4771/Schism of the Waning Moon

Schism of the Waning Moon
Date of Scene:	11 November 2016
Location:	Lordran
Synopsis:	In the wake of Gwyndolin's death, and that of the lovelorn Lady Darkling, the diehard Darkmoon Blades splinter in a faction concerned with only one thing: revenge against the Multiverse that has taken everything from them.
Cast of Characters:	Priscilla, 253, 518, 1014, 707, Lezard Valeth

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Priscilla has posed:
    A sunny day in Anor Londo, high atop the mountains, as much as any other. Despite the bustling occupation that has slowly swelled within its previously tomb-like walls, both its location, and its time period, keep the noise to a warm, echoing babble, and leave the high-altitude air refreshingly pure and clear, letting show the idyllic weather than always seems to hang over the sprawling, grand historical citadel. Even the weird, winged demons that seem to hang around on the walls, and the giant, stompy knights that stand guard around it seem almost approachable like this.

    Both the quiet, and the fresh air, with no warning at all, are abruptly ruined; first by the sound of a rumbling explosion that can be heard all the way out to the Archives and guard towers at the mountain bowl's peak, and then by the distance stench of sulfur, saltpeter, and other, unidentified chemicals. The city itself goes briefly quiet, as billowing black clouds of smoke rise from an impressive hole in the Citadel Palace's upper, outer wall, and the shattered, stained glass window that had dominated it. Then, it rises to a fever pitch, interspersed with the clanking of hundreds of heavy, armoured boots, and the flapping of winged creatures. Silver shapes are seen taking to the rooftops to avoid ploughing through the surge of humanity pushing down the main street, converging on the source of the disturbance from multiple directions almost like medieval SWAT. A second explosion follows shortly thereafter, before any of them reach.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    Psyber is whistling to himself as he walks through the streets. He's got a slightly heavier coat than normal on, ends trailing behind him as he marches through the alleys at a practiced pace. He's also holding an energy drink in his hand. This may be quite the disturbance, but Psyber seems relatively relaxed about it all. Mostly because Priscilla requested his help, but wasn't screaming bloody murder or sounding dying, so he figures he can take his time.

    Holding the can in his hand, he sings to himself boredly, "The last that ever she saw him, carried away by a moonlight shadow. He passed on worried and warning, carried away by a moonlight shadow. Lost in the riddle last Saturday night, far away on the other side. He was caught in the middle of a desperate fight, and she couldn't find how to push through."

    Normally, as a sign of asserted dominance and ass-kickery, he'd bring the Sun-Slayer Greatsword. Today, instead, he has brought Ari across his back, the tip occasionally scraping against the ground if he leans too far back while the sword is sheathed there. He has a tired look to him as he walks towards the site of the disturbance, chugging down the last of his Red Bull.

    "Ari. I finished the can."

Yuuki Kuran (518) has posed:
    Ah, the great outdoors! Priscilla had told Yuuki that she had wanted her to see 'other' things, and the vistas of Anor Londo were quite breathtaking. Especially when there wasn't giant maruading golem dudes trying to ruin your day, flying gargoyles not swooping down on your dumb head, or armored knights firing arrows as large as your body, into you, as you tried to cross narrow bridges with little room to maneuver.

    Really, even if it wasn't her favorite time of day, the vista was beautiful.

    Yawning gently, bringing a hand to her mouth as she did so, from her perch precipitously towards the edge of the long fall down -- just as the explosion happened. "Wh..." She begins, confused and drowsy after exploring most of the 'night'. Was it some sort of planned thing? Normal? No, there was too much confusion, too much action, too much re-action.

    So, obviously the smart thing to do was wander against the grain towards the disturbance just before the second explosion.

    "I am almost certain Priscilla didn't want me to see this, either!" She comments to the air, a grim sort of amusement in her luck.

Heaven's Armory (1014) has posed:
    Ari the ultragreatsword is on Psyber's back, but Ari the amibguously-teenaged girl in partial armor appears by Psyber's side at his word. Without a word of her own, she takes the emptied can and, still holding it in her hand, burns it down to what seems to be a disc, the sparks absorbing into her skin without marring it. The remains she secrets away for the moment, the recycling complete, and the street litter no the worse for it.
    She looks up. "Bright, for moons." Not that there is any lack of shadows, in any city. With that, she trudges on, not appearing to be carefully watching her wielder's condition, particularly in regards to his energy level.

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
At the moment, it doesn't really matter who wants whom to see (or not see) what; all Xiaomu really knows is that something big and over-artilleried is wreaking havoc, and that she still needs to kick some more ass in the name of getting over the ongoing annoyance that has been the Sessho-Seki crisis back home. Granted, getting into a big fight is probably not the best idea for de-stressing ...

But then, you can only pursue Lu Bu so many times before it gets either frustrating or passé.

Given the amount of gunfire the unknown hostile is dispensing, Xiaomu determines that a roof-hopping approach (or otherwise aerial) is probably not a great idea; as such, she's weaving through the streets on her lightcycle, being careful enough (and holding back on her speed) to make sure she doesn't wipe out on a tight corner or roll right over some pedestrian who's trying to get away from the source of the trouble. Once she gets close enough to catch a decent glimpse of the gunwalker, she cuts into the nearest alley and de-rezzes her lightcycle, leaning out long enough to get a better look and try to sort out a good way to approach the problem of stopping it.

Lezard Valeth has posed:
Lezard has been seen here, there, and everywhere in Lordran. Ever since assisting in reworking the fundamental nature of the world and helping to put Priscilla in power, the Necromancer of Midgard has been almost exclusively working from the Duke's Archives, wandering almost unchecked through the land. As the seat of power, Anor Londo is a fairly frequent stop for the Necromancer, both for his enigmatic designs as well as to occasionally flagrantly remind the local gods that they owe their renewed relevance to the inheritor of the Abyss itself. Mostly with his presence and the constant presence of the Manus Catalyst, like a splinter in the mind of the more orthodox types.

The explosion, as what one might expect, immediately draws Lezard to the location. The normal teleportation circle draws itself, and the Necromancer fades into existence, clucking his tongue. "Well well well. How very gauche." Lezard comments, looking over the shattered glass window and letting the Citadel tremble under his boots... And he glances over to the others arriving, his foot tapping. "Oh good, we're all here." Clearly, he doesn't view the /massive number of knights and gargoyles/ as relevant security. "Shall we investigate?"

Priscilla has posed:
    Arriving at the Citadel Palace is a one-way affair unless one wants to do a lot of dangerous parkouring. This is by design. As grandiose and gorgeous as the city is, it is, after all, still a fortress, and it is advantageous to force people inbound for the palace up a straight road and stairs at some point of the journey or another.

