point that they must sell off their children for coin can usually find a wealthy lowborn merchant family seeking to purchase their way into nobility. On the other hand, you can certainly imagine that children of noble birth being sold into slavery, while certainly not a common occurrence, is still the most likely manner by which a highborn girl makes her way into the Organization, but that would only occur under unique circumstances that typically involve attempting to ransom the girl of a destitute family or because the family conspired to remove a troublesome heir from the line of succession, neither of which applies to you.
At least, you would certainly hope that to be case for you, because, to your knowledge, you had not caused any irreconcilable succession crisis and your family is certainly not so destitute as to be unable to pay a ransom, which would appear to suggest that your captors never informed your family of your captivity and most likely sold you to the Organization immediately after your capture. If you were able to somehow make your way back to your ancestral homeland, you might be able to leverage the political consequences of the Organization murdering or kidnapping the daughter of possibly the second most powerful family in all Bortisia on her own land in order to avoid an otherwise guaranteed execution, but you are not so foolish as to believe that would protect you from the wrath of the Organization. You also have to consider the ramifications of forcing the hand of your family into choosing between you and all the deaths which will certainly result from the Organization withholding the service of Warriors from your lands in the future, an exchange that you cannot in good conscience agree to.
Of course, all of this is based on the by no means guaranteed assumption that your family would still accept you after what you have become, which, to be fair, is not a topic you particularly enjoy contemplating.
Regardless of your personal concerns, however, there is also the present state of the Caleninian Empire to consider and it would not be remiss for any Warrior assigned to the Region to believe that they had done something to antagonize the Organization for them to warrant being sent to such a dangerous environment, even, or perhaps especially, for a Single-Digit Warrior. Looking back on it now, it is hard to believe that, before your capture and forced hybridization, the Caleninian Empire was still seen as one of the great powers on the continent, even after their humiliating defeat to King Charles I of Lacrirori. Under the reign of the current Empress Aurelia, the Legions had spent considerable effort importing high-quality warhorses to expand their cataphract corps, financed a massive expansion to the Imperial Arsenal to increase production of new heavy arquebuses and even secured an alliance with the Rumiumese Republic, which you distinctly remember had been distressing news for your parents, who believed that the two states sought to reform the Coviatean Empire. Nowadays, however, many are beginning to doubt the Second Empire will even survive the decade as every neighboring state they had wronged in the past seizes this opportunity to finally claim their vengeance. That is, of course, provided the massive hordes of Yoma rampaging through the countryside, so emboldened and overwhelming that they no longer even bother with subterfuge, or the increasing number of powerful Awakened Beings, migrating into the region and battling each other for the most plentiful feeding grounds, do not depopulate the land before its enemies can deliver the killing blow.
Compared to all these complications and more, the presence of the Abyssal Queen herself, paradoxically, rests quite low on your list of immediate concerns, since she usually prefers to hunt along the shoreline, depopulating entire vibrant coastal cities in a matter of hours and rarely leaving enough survivors or lingering long enough for the Organization to amount a proper response to. Not that the Organization would ever undertake such an arduous plan, of course, since, as the ranking Warrior in charge of a Region where the Abyssal Queen operates, the Councilors made it quite clear to you that the standing policy of the Organization is to avoid confrontation with the Awakened former Number One Warrior they created and, ultimately, unleashed onto the world.
It was already widely accepted among the educated populace, since long before you were born, that the Abyssal Queen is some manner of Yoma, possibly one that migrated from a distant land, where Voracious Eaters can grow to such obscene power due to the lack of the Organization and Warriors keeping their population in check. How the populace react should they ever discover that the creature that had terrorized the land and devoured so many innocent victims was once a Warrior of the Organization?