    Coming to the wide plaza that shelves off the front gates finds it littered with fist-sized pieces of glass and stone, indicating the explosion had apparently come from inside, rather than long distance. A third explosion rocks the area, rumbling the massive flagstones with its shockwave, and showering those gathered with more debris. Some of the Knights have arrived already, ploughing on through the dangerous shower without a care, some storming the gates and others immediately /doing/ said parkouring, while others hang back and surround the plaza, and others even further and slamming the grounding spikes of the preposterously massive greatbows into the ground, drawing back the wound titanite strings and loading their man-sized iron lances.

    It isn't a threat that comes from within the castle walls though. It seems as if the chaos deliberately comes to a halt as soon as a number of Elites converge. In fact, deliberately, before they can even get in through the front door. In the sudden, semi-quiet, the air suddenly fills with a dull, distant sound like roaring wind, suddenly pitching up into a keening sound like fraying steel strings, and the plaza all around flashes with swirling, blue and black vortices whirling up from the ground, expanding outwards as ghostly, midnight blue figures arise from them.

thin moments, anyone closely responding is surrounded on all sides by a little over a dozen Darkmoon Blades; ostensibly warriors dressed in varying assortments of armour, old and ostentatious mixed in with newly and pragmatically acquired, but all universally faceless, and all universally armed. Their affiliation is instantly recognizable both by the ghostly, deep blue hue that suffuses their ethereal figures, and the visible insignia of the sword placed over the crescent moon on various places of their armour.

    The knights pay them an absolute minimum of attention, as do the winged white demons flying to the upper levels and crawling in through the broken wall and window. To them, it is only proper that the Darkmoon Blades be summoned, to punish the sinners associated with an attack on the royalty, but the men and women only let the reinforcements rush by, standing resolutely in a tense, dead silent circle around the Elites, facing inward like statues, until almost all the guardsmen are gone.

Lezard Valeth has posed:
Lezard is about to step forward, so as to begin investigating with this erstwhile team of Elites... When the Darkmoons arive.

Lezard pauses, a visible scowl etching across his face as he sees the mass of zealots. "The Darkmoons." He states with a level tone with just that eyebrow-twitching edge of irritation, like a roommate you just can't get rid of, the kind with really bad personal hygiene and you don't want to just start bludgeoning them to death with soap in a sock.

On second thought, it probably would be pretty appropriate for these unwashed madmen.

Lezard grates for a moment, and then simply gestures with the Catalyst as they ring the Elites. "Good of you to come, servants of the /Dark Moon/." He states. "Surely you are here to assist in the crisis and not to do anything... ill-advised." He asks.

They're delaying the group. He knows it. It's blatantly obvious. But even in an obvious delaying action, one can gain some insight.

Yuuki Kuran (518) has posed:
    Entering the plaza at a jog, Yuuki looks around. The silence of things, and the guardians ignoring the blue armed people - some sort of summoned force? familiars? - that had appeared suddenly.

    "I didn't think explosions would be natural, but maybe... an accident?" She murmured, looking to Psyber (also on site) since she had known he was here before.

    Lezard, on the other hand, doesn't recieve distrust per-se, as she was also aware he was a contributor to the world, and was somewhat relieved to find him having /not/ brought forth an army of the Undead. So she had that going. Aware the last time she met the Wizard, she had a flimsy disguise on, he probably would notice her at all.

    Totally!

    "Ah... Hello? What happened here?" She addresses the Darkmoons.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    "A moon, no matter how bright, can only reflect, never emit," Psyber says to Ari as they walk along, his hands in his pockets as he strolls, "It merely claims the light of another as its own and people praise it for that." He stops abruptly, once he can meet up with the others and looks around. He sighs a bit as he steps into the plaza and looks to the front gate as the knights had in. He adjusts his stance slightly and takes stock.

    The group is quickly surrounded, leaving Psyber standing there casually. He looks pretty relaxed, though people who know him well enough can tell it's more like a wolf feigning uninterest than actual relaxation. He calmly looks between the gathered Darkmoons and tilts his head a bit, "Long time no see. I haven't seen you guys since I turned Gwyndolin into a pool of goo on the floor."

    He takes a casual step forward, stretching a bit and raising his hand to rest on the handle of Ari. He's ready to draw the sword and strike someone down in an instant's notice, but he's going to let Yuuki and Lezard bear out their discussion, first.

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
And here Xiaomu had been expecting just one big enemy, what with all the chaos and confusion. She looks around at the Darkmoon Blades, then 'salutes' them briefly - just a jaunty little lifting of two fingers to her forehead, followed by a casual flick of greeting and acknowledgement. "So do you guys know more about what's up than we do?" the sage fox inquires, before turning her gaze back to the palace. "Or do we all just head in and see what there is to see?"

She also waves to Psyber and Yuuki (and, grudgingly, to Lizard Valeth), starting to walk towards the Citadel Palace to try and get a closer look. If any of the local guard-knight types try to stop her, she'll stop easily enough.

Heaven's Armory (1014) has posed:
    "It is an unusual time to see one," Ari vaguely responds, "though others are unsurprised." Less abstractly, "Does the covenant still hold? Svala said little."
    She stands where she is, rather than taking anything that could be taken as a hostile action, including the act of dematerializing before someone stabs her vulnerable (if not strictly human) flesh. Psyber is waiting and, therefore, so is she. She is also keeping an eye, of sorts, directly behind the both of them, via the eyeless sight that projects from any part of her true body.

Priscilla has posed:
    Psyber knows exactly what he's doing. All around him, he can hear the subtle clinking of armour and creaking of leather as fists tighten, shoulders tense and knuckles go white around weapon hilts. The emotional reaction he provokes is real and visceral, to the point of being almost palpable, but in stark opposition to last time, not one person twitches towards throwing themselves on him whilst declaring heresy. It might be a concerning change.

    The lady in brass is oddly, nowhere to be seen, but a substitute in bronzed, ornamental plates and a fully masked helm takes one step forward, using a hushed and rumbling voice. "We are most certainly here to assist in managing a crisis. One much more concerning to the future of our Lordran as a whole than some collateral damage to the palace. One can be repaired easily. The other is a much more insidious cancer that insinuates itself without rebuke."

    "Do not think to play innocent." Another states to Xiaomu, and then glares at Yuuki through a slit visor. "Even should your ignorance be genuine, it does not excuse your presence, treading the holy ground that a usurper, a despot, and degenerate puppet queen has allowed your kind to pollute for her benefit. You are thugs, mercenaries, assassins, manipulators, and corruptors all, and little else. Think not that your negligent joke of a ghost queen will excuse you from those of us who remember the rightful heirs you have slaughtered."

    Strangely, instead of invoking Gwyndolin's name, as their former, powerful, and rightful leader, the rallying cry is a much more subdued and spiteful one. The leader calls "In memory of our Firekeeper." and the others respond "For the Knightess." And the circle fills with the cacophony of drawing steel and tensing bowstrings.