Occasionally, you toy with the idea of revealing this information to the world, but then you realize that, while the Organization would likely suffer irreparable damage, if not outright destruction, you would also be condemning all your fellow Warriors to the pyre through no fault of their own, not only for little benefit, but likely to the detriment of the world, since it would allow Yoma and surviving Awakened Beings to operate unchallenged. Besides, while you despise the Organization from both a personal and moral standpoint, you do admit that it would be unreasonable to blame them for the creation of the Abyssal Queen and the other Awakened Beings, since, while you might not have the actual statistics on hand, you would certainly estimate that the overall number of lives saved from Yoma by the creation of Warriors still far outweighs the saves lost to Awakened Beings
Sighing in resignation, you carefully unclip the faux-front choker made from the same strange black fabric as your uniform from around your neck and gently pull it out from under the front of your uniform, wincing slightly in pain as the movement agitates the sensitive flesh surrounding the massive wound it is specifically designed to conceal from the public, before placing it on top of your bundled up cape to spare it from coming into contact with the disgusting wooden surface of your sleeping platform. Gingerly probing the base of your neck to gauge the state of the torn stitching, you grimace in frustration when you note that one of the metal staples designed to hold the two halves of your mutilated body together had partially torn through your reinforced flesh and, while the tear itself has already healed over, the staple is now anchored out of position, which, in turn, has torn several lines of stitching along the wound that were applied onto your more vulnerable Human flesh in order to seal the permanently open incision and prevent bleeding. Judging by the relatively little amount of blood and the looseness of the wound itself, you can safely choose ignore it for now and mend it once you are ashore as part of your weekly personal maintenance, but you were never one for procrastination, especially since you have more than enough idle time right now to fix the problem and, should you be trust into combat immediately upon landfall, you would prefer not to fight in this state, even if the disturbingly talented butchers of the Organization designed your body to continue operating under much worse conditions.
Reaching over toward the small leather satchel that you had been using a makeshift pillow, you quickly rummage through your rather depressing collection of personal possessions, not that you necessarily place undue value on material goods, of course, but there are some things that you would like to buy once you make landfall. Chief among them would be a small and sturdy mirror that you can use to inspect your neck and help you make the necessary repairs or adjustments in the field, because, considering the present state of the Second Empire, you have doubts as to whether you can consistently find accommodations that provide you with a mirrored vanity once every week.
You quickly locate the small medical kit the Organization provided you with and taught you have to operate shortly before your departure, making sure to carefully set it on top of your cape before you finally unclip and unroll it to avoid possible contamination from Goddesses know what manners of foul contagions plague the surface of this half-rotten ship. Inside the opened bundle, you immediately identify the various metal instruments and other medical supplies the Organization prepared for you specifically, since everything within must be able to withstand your corrosive blood. It takes you a moment to identify the pouch you sought, since this is the first time you have had to perform this operation yourself, but, eventually, you manage to retrieve the small package of thick metal stripes with sharpened ends strong enough to pierce through your hardened flesh as well as a set of medical pliers to help you fashion them into staples, once they have been properly positioned. You grimace in annoyance when a quick accounting of the number of staples the Organization supplied you with numbered to only twenty, not even enough to be considered a full replacement set, since you would ideally have at least thirty staples running from the tip of your throat down to your lower pelvis to properly secure the wound during extreme physical activities such as combat, but, in hindsight, you are hardly surprised, since the staples are forged from the same strange metal as your blade and the Organization likely has an extremely limited supply, considering the fact that they did not even forge your armor from the metal.
Sighing again in frustration, you reseal the spare staples back into the medical kit before reaching down to where you had arranged your your armor pieces and unclipping one of your pauldrons from the upper armor assembly before placing it on your makeshift sleeping platform and angling it so that you can use the metallic surface as a rudimentary mirror to help you with the procedure. The dim and flickering lighting provided by the single dying candle would have made it impossible for even a trained physician to perform this operation properly, but your enhanced vision allows to make out enough of the blurry reflection to proceed. Taking a deep breath, you are somewhat surprised to realize just how tense and nervous you are, especially over a procedure that the Researchers routinely performed on you and the other Trainees, but, know that you think about it, perhaps you were always this nervous and afraid, but the Organization had broken you so severely that you had become somewhat desensitized to it. Now that you have to make the conscious decision to mutilate yourself, however, instead of having that choice forced on you, you find yourself hesitating and you can even sense a faint trembling in your arm as you bring the pliers up to the misaligned staple.
Taking several deep breaths to steady your nerves as best you can, you have to remind yourself that this is a routine procedure that will become your reality for the foreseeable future and that, while you might despise what you have become and the depths you must sink to in order to survive, you cannot allow despair to claim you as it has claimed so many of your fellow Warriors. Steeling your resolve, you focus your attention on the blurry reflection of your stigma and carefully direct the pliers-...
"Need help?"