    Three of them in unison take knee, ostensibly praying to a god that no longer exists, and yet simultaneously raise their crescent moon talismans, and sharp rays of moonlight shine down from nowhere on the gathering, enveloping each member in a cloudy sheen of soft, white light. Others draw their hands over their blades and arrows, causing them to flare to life with blue-violet radiance much more intense than before.

    Coiled arrows launch from all sides, as two, near-simultaneous volleys, ranks separate, and those with thrusting swords and short glaives overtake them immediately as a feint. The leader before Psyber draws his sword with a loud, shimmering ring of enchanted steel, and raising it high, and with a blinding motion of his other hand down low, fires a two-inch slug of steel-cored lead at the center of his chest, filling the air with a ringing bang and a cloud of black smoke.

    Far from the usual indeed.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    The bullet was something Psyber did not expect. The slug of metal slams the half-angel square in the chest. There's likely the zip of metal ricocheting off metal when it hits the ultra greatsword on his back. Psyber looks down and then says, "Huh. You got guns," In a surprised tone. Blood begins to seep from the corners of his mouth from the injury.

    It'd be a fatal wound on most normal people. Psyber is, fortunately, not a normal person. So despite the gaping hole in his chest, he's dashing forward and instant later. It's fast and abrupt enough to leave a trail of blood in the air in his wake that splatters to the ground behind him as he draws the massive sword on his back.

    His target is obviously going to be the one who shot him in the chest, so Psyber doesn't even bother feinting or alluding that he might head a different way. He instead swings the sword in a goliath overhead strike with one arm, using his free arm for balance as he charges in towards the Darkmoon leader.

    "I'm not in the mood to waste my time with you today."

Yuuki Kuran (518) has posed:
    Yuuki had brought her left hand up to shield her eyes from the light streaming in from the bombed roofing area, peering out from her unassuming position in 'the main thoroughfare' causes yet more confusion as the Darkmoons make dire oaths and metaphorically spit in her outstretched hand.

    Well. That happened. Yuuki's sleep-dopey eyes widen marginally, in a mixture of surprise and uncomprehension. Her reflexes are good, but she doesn't think this situation warrants her going all out.

    Or, more likely, she's just caught flatfooted in the surprise round. Darkmoon Arrows fwip through the air, as her hand drops incrementally, before she catches an arrow in the gut, another in the heart -- no, that one is pinning her hand to her chest, instead, how lucky -- and a third in her neck, sending her back a half step, and the magical damage ravaging her body in little bursts. By all rights, she's just dead upright.

    And then she just doesn't... fall over. Then, she speaks, croaking around an arrow in her throat. "Isn't feeling pain enough? Magnifying it is just a cycle, of losing and causing loss. Finding a way to live on, and not spending yourselves like this..."

    She super doesn't understand Dark Souls.

Heaven's Armory (1014) has posed:
    There's a long, tense moment, and following that, clear indication that battle will soon begin. This is good, as without such warning signs, one of those arrows would surely have taken Ari somewhere reasonably fatal. Instead, she has time to orient, to track which figures are tracking her, and when an arrow comes her way, the girl's hand is already out in a warding gesture. It's not, strictly, a ward, but the effect is similar--the projectile bursts into flame so quickly that she is instead pelted with hot ash. It's hardly pleasant, but doesn't slow her down.
    Psyber is shot. Ari suspends her immediate reflexes long enough to sweep her vision across those in front, and take two running steps forward, aiming just to the shooter's side. She disappears while still in motion, brief sparks collapsing almost before anyone can notice them. With any luck, someone will think she's either teleported or turned invisible, rather than just not being there at all.
    Where she still is, of course, is coming down in an overhead strike that will not be dissuaded by any inferior armament. A shield or blade she strikes is liable to break, or worse.

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
Oh.

Xiaomu is ready to start defending herself as soon as the knight reacted THAT way to her query - and only then does she think to slip a hand into her vest ...

Well, let's put things in the right order. First she uses her staff to vault further away from the nearest Darkmoon Knights, and while she's in midair, THEN she reaches into her vest to turn her radio on to a frequency she hasn't used in a while. By the time Xiaomu lands from that leap, though, she's got both hands on her staff, one gripping the shaft, the other holding the headpiece.

And then she draws Suiren, light glinting silver from the sword's blade. "Okay, look," the sage fox says, her tone serious. "All we were asked to do was help save your world from a horrible curse that was eating away at *everything*, your order included. That's kinda why I figured we might still be on the same side here and now. Priscilla stepped up to the throne because nobody more qualified and more interested was showing up to do it; wrecking the castle is *NOT* how you start inquiring about a change of monarch!"

She's not assuming that talking is a free action, mind you; Xiaomu twirls Suiren through the air, leaving trails of mist in the air as she slices arrows out of the air. That's enough to make sure she doesn't get outright pincushioned, but she still racks up a few near-miss injuries. Then, during a break in the arrows, she simply stabs Suiren into the ground in front of her, her hairtails briefly flaring out about her head as she puts extra oomph from her own power behind Suiren's magic -

And tries to ice the pavement over underneath at least a few of the Darkmoons. If she can get all of them on unstable footing, great, but she doesn't want to imperil her allies' footing in the process!

Lezard Valeth has posed:
Lezard visibly rolls his eyes at the diatribe, his absolute scorn for this /specific/ type of behavior quite evident. But then he's an evil goddamn necromancer, he probably gets this kind of speech almost weekly from some asshole with an excessive burden of steel and morality.

"Is that really the /best/ you can do? I can call up the dead, craft life from the elements themselves, rip your soul from your body, and bring forth fragments and echoes of the very Abyss you do despise, and /that/ is the best diatribe you can call forth? I even made it /abundantly/ clear that I didn't even /do/ it for the very people you despise so much."

There is a sudden surge of /black/ around Lezard, seven spheres of lambent, light-sucking Abyssal Darkness about him. Tiny, gleaming eyes blink in the black, and he grits his teeth as they call out to their Firekeeper and Knightess. "HEAR ME, FOOLS!" He cries out, bringing the catalyst up and slamming it down, a radial wave of explosive force blasting outwards. It intercepts the arrows and knocks back the combined assault around him, the seething cloud of horrid black clouds rushing outwards to strike at them at the same time, scorching flesh with the touch of raw, unfiltered Humanity. "I am not just a /corruptor/. I killed a /LOT/ of people for the right to be addressed and treated /properly/." Hubris practically leaks from Lezard's pores as he grates in irritation. "YE KNOW ME! AND IF YE DO NOT KNOW ME, YE SHALL BE /MADE/ TO KNOW ME! IT SHALL BE ENGRAVED UPON THY VERY SOULS! /LEZARD VALETH/!"

Additional clouds of black begin to manifest, even as Lezard raises the Catalyst, hammering it down once more. This time, a cylinder of purest Dark explodes upwards, seething, screaming hellish voices beginning to swarm outwards as this time, another horrid mass-area strike begins washing outwards.

Priscilla has posed:
    The leader drops his gun as soon as he has fired it; clearly some kind of flintlock, or perhaps percussion cap firearm, but also clearly visually modelled after a modern handgun, as if someone very, very intelligent had tried to replicate one of Psyber's guns by description, and skipped a century of invention to arrive at rifled minie balls. It's also goddamn massive; enough to break someone's wrist normally.

    Smart guy as he is however, this time a Darkmoon doesn't even try to cross swords with Psyber. The moment he lunges forwards, the man is leaping out of the way like he's in a boss fight, diving perpendicular to Ari, and then handspringing backwards into the air, drawing, firing, and discarding a second pistol before landing, and smashing something on the ground that lets off a thick cloud of sickly yellow smoke so he can get the hell away, having apparently drawn his honourable blade only as a feint.

    A cadre of Darkmoon arches beat similarly hasty retreats as their coiled, golden arrows have much less than the intended effect, one of the fragile things shattering against Ari's incinerating wave, several of them swatted out of the air by Xiaomu, and three of them discharging their payload into Yuuki without killing her. They bail even as the ice rushes at them, discarding their seemingly advantageous surrounding position without thought, vaulting over railways and onto surrounding buttresses and platforms where they can fire again, giving more ground than they should.

    If they were retreating before, they bug the fuck out once Lezard revs into high gear. Previously they were oh so willing to courageously throw their phantom bodies onto him, eager to rip the squishy sorcerer to pieces. Now only those with shield, glowing with swiftly applied magic, dare retreat any more slowly than the others, hurled backwards in the blast wave of pure Dark that eats away the sorcerous power of their enchantments within seconds. Where it should have eaten their bodies and souls away as well however, their scorched and pitted armour still remains in relatively one piece, and the cloudy sheen over their bodies shines through the abhorrent black mist, beating back the swarms of pinpoint eyes that circle them.

    It seems they've taken countermeasures against him as well. /Specifically/ against him. One, then two of the shield bearers rush at him from opposite angles, being a more familiar pincer-suicide tactic, but drawing close enough, he can hear their fevered murmurs whispered into the back of their shields to mask them, and the floor between them suddenly lights up into a circle of blackness painted in bands of violet runes, muting all sound within, and greatly suppressing magic. It'd normally be not all that hard to move out of it, but both of them are boxing him in, circling to try and keep him there without letting him teleport, and then thrusting from whichever way he isn't looking with their holy swords. They've /rehearsed/ this.

    The remaining melee combatant hurl hails of knives towards Xiaomu, trying to force her into more deflection swordplay to cover the jumping attack of a glaive wielder off the nearest pillar. All of them are poisoned, of course. Another whips a urn of fragile glass at the back of Yuuki's head like a baseball, shattering to splash her in legitimate holy water; not blessed by a priest holy water, but blessed by a goddess holy water. More smoke bombs go down, shrouding parts of the surroundings in that mustard-coloured gas, allowing swordsmen between them, but little view of the rest. The whole thing is like an insanely coordinated flash mob, rehearsed by the assassination specialist amongst the order, rather than the knights wishing to prove themselves, all bravery and glory hounding having been attracted to Solaire, it seems.

Priscilla has posed:
    Someone, somewhere in the chaos, hisses. "Spare us your conceit. Whatever you believe you are owed, whatever respect and deference you believe you have earned, you will find none among us who care." Then another, more hoarsely. "This isn't about the throne anymore. This isn't about your blasphemy. Those sycophants who still believe in the virtues of the Lords have already abandoned their order. This is about you." And another. "I don't care how or how long it takes, every one of you will die. Even if the Lady of Sin won't judge you guilty, as long as you step foot in our world, we will take your lives in exchange for everything you've taken from us. First our lord, then our leader, then our friend, and then our most faithful knight. If you won't be satisfied with your petty revenge for the abomination who abets you, neither will we forget ours."

    As if speaking of the devil, perhaps thirty seconds further into the madness, Priscilla herself appears in the palace gateway, streams of silver knights to either side. This is her home turf, and so she makes no effort here to appear like a lady with a tail. She is large and in charge, quite literally, both wearing the hollowstone crown, and sixteen feet tall. Notably present is the cross-patterned spear in her hands, more like a short, duelling spear rather than the massive pike Svala usually looks like. She takes the big people stairs, hurrying down with a significant level of urgency for another scrape the Elites of the Multiverse are getting into. "Now I see very well where our absentee knights of the Darkmoon hath gone. I had thought thee shamefully fled or executed, but I see now even worse. To what cause dost thou owe this /disgrace/ in Anor Londo's name? Thine abandonment from thine own compatriots? Abandon this farce at once or I promise no due procedure of law shalt shield thee." Her tone is forceful, but lacking in the sternly sympathetic quality that an authority figure needs to guilt underlings into line. There's too much resentment still there.

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
"XIAOMU SURFING!!"

Why stay in one place and get knives rained on you when you can zip into motion and leave those knives hitting nothing but air? And more importantly, why let herself be pushed into pure defense mode when you can hang onto at least some of the initiative? Xiaomu turns Suiren's ice magic to a second purpose, conjuring a block of ice beneath her own feet and applying more magic to propel it into motion; she has to bat a few knives away with the staff/sheath for good measure, but it puts her into motion ... and the glaive wielder is, more likely than not, going to come down in the crosshairs of the barrage of poisoned knives.

And that's when Xiaomu reverses course - smoothly, easily, and faster than you'd normally expect a sage fox in rapid motion to turn around. This time, it's the Darkmoon glaive-wielder who gets ridden, this time *encased* in ice instead of simply getting it under his feet or anything - and Xiaomu's not above trying to ride her ice-entombed foe into some of her sweet ride's compatriots ... if any of them are close enough. Otherwise, she'll ride him to the edge of something and backflip off before he either smashes into a wall, or slides off over a steep drop.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    Psyber slams the blade into the ground and almost immediately pivots with it as soon as he realized it missed. Most people with such a weapon would be slow, but Psyber is almost frighteningly fast. The massive sword doesn't have too long to rest on the cratered ground from his strike before Psyber is adjusting his stance again.

    He can hear the second pistol being drawn and realizes this opponent is not going to be an average opponent for him to face. The half-angel twists his body and then uses the wide-bladed Ari as a shield, letting the bullet ping off it rather than put another fist-sized hole in his torso like it normally would. He CAN fight through ungodly amounts of damage, but he prefers not to as a matter of convenience and comfort.