You flinch as the unexpected interruption startles you out of your concentration, before your brain finally catches up to reality and you feel your eyes widen slightly in surprise as you glance to see Louise staring at you, her face still set in that same blank expression with only her right eye visible. The prompt so was unexpected, in fact, that, for several awkward seconds, you and Louise simply stare at each, you a rather embarrassing look of surprise, while Louise maintains her usual lack of expression with such consistency that you briefly wonder if, perhaps, the girl suffered some manner of injury to her face before or due to the surgery which precluded her from making any expression.
"Oh, I...yes, I suppose," you respond awkwardly before finally manage to gather your wits about you and your expression softs into a sincere smile. "Thank you."
As always, the other girl does not respond and her expression, lack thereof, does not change in the slightest as she nimbly rises to her feet, her body uncoiling from her sitting fetal position like a serpent in one smooth motion, before she makes her way over to you. To your surprise, however, when you offer her the pauldron, so that she might hold it for you in a better position and angle to catch the limited light and provide you with a better reflection you use to guide your hand, she simply brushes it aside dismissively before holding out her hand for the pliers. You hesitate at that, because you would expect that Louise of all people would realize how dangerous your blood can be to anyone without a specialized protective equipment and while you can control the flow of blood to lower the risk, you still have nightmares of the horrific injuries the other girls in your suffered in their effort to save you.
"Are you certain?" You ask hesitantly, wavering between outright rejecting her help or acquiescing to her request, even though you know it could very well result in her getting injured for your sake. "It is quite a simple procedure, really, one which I can perform easily myself," you point out quickly, making one last effort to dissuade her, even though you somehow doubt the other girl is the type of person who can be swayed so easily. "You need not trouble yourself on my behalf."
"Just hand it over," Louise replies icily, a hint of annoyance finally breaking through her stoic façade for the first time, as far as you can recall, that is not due to pain or fatigue during training.
You are so surprised by her reaction that you do not even protest when she finally reaches down and plucks the pliers from your slackened grip before climbing up onto the makeshift bed and kneeling in front you to inspect the broken stitching. You barely have time to redirect the flow of blood away from your the area before you have to bit down on the inside of your cheeks hard enough to draw blood in order keep yourself from screaming in pain as Louise tightens the pliers around the dislocated side of the staple and begins to twist it out of your flesh before she can reinsert it into its proper position. The mysterious metal the Organization used to create the staples is so strong that even such a thin strip of it is still enough to force Louise to release her Yoki to a level where the color of her eyes have shifted into the unsettling shade of yellow and her pupils into the dark slit-like pupils characteristic of Yoma to simply allow her to slowly bend the staple into an angle where she can slide it out of your flesh. No matter how many times you undergo the procedure or how resilient the rest of your body becomes, you can never seem to build up any pain tolerance in the area around the stigma, even though you know far too well from injuries to the rest of your body that your pain threshold has risen to such an absurd degree that amputations, broken bones and otherwise major traumatic injuries now barely even cause you much discomfort.
After what feels like years of having a shard of metal grinding through your flesh, you finally release the trembling breath you had been holding as Louise finally manages to unhook the staple, allowing you to instantly close the wound, leaving only a lingering sense of pain that you are not not quite sure is real or simply a lingering phantom in your own mind. You barely have a moment to catch your breath, however, before you feel Louise's spare hand close around your throat, making your heart skip a beat before you realize she is holding the stigma closed in order to properly anchor the staple. Thank the Goddesses for small mercies, however, because while the removal process was agonizing and seemingly unending, it only takes Louise a second to align the staple properly before you feel a sharp, painful sting that quickly fades as the metal pushes up out of your flesh before your accelerated healing secures it in place, while Louise begins the exhausting task of bending the realigned staple back into its locking position. Once she is confident that the staple is properly secured and unlikely to came loose again, Louise begins to relax her grip on your throat slowly to ensure that it is not too tightly placed to risk tearing again during extraneous physical activity, before she finally leans away, satisfied with her handiwork, and turns her attention toward the medical kit, exchanging the pliers for your suturing tool and a roll of special stitches created from the same black fabric as your uniform.
"Thank you for your assistance, your help is greatly appreciated," you inform Louise with an genuine and grateful smile, even though her expression remains otherwise unchanged as she leans back to begin the comparatively easier, if only marginally less painful, process of removing and replacing the stitching. Using the much more precise tweezers of the suturing kit, Louise begins by removing the torn stitches one at a time and replacing them before moving on to the next one. In all, by the time she finally returns everything to the medical kit before hopping off the makeshift bed and, wordlessly, returning to her original position on her own sleeping platform, with her hugging her legs up against her chest and her chin resting against her knees, as though this entire process had never even occurred.
"Masterfully done, I am truly in your debt," you praise as you gently probe the new stitching around your throat, flexing the muscles slightly to test the tightness, before allowing your blood begin flowing through the area again to test to the seal. "Should you ever require assistance in the future, do not hesitate to call upon me," you swear graciously as your smile grows upon the realization that the placement of the stitching and staple are noticeably more comfortable than those performed by the Researchers right before your departure. For her part, Louise does not acknowledge your offer in the slightest, but then you never expected her to react and, that aside, it would be the height of hubris to make such oaths merely in the hopes of some manner of emotional validation. Regardless of your faith in your fellow Warrior, however, you still make sure to perform one final inspection of your neck with your pauldron, before you reattach it to the rest of the armor assembly and turn your attention toward the medical kit to confirm that everything is properly accounted for before you roll it back up and return it to your pouch.
Pushing yourself to your feet with only a slightly exaggerated groan of relief, you make sure to stretch out your limbs, while you mentally calculate the rough position of the ship, assuming it maintained proper heading and barring any major irregularities in wind. You and your fellow Warriors had boarded the old, beaten ship, a decommissioned or salvaged war galley that might have once been considered a formidable warship a hundred years ago during the time of the First Empire, from the private docks of the Organization's stronghold on Molimivoma Island. As one of the few remaining states on the continent where the slave trade is still legal, the Republic of Runium has become the center of this despicable institution and the Republic's capital city of Polum is now so associated on this trade that its massive harbors have become a vile den of scum and villainy, filled with pirates, coastal raiders and professional slaver guilds. One look at this disgusting rotting heap of a ship and its unsavory crew allowed you to deduce that the Organization had hired pirates to deliver you to the mainland and the only business these scum could have with the Organization is bringing young girls to be butchered and mutilated into half-breed abominations like you were. It took every bit of your willpower to not deal out justice on the spot and, even now, after a week of travel, the only means by which you can alleviate the disgust you feel, both at the slavers as well as yourself for abiding their continued existence, is to remain blow decks, in the same cells that, just weeks ago, were likely filled with young girls just like you all those years ago when you came into the possession of the Organization.
As always, the Organization never even deemed to inform you of exactly where it is that this accursed ship is actually meant to deliver you to, but you estimate the voyage must be coming to an end soon, since no sane captain or crew would dare to sail far into Caleninian waters with the Abyssal Queen so near, which means that the ship will likely dock somewhere in the Duchy of Erorumia, but you have no way to confirm your theory without directly speaking to the crew, which is something you had been avoiding this entire trip for fear of losing control. Now that you consider it, however, you realize with a slight sense of shame that you had actually not spoken to the other Warriors, since you and Louise were the only two who chose to remain below decks, so perhaps it might be better to spend these last few hours of idleness getting to know your fellow Warriors better.
Article: After some consideration, you decide to:
[ ] Remain Below Deck with Louise
You have made it this far without having to resort to interacting with the vile scum that crew this ship and, with only hours left until you can finally be rid of them, you have no intention of doing so now. Besides, while the other girl might not share this opinion, you would feel rather guilty if you abandoned Louise to endure the bowels of this disgusting by herself, especially after her invaluable help just moments ago. Due to the tumultuous nature of your relationship during training, you actually know very little about her besides her martial abilities, so you should at least attempt to remedy that before making landfall, since you have no idea when you will cross paths again.
-[ ] (Optional Write-In) Specific Topic?
[X] Find one of your fellow Warriors
Despite spending a week together on this voyage, you have had remarkably little interactions with the other Warriors and, while you can make all manner of excuses to justify your antisocial behavior, that does not mean you should simply abandon all your social and professionals obligations, especially to the Warriors who will be serving alongside you at your assigned Territories.
-[ ] Solange (Number 13)
Despite being in the same Trainee class as you and being nominally assigned to your Territory as well, you know remarkably little about the former Sister of the Church and while she might have spent most of the voyage locked away in one of the other cells, you should still at least make an attempt to interact with her.