    "I don't really want... respect. And I don't care about the fact that you hate me," Psyber wheezes a bit, the hole in his chest starting to close, "You wanna hate me, fine. You wanna kill me? A lot of people have far stronger claims than you do to that, so I can't let you kill me until they've had their chance," Psyber notes flatly, "And if you didn't want your leader to die, he shouldn't have pushed me too far. Because I tried to be patient."

    Psyber's attack isn't to charge in on the leader again. Instead, he turns Ari sideways in one hand. His other hand is holding a handgun in it, the barrel resting along the flat of her blade once he's turned her. There's three sharp cracks as Psyber lets out a trio of shots from the handgun, bringing the bullets into close proximity with Ari's blade.

    "Ari. Ignite."

    He's aiming to send a trio of flaming steel rounds right at the man rather than come in for another melee strike.

Heaven's Armory (1014) has posed:
    Through the connection between weapon and wielder, Ari intuits the precise nature of her directions. This is a new trick, both for their opponents and for her, and requires some degree of finesse. She has enough, and authorization to use it had already been granted, some time ago.
    The burning begins at the back, then works its way forward through each round forward. They rocket forward a little more unsteadily than the shots would otherwise, though the frontal shell lasts nearly until the target is reached, all that small fraction of a second that this takes to happen. At that point, each round is not just molten, but infused with a spark of magic that burns all in proximity, the oxygen in the air around each impact, most noticeably.

    There is another of Heaven's Armory here, a rare occurrence. The spear that Priscilla carries, Svala, materializes her human form only when the approach is completed, owing to what difficulty the grey-haired, gentle-looking not-quite-human girl would have keeping up with the steps of someone close to four times her height. She says nothing immediately following her appearance, only looks out onto the Darkmoon Blades, eyes flicking from one position in the battle to another, with a controlled expression that flickers to familiarity and sincere regret, before again being smoothed over.

Yuuki Kuran (518) has posed:
    Yuuki Kuran feels a sense of great weariness, a hanging curse that drags at her shoulders and makes even her feel weak and powerless. She lowers her arrow-pierced left hand, using her right hand to snap the arrow shaft and pull it out, doing the same for tha arrow in her throat, which seems relatively unmarred even for 'getting blown out by a magic arrow'. The one in her gut, staining her nice shirt with a bit too little blood for a wound there but having burnt holes in the surrounding cloth, is left in.

    >Yuuki Kuran has been indicted by a shitler. It's not even her fault!

    "I am sorry for treading on your holy ground. But just because you have been--" Yuuki begins, in a pleading tone, even as others summon BLACKEST NECROMANCY to blow out blue buggery bastards, surf on ice, or use magic peopleswords to teach the Darkmoon Terrorists the meaning of good taste, she gets a bottle of highest grade bulllcrap smashed against the back of her head.

    Glass gets all in her hair. Glass and worse. The liquid splashes all over her brown hair before exploding in fire, the poor shojo immolating in purging fire. Staggering around, a hand reaches towards one of the semi-distant darkmoon archers, burnt fingers revealing blackened bone in the extended limb before the fire ceases, giving way to a dark mist of smoke and hanging flecks of red which resolve themselves as the Kuran girl takes a few more, less staggering steps towards the archers, and the pot-throwing asshole gets to circle away. Her clothes are... fine, and her body, well, the sweeping sight of burned skin smooths away in short order. She had barely made a sound, though that smoke and red-flecked aura resolves itself like butterfly wings behind her. "Did that resolve you? Did doing that make you feel better, make you..." She searches for the word. "Feel any catharsis, any release at all?"

    Sweeping her now-undamaged left hand outwards, she targets the archers' weapons with crackling of invisible kinetic force, as if she was simply dismissing their weapons from their hands, or smashing them to twigs and kindling-sticks. "Because that is enough."

Lezard Valeth has posed:
They're adapting.

Lezard, for a moment, is shocked. The insane zealots are /adapting/. His indignant rage is, for a moment, stymied by this realization as the pair of heavy fighters begin working to suppress his magic and keep him pincered. A holy blade punches into his shoulder even as he turns and parries the other... and he starts laughing. "This is new. This is actually interesting. You want to /kill us/?" He laughs. "I can almost respect that!" The fact that the holy blade sears his body and causes him to quiver, shaking in pain as his tained flesh is scorched. He grimaces in a mix of pain and sneering interest at this before he shifts his own actions.

He turns, putting one of his sides to each of the Darkmoons. A hand dips into his cloak, and with a sudden motion, a series of vials are hurled towards one of the knights, each one filled with a clear fluid. Naturally, the immediate response would be to block since they're trying to keep him locked down...

The vials shatter, releasing a horrible noxious cloud of sublimating acid that engulfs the knight in stinging, seething fluids. For the moment, he uses the Catalyst to keep the other knight at bay while this occurs. Lezard giggles like an asshole at this.

The arrival of Priscilla causes Lezard to glance over in her direction, pondering as he looks over to her. The Darkmoons might try to capitalize on this, but... Is he prepared for that?

Priscilla has posed:
    A valiant attempt at a surprise, but the devastating plunging attack is stopped solid by solid ice, and repurposed into something much less dignified. One of the other Darkmoon Blades is violently ploughed out of the way, not having enough traction on ice to outrun a skating sage fox, but as he is, he slings something from his hip on a looped rope grip, and an explosion of flame erupts in front of her, instantaneously melting a wide, steaming crater out of the ice to but a nasty halt to her ride.

    Fire is going downrange elsewhere as well. The ugly clouds shred apart as three augmented rounds burn though them, combusting pieces of the smokescreen to leave cylindrical holes in its mass. One round misses completely as the agile foe is revealed behind. One hits his shoulder and shatters a pauldron, but sprays out as so much molten metal added to the mix. The third hits him in the lower right chest, and draws glittering, phantom blood as the high velocity bullet pops a neat hole through his armour and the burst of fire ravages what is underneath. He tumbles backwards, but finds enough time to unhook a tiny, silvery skull from his belt, cock it back, and pitch it into Psyber's face. It blows up before actually reaching him, but with a deafening, only vaguely-human screen, and a fizzling crack of popping, blinding light, similar to another weapon they've seen employed.

    Lezard can hear his target of choice taking a deep breath as he chucks the vials, already expecting some dickish chemical weapon given the innocuous appearance of the contents and Lezard's known disposition. When it explodes into acid however, he has much more to worry about, staggering back out as if swatting at a swarm of vicious hornets, his armour sizzling and melting against his skin. The other one has to contend with the fact that the catalyst makes a bizarrely effective mage's mace, struggling to stand his ground against its repeated impacts, only capable of exchanging shield pokes. The first, however, draws out a little sachet of some golden dust, tosses it over himself like a bag of glitter, and where the tiny, twinkling sparkles fall, his mail begins to repair itself, steadily reversing the degrading process with a counter-consumable.