-[ ] Cerise (Number 24)
You and Cerise have never gotten along, even when you were both in the same Trainee class. The other girl is belligerent and abrasive to most of the other girls, but she seems to harbor a particular dislike for you for reasons you can only guess at. While she is not assigned to your Territory, you should at least make an effort to find out what it is about you she finds so disagreeable.
-[X] Renee (Number 27) and Sophie (Number 30)
Out of all the Warriors on this voyage, you know the least about Renee and Sophie, since, owing to you being in different classes, you never even crossed paths with each other during training. Sophie appears friendly and approachable, but is obvious that she prefers to spend what little time she has left with her companion Renee and you do not wish to disturb her, especially since the life of a Warrior is fraught with uncertainty and peril. Nevertheless, you should at least make an attempt to interact with them before landfall, especially since you and Sophie will be assigned to the same Region.
--[X] (Write-In) Ask if Louise wants to accompany us, emphasizing that having a cordial working relationship with warriors from her area is going to make future Awakened Beings hunts more successful.
[ ] Talk to the crew
Despite how much you might personally despise pirates and slavers, for both personal and moral reasons, you recognize that hiding away in the bowels of their ship and pretending they do not exist is hardly a proper solution or appropriate behavior. You have been isolated from the world at large for three years and all the information you have regarding the current state of both the continent as well as your assigned Territory was provided by the Organization, so perhaps you should take this opportunity to learn as much you can before landfall.
-[ ] (Optional Write-In) Specific Topic?
[ ] (Write-In)
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[X] Talk to the crew
-[X] Get the lay of the land from what are presumably if not locals, at least regulars, as well as latest gossip of the region. You don't trust the Organization's briefing's for a myriad of reasons. Talking with normal people even if they revile you, will help keep you grounded in your humanity too. If we learn anything important we can pass it on to our peers.
-[X] Get the lay of the land from what are presumably if not locals, at least regulars, as well as latest gossip of the region. You don't trust the Organization's briefing's for a myriad of reasons. Talking with normal people even if they revile you, will help keep you grounded in your humanity too. If we learn anything important we can pass it on to our peers.
- Location
- California
[X] Find one of your fellow Warriors
-[X] Renee (Number 27) and Sophie (Number 30)
Figure Sophie is probably good to talk to since she's assigned to the same region ad us, and according to the dramatis personae she is friendlier than most of the other warriors listed there.
Edit: adjusted vote to match new layout.
-[X] Renee (Number 27) and Sophie (Number 30)
Figure Sophie is probably good to talk to since she's assigned to the same region ad us, and according to the dramatis personae she is friendlier than most of the other warriors listed there.
Edit: adjusted vote to match new layout.
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- Location
- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[X] Find one of your fellow Warriors
-[X] Renee (Number 27) and Sophie (Number 30)
-[X] Renee (Number 27) and Sophie (Number 30)
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rdc30
While you learned to write, I studied the blade.
I actually expanded on the preset options, since I suspect people were already indifferent to a mostly fluff vote and were put-off by how open-ended it was. In the future, I'll provide more detailed preset options and people can do their own write-ins if they want.
So the vote to speak to Sophie will fold into also talking to Renee because of her proclivity to stick with her then? Or are you giving us the option to speak to both of them?
I somewhat think speaking to the crew about the happenings in the region isn't the worst idea. They may be scum, but they have been working in the region far longer than we have been in it. They're bound to have some knowledge of the state of the area with their unique perspective because of their profession as pirates/children trafficking for the organization.
rdc30
While you learned to write, I studied the blade.
Yeah, I'll just count them together.
[X] Find one of your fellow Warriors
-[X] Renee (Number 27) and Sophie (Number 30)
-[X] Renee (Number 27) and Sophie (Number 30)
Eternal_0bserver
(Unverified Bookworm)
- Location
- Earth, Northern Europe
[X] Find one of your fellow Warriors
-[X] Renee (Number 27) and Sophie (Number 30)
-[X] Ask if Louise wants to accompany us, emphasizing that having a cordial working relationship with warriors from her area is going to make future Awakened Beings hunts more successful.
Edited.
-[X] Renee (Number 27) and Sophie (Number 30)
-[X] Ask if Louise wants to accompany us, emphasizing that having a cordial working relationship with warriors from her area is going to make future Awakened Beings hunts more successful.
Edited.
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Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
This is a very interesting Quest; good Claymore fanwork are rare, and this one seems promising.
Before voting, I wanted a clarification: the list above says that Sophie will be assigned to Ariella's territory, as will Solange, while Renee and Cerise won't be. If that's the case, would it be wrong to assume that Renee and Cerise will be assigned to the same territory as Louise? Because, if so, I'd feel inclined to make a vote where we try to drag Louise along while going to talk with Sophie, if only for the parallel it's going to draw between the antisocial ones (Louise and Renee) being assigned to the same territory, which seems like it might lead to an interesting discussion. The dynamics seems similar enough that I'd be very curious to explore that parallel.
Before voting, I wanted a clarification: the list above says that Sophie will be assigned to Ariella's territory, as will Solange, while Renee and Cerise won't be. If that's the case, would it be wrong to assume that Renee and Cerise will be assigned to the same territory as Louise? Because, if so, I'd feel inclined to make a vote where we try to drag Louise along while going to talk with Sophie, if only for the parallel it's going to draw between the antisocial ones (Louise and Renee) being assigned to the same territory, which seems like it might lead to an interesting discussion. The dynamics seems similar enough that I'd be very curious to explore that parallel.
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They
[X] Find one of your fellow Warriors
-[X] Renee (Number 27) and Sophie (Number 30)
-[X] Ask if Louise wants to accompany us, emphasizing that having a cordial working relationship with warriors from her area is going to make future Awakened Beings hunts more successful.
Edit: Changed Vote.
-[X] Renee (Number 27) and Sophie (Number 30)
-[X] Ask if Louise wants to accompany us, emphasizing that having a cordial working relationship with warriors from her area is going to make future Awakened Beings hunts more successful.
Edit: Changed Vote.
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rdc30
While you learned to write, I studied the blade.
Yeah, she's going to be the ranking Warrior for their region.
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
Thanks for the answer! If so, I'm going to borrow @EzordCyborg45 vote, although I'm applying a little modification:
[X] Find one of your fellow Warriors
-[X] Renee (Number 27) and Sophie (Number 30)
-[X] Ask if Louise wants to accompany us, emphasizing that having a cordial working relationship with warriors from her area is going to make future Awakened Beings hunts more successful.
I get the feeling that an offensive warrior is gonna be more receptive to "this will make you more efficient at killing Yoma" as an argument than she would be at a "let's socialize" one, especially one like Louise who is noted to be somewhat antisocial. That's just my opinion though; as I said, I'm mostly curious to see what the interaction will be like if we position Ariella and Louise as mirrors to Renee and Sophie, and try to have a discussion on that front.
[X] Find one of your fellow Warriors
-[X] Renee (Number 27) and Sophie (Number 30)
-[X] Ask if Louise wants to accompany us, emphasizing that having a cordial working relationship with warriors from her area is going to make future Awakened Beings hunts more successful.
I get the feeling that an offensive warrior is gonna be more receptive to "this will make you more efficient at killing Yoma" as an argument than she would be at a "let's socialize" one, especially one like Louise who is noted to be somewhat antisocial. That's just my opinion though; as I said, I'm mostly curious to see what the interaction will be like if we position Ariella and Louise as mirrors to Renee and Sophie, and try to have a discussion on that front.
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They
Yeah that makes sense since to become an Offensive type the Warrior's desire to kill Yoma surpasses their desire to live, so putting it in that context would probably make Louise more receptive.
[X] Find one of your fellow Warriors
-[X] Renee (Number 27) and Sophie (Number 30)
-[X] Ask if Louise wants to accompany us, emphasizing that having a cordial working relationship with warriors from her area is going to make future Awakened Beings hunts more successful.
I guess I'll go with this for now. This will let us get a better read on a quite a few of our fellow warriors at once even if Louise declines the offer.
-[X] Renee (Number 27) and Sophie (Number 30)
-[X] Ask if Louise wants to accompany us, emphasizing that having a cordial working relationship with warriors from her area is going to make future Awakened Beings hunts more successful.
I guess I'll go with this for now. This will let us get a better read on a quite a few of our fellow warriors at once even if Louise declines the offer.