    Yuuki is a less known quantity. The holy water had been a wild guess, after she had survived the arrows, but otherwise she is not a figure the assassins have spent months preparing and training for. Despite the palpable, seething resentment shared between them, the nature of her responses are disarming, resulting in hesitation on those quivers and bowstrings. One of them starts back with halting words, before a quartet of bows are pulled out of slack and reluctant hands and disarmed within instants, instantly putting them back on guard, and resorting to a number of those heavy iron pistols used on Psyber.

    The mess pretty abruptly comes to a head thereafter. Less at the sight of Priscilla, and visibly moreso at the sight of Svala. Despite being locked in combat with their mortal enemies, the Darkmoon Blades are given pause by the sight of a member of Heaven's armoury, and abate their attacks in wary, disjointed confusion. "What is the meaning of this?" the leader asks, though his voice croaks with barely restrained sorrow. His faceplate doesn't crane nearly so far upwards as to look at his "queen"; only the girl on the stairs.

Heaven's Armory (1014) has posed:
    The spear-girl's voice seems soft, yet carries, even in the open space. She speaks in measured tones, word chosen with care and underlying meaning.
    "I am Svala, of those called Heaven's Armory." The Darkmoons don't need to be told this, having clearly recognized her. However, there is a proper way to do things, and, for her... reminders are necessary, so that she can reach understanding without violating the laws forged into her. "I cannot dishonor the secrets kept by any past wielder. I cannot speak their names, nor tell of how each individual fell. I cannot speak of who among them lived to complete their quests, nor of who failed in the process, nor of whom I failed."
    Yes, they recognize her, and she does, them. Some, at least. Even through their armor. Her eyes lock, for moments at a time. "Only those that pass judgment may wield me. And those that fall from the righteous path, I will seek to guide back to it. And, if... I cannot..." Here her voice does break, the bitter regret upon her face, before she recovers, "...they may wield me no longer, and I must judge another."

Psyber (253) has posed:
    "Awesome. It worked," Psyber says to himself after letting the shots fly. He spins the gun and holsters it again before patting the flat of the blade with his palm a couple times, "Nice work, Ari. I'm glad you can figure things out so quick." He compliments to the blade. He doesn't get too long to celebrate the victory, though.

    Not too far in front of his face, the skull explodes in the air in a blinding blast of light. The half-angel staggers a bit and lets out an annoyed and incredibly inconvenienced noise as he covers his eyes with his forearm and waits a few moments for the spots to clear and his eyes to normalize. It doesn't take nearly as long as it would for a normal person, but it's still a good few moments.

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
"Uwaah!!" yelps Xiaomu as the fireball detonates ahead of her ice-sled. THAT's enough of an excuse for her to vacate her ride; let the iced-up Darkmoon dude get unpleasantly defrosted instead. This also seems like an appropriate moment to sheathe Suiren again - it's not like she needs the sword out to use its ice magic, it just works more efficiently that way. Plus, well, *sword*.

She's got other weapons, though - such as Silver and Platinum, her original pair of handguns, which she draws after slinging her staff across her back. She immediately draws a bead on the guy who chucked that firebomb into her path ...

Then slips her fingers *out* of the trigger guards, averting her aim just a little as it seems like, just maybe, something's gotten through to the Darkmoon Blades. After listening for a moment, Xiaomu relaxes her arms and lowers them, keeping her handguns out and ready but not aimed at anyone. Not unless there's a continuing threat to react to.

Heaven's Armory (1014) has posed:
    Ari isn't feeling safe enough to rematerialize and chat back, especially with the macabre stun grenade that hits her wielder soon after, but Psyber may feel a sense of satisfaction from her, appreciation for the new tactic improv, and a little bit of something like 'of course, because it's me' at his praise. A regular flashbang might not, given that she doesn't really need light to sense people, but a magical device is generally able to disrupt even her true body's senses, so she's similarly put out by it for a short while. This is accompanied by a brief confusion/panic feeling, having not expected a thrown skull to do that to her.

Yuuki Kuran (518) has posed:
    After disarming the knights with the sweep of her hand, Yuuki just stands there, staring with blood-red eyes glowing like embers beneath her long brown bangs. They draw new weapons, obviously, which makes Yuuki sad, but they don't use them. She had been getting through to them, through their hate, but the red haze of her disregard - her anger, at those who would dare strike at her - had taken a toll of its own. It's always an awful curse. Do you continue to turn the cheek in a hopeless attempt to get through? How do you decide that enough is enough? When is it justified to strike back? Even in a passive way?

    The 'wings' of smoke and blood behind her beat once, before fading into little butterflies of the same substance (that is, smoke and blood), fluttering around her lightly before drifting off, leaving her much as she was before she got holy waterbombed.

    She tries favoring the darkmoons about to bust a cap into her with a kind smile, letting her arms rest at her sides. Maybe this will all clear up!

Lezard Valeth has posed:
The fact that the man can't focus on keeping Lezard contained means that the mage gets an opening to simply run away from the other man trying to shieldpoke him, allowing him to get some distance as he sprints out of the immediate radius of the magic dampening. That was the real point of the exercise, after all. "So, where were we..." He says, smiling...

But the Darkmoons pause, looking to... The woman with Priscilla? Lezard looks at them, and then to the woman, back and forth as he considers the situation. "Well. Well well. Looks like they saw something they didn't expect."

The weapon-women explain themselves, and Lezard considers, thinking. "Fascinating. A self-aware weapon of judgement." But there's a more important question at hand. Lezard frowns. "Did some of these fools happen to wield you at some point in their lackluster lives?" He says, gesturing idly. "Surely, the appearance of you would not dismay them so were it not the case." He doesn't attack again, figuring the Darkmoon faltering at this point heralds imminent bitching out, because that's how Darkmoons work. "Frankly, gentlemen, I believe you lot have overstayed your welcome. Killing you for the moment is pointless. Run and save yourselves some suffering for now." He says, crossing his arms.

Priscilla has posed:
    With Psyber ever so briefly out of the picture, one can see fingers twitch around glowing sword hilts as the Darkmoon Knights consider pressing the small window of advantage they actually have, and very dearly wish to. It seems that Priscilla's arrival wasn't out of the expected, but something about her piece of Heaven's Armoury showing up has left them uncertain of what to do.

    Though they're aware of the seconds ticking down while the group of Elites regathers themselves and gets back off the defensive they had struggled to push them to, even a cabal of holy assassins seems to give pause here, especially those trying to aim at Yuuki, hesitantly half-lowering their weapons. Only one dares shout "HOLD YOUR TONGUE OR I WILL REMOVE IT FOR YOU!" towards Lezard Valeth of all people, outright trembling with rage, possibly younger amongst the order, or at least, closer to someone.

    The one they are looking to leadership seems too absorbed in Svala to issue any more orders. Priscilla seems too in-the-loop to interrupt. The knight lowers his voice to a hoarse whisper, echoing through his faceplate, his shoulders trembling and then slumping. "So that is how it is. After the two of you went through so much, when she finally thought she stood a chance, and could wait no longer, you abandoned her. You abandoned her just as everyone and everything else has abandoned us." His mail clicks as he snaps his head back up.

    "So be it then. Better that all deceivers be known swift and early. It our mistake to trust even a single outsider. Even if all others should forsake us, the new light of the Dark Moon will not. Our dear lord Gwyndolin was too honourable. Too set in the old, noble ways. He gave you too much opportunity to repent. Too little focus whilst dividing all his power to preserving this world. Though the traitors flock to the house of the sun for their petty glory and approval, the new moon that blesses us knows our loss. The new moon understands what you are, and so you will see exactly what we are capable of."

    There is a bit of a tense moment as his gauntleted fingers reach into a belt pouch, but right away, all he draws out is a tiny, brightly glowing stone, pulsating rainbow hues. He holds it high above his head for some mysterious reason, then gestures with a sharp, chopping motion, and something abruptly seems very, very wrong.

    The shot arrives before the sound does. In a split second of silence, something punches straight through Priscilla's chest and shatters the stairs behind her into a flattened, spherical crater of pulverized masonry, washed red with her blood a split second later. The air thunders with a sound more like an explosion than a hypersonic impact, and the air swirls violently in its wake. She is thrown bodily into the crater at the same time the noise arrives, bouncing against the broken staircase and spitting out blood in silent shock.

    Considering it should have obliterated her heart, the fact she isn't instantly killed, never mind able to roll over and hack up more red, is statement enough to what absorbing those Lordsouls has done, but it doesn't seem like it ends there. The Darkmoon Knights scatter as their leader leads the gesture into a horizontal sweep, and in a fraction of a second, a second shot arrives hot on the heels of the last. There is a brief chance to react as, tracking the first trajectory, a flash is visible on the city walls, and then another as the munition breaks apart in mid-flight and immediately shreds the entire area with thousands of hypervelocity steel needles.

    The leader is caught up in the blast as well, and his phantom is torn into bloody, scintillating blue mist. The others are escaping as quickly as they can. For those at the coronation, the sight and sound is all too familiar. It's the railgun Eryl's parent company had donated as a show of Multiversal force, stashed away in a vault since then, and, apparently, recently stolen and transported to a guard tower.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    Psyber, as his instinct allows, slams Ari into the ground and use the flat side as a shield from the cloud of shrapnel flying in towards him to absorb the bulk of the flying metal with his sword. He looks immensely unhappy as he blocks it and then hoists up the blade again.

    "Goddamn Darkmoon. This will NOT go unanswered," He notes, anger settling into his voice as he hoists the sword up and across his back moments later. He immediately starts shouting, "Clerics! We need clerics! And someone wake up Gwenevere and get her out here!"

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
It's safe to say that Xiaomu was NOT expecting the railgun sniping; she was starting to tense for aiming at the leader when he raised that stone -

And then somebody assassinates Priscilla. Or at least makes a highly credible attempt at it - the fact that Priscilla is actually still moving after a shot like that suggests she's going to be good for a little while longer: long enough, hopefully, to get the kind of high-intensity healing she needs.

The second shot is the one that draws Xiaomu's attention to the sniper still being there, and the sage fox briefly aims in that direction before starting to sprint - only for the sprint to get interrupted by all of the flechette splinters.

"Fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff--!!!!!!"

The nice thing about those needles going that fast is that they don't get stuck in the wounds, and the wounds aren't, say, bullet-sized. She also had the advantage of being further away from her allies, meaning she doesn't have quite as much high-speed shrapnel headed her way. That's not to say that it doesn't hurt like hell, though. And now Xiaomu is well and truly ticked off. Her handguns are holstered, and in their place she pulls out the lightcycle baton -

'Breaks' it in half -

And rezzes up the lightcycle, heading for the wall as fast as she can get there, probably parkouring across roofs at least here and there. The less consistent her path is, though, the better ... and the more she's down between buildings or whatever, better still than being out in the open.

She's probably going to be about five times more terrifying when she gets to the sniper's perch, thanks to blood trickling from a few dozen small wounds plus the arrows she got nicked by earlier.Bloody, and furious, and not likely to give any fucks whether her opponent lives or dies as long as they *suffer*.

Heaven's Armory (1014) has posed:
    Svala can't answer Lezard, for the very reasons just explained, but expects he realizes that. The Darkmoon answers for her, and she can't respond, again limited by more than binding oaths. She has done this man no wrong, and will not apologize to him.
    The one she failed is dead. They all are.
    The railgun fires. The flash is not recognized in time. There is no warning sound, only a cratering explosion. Svala's human form is thrown back from it, light as she is, crying out in pain and shock. This ceases, abruptly, as her body disappears. Only Priscilla can hear her, now. Suppressed pain. Concern. A need to take herself to cover. The sort of magic that Svala specializes in can't provide enough instantaneous force to deal with a weapon that powerful, when accurately aimed.

    The flechette, at least, won't really do a thing to Ari. She makes a perfectly serviceable shield. The feelings she gives Psyber are less focused than Svala. Some complicated concern, directed toward her sister's state. A slow-burning anger, toward the Darkmoon who just let himself get shredded. An immediate need to take out the attacker. A less immediate need to hunt down all the other attackers. A /long/ hunt. To wherever they may hide, even in 'death.'

Yuuki Kuran (518) has posed:
    Everything is going great. Even if people hold tightly to hate, there's still hope. They're not monsters, this isn't about nature, but simply pain and desperation. Her kind smile falters some when the leader of the Darkmoon forces swears oaths, and her expression switches to confusion.

    And then the sound, the earth-shattering kaboom, after Priscilla is drilled and goes down. Disbelief reigns, even as the smell hits her like a truck, all that blood, everywhere. Priscilla coughing up more. Her hand goes to her more-uncovered eye, before the second crack - and the rain of flechettes - spray the area with the intent to turn anyone left there into hamburger, kicking up dust and more blood this time from Yuuki.

    Out of the clearing dirt, though, with her clothes more or less ruined (and looking quite fine, thank you) and blood staining countless hallmarks of wounds without the wounds themselves is the girl herself, taking stumbling steps towards the downed Priscilla. "This... is probably not what you wanted to show me either!" She complains, or tries to make light of this literally awful situation, before she kneels besides the downed crossbreed woman, and draws out a crystal phial of red, messing with it for a moment before pressing it to Priscilla's lips. The taste is...

    It's Definitely A Potion. It has a faint alcoholic grapey taste, but it's thick like a cordial. "You have to drink, quickly." She urges.

    Whatever it is, it's Definitely Not (TM) blood.

Lezard Valeth has posed:
"Come over here and try, child. I would be happy to relieve you of your burdens." There is a surge of purple flame in one hand as he grins in anticipation...

But the conflict is overridden by the sudden realization that things have escalated to unaccepable levels. Like when Priscilla gets splattered. Lezard glares in her direction, almost as if he is offended that she's been struck down like she has, but his hand is already rising.

The hypersonic flechette hammers into the barrier a moment later, his hand surging with power as he grimaces and weathers the rain. As it ends, Lezard is left standing there, looking unharmed...

And then blood splashes about him from several painful-looking holes that have been torn into him. "Well. So be it." He grates. Thankfully, what concern he has for Priscilla is handled as Yuuki moves to help Priscilla in her own special way.

Instead, he raises his hand, and a colossal amount of sorcerous energy begins gathering before him. It looks like Lezard is probably preparing to straight up nuke the Darkmoons if they don't either bail or stop him.

Priscilla has posed:
    With the focus on the sniper team, the other Darkmoons fall back to a safe distance, and slip white-wrapped black crystals from various pockets and folds, clutching them and invoking some kind of power that causes them to fade in the same way they had appeared, bugging out before they can be caught. With the streets cleared, Xiaomu has a straight ride to the outer walls, albeit a lot of stairs, ramps, walkways and spirals to navigate over at high speed.

    She can see it; the great white beast of a gun, manned by no less than three knights who hadn't appeared with the anemic number down below, who have managed to figure out its basic functions, and load it with ammo that looks like it has been melted down from something else and hand-smithed; rough, but precise. It's not clear what they've juice the battery with, but right as she draws near, and as Yuuki rushes to Priscilla, Xiaomu gets the wall of crushing sound right in her face from being so close to it as it fires, and the fiery singe of its electric discharge.

    Another slug screams down from on high to finish the job, but by this point, the party has already scattered into action, and one of them is calling for backup. Only moments prior, /someone/ out of the few brave enough to stick to the surrounding buildings has shot off some kind of eye-shaped flare (a normal eye), and at the head of the knights storming back out of the gates, is a somewhat familiar in black and dark silver armour, shrouded with blue cloth. Artorias interposes his giant frame before Yuuki, Psyber, and the two members of Heaven's Armoury, and, then interposes an utterly colossal, gleaming black shield between himself and the slug. His claim to fame as immovable is demonstrated as the solid slug hits his shield square on, the flagstones shatter around his heels, and the munition yields instead of him, splattering into molten globs while he remains in place.

    Priscilla has stopped breathing, but then that doesn't really seem all that important at the moment. The gory wound through her chest confirms that she seems to have inherited some measure of that non-definition of internal anatomy the dragons here all seem to have. She'd only met Yuuki yesterday, and only spoken to her a little afterwards, but the girl had seemed so sincere that there are no second thoughts about swigging a healing potion, even if she coughs up a little bit of it. That seems to rapidly stop a lot of bleeding, though her dress is already soaked beyond recognition.

    The Darkmoon Blades manning the gun turn immediately as Xiaomu motorbikes up over the wall, as the lightcycle presents another unknown variable. They ditch their positions, hesitantly drawing weapons, until the nauseating wave of dark, sorcerous power reaches the wall in such a way as to signal the oncoming of a thunderstorm. Even from here, they can see him charging up, and pinned down by Xiaomu, they make the only choice they can. Reluctantly, they leave the artillery behind. Their feet flash with halos of pale blue energy, and they leap well clear of the wall, plunging down off the side of the mountains until they become invisible.

Priscilla has posed:
    Shortly thereafter, the clerics Psyber had sent for arrive, mostly surrounding Gwynevere out of the castle gates along with a personal guard. The instant she sees the front plaza, her eyes widen in unmistakable horror, and she almost trips on her way down the stairs, throwing herself into Artorias' shadow, kneeling over Priscilla, swallowing hard and clasping her hand. At the first signs of life from her stabilized daughter, the goddess chokes back tears of relief, momentarily, and understandably, ignoring the half angel and the vampire as she settles into what first just sounds like little whispers and croons of "My little girl, my sweet child", but then continue past the point of being sensible, and become rapid murmurs of another language altogether.

    The cratered stairs flare to life with almost blinding, rose-golden light, and the ambient temperature spikes to that of direct, mid-summer sunlight, ringing with the colossal sound of what reminds one of a long and deep exhalation, mixed with heavy chiming. An absurdly complicated sprawl of shining runes appears in a wide circle, twisting streaks and motes of light flow upwards from them, and within instants, Psybers' and Yuuki's lesser wounds to their durable and regenerative bodies are instantly mended, so fast as to be disorienting.

    Priscilla doesn't seem to have healed nearly as well, for some reason or another, but the difference is still pretty staggering, looking more like she'd been shot with a rifle instead of a railgun, and no longer bleeding all over. Priscilla immediately starts standing up, and then her mother is all over her, squeezing her too tightly for her to want to push her away. Instead, she looks over Gwynevere's shoulder at Psyber and Yuuki, with her jaw set like she really wants to say something, but now is not the time. Instead, she lets her expression relax into sheepish gratefulness, and whispers "I supposeth we art no longer even. I shalt request thine presence tomorrow."

Yuuki Kuran (518) has posed:
    Yuuki Kuran is exposed to straight-from-the-divine-tap-flavor sunlight, and if it weren't so blinding she would appear to be balking and shielding her eyes and making a 'hrnnnnnnnnnnnnn' noise. In fact, if Artorias' shield is any succor from the midsummer's glaring light, she finds solace in his shadow. "I'm fine! Fine! Really fine! So very fine, honest!" She practically squeaks, even if her clothes tell the entirely opposite story.

    It's ok. The harsh light of the daystar is much more angry at her, offended at her presence, while this is a motherly light. One that bears her no great and special ill will.

    "Is she alright? I... have more medicine if that's what it takes?"

Priscilla has posed:
    It takes a minute of Priscilla trying to wiggle and pry herself away from Gwynevere before the goddess stops to notice the others. Despite their familiar relation, the Princess of Sunlight has lived a palatial life, and her daughter has seen more combat than pretty much anyone present save Psyber and Artorias.

    Gwynevere looks as if she'd like to hug Yuuki too, but she is much too small, so instead she only wipes her eyes and offers a smile so warm it is almost physically felt. "Thou hast done more than enough. This is . . . simply a little bit of how she is. Pray, come inside, thou art heroes this day."