Scene #9646: BINDING BLADE Ch55: Bramimond, Group 2

Owner	Pose
Marigold	First Roy, then Guinivere, then Sophia vanished soundlessly into the impenetrable black 'pool' your digging uncovered. Sophia, with her prophetic gift, assured you it was safe (or at least, not immediately lethal). So did a ghost with your own face and voice. Although you can't see the ground or hear the footfall, if you step into the 'pool', you can feel stone steps underfoot. They lead down. And down. And down . . . Even if you hold onto someone else, there comes a point where their hand in yours stops being real. . . . . . As you descend, light and sound return to you only slowly, as if you were emerging from a thick muffling fog. A faint purple glow in the distance resolves into the eerie light of dark-magic torches, burning forever in their wall-sconces with no fuel. And a smaller, dimmer red gleam is just beyond them. It's like a ruby-marble, hanging from a string, and the hand that holds it belongs to-- "Oh, thank goodness you're here," Princess Guinivere says, straightening up from ruefully examining the broken heel of her shoe. "You'd think I'd learn to take these things off before I jump into pits," she says self-deprecatingly, as if this were a regular thing. "Where's everyone else?" There's no good answer to her question. Roy and Sophia, however you look, simply aren't here. Nor are most of the other Elites. The "room" Guinivere stands in is really more of a cave made of shattered walls, falling against each other in such a way as to happen to preserve an open space. It's somewhere between a large living room and a small chapel; unfurnished, made of densely-symbol-engraved white-gold stone lit violet by the magical sconces. At the far end of the room is the mouth of a further corridor, and the gloomy-flickering violet light doesn't reach far into it. After a little while, the darkness speaks. It says "Oh! What nice friends you've brought." And it says "Um, sorry about the mess." And it says "Oh. Hey. It's you." And it says "You're not here for what I think you are, right?" And it says "Having fun on your little adventure?"
Skipper	Skipper returns from having to run a nearby errand! Just in time for a delve into the mysterious pool. Skipper barely needs to be told it's safe, they'd be ready to jump in anyway. Adventure! --- --- --- > "Where's everyone else?" "Thank you thank you thank you it was so dark and I didn't know where everyone was and I thought I was alone and-" Skipper has to be nudged in order to stop hugging the first light source slash other person they find. No attempt is made to restore lost dignity after that, it's a lost cause. "I don't know where everyone else is. I barely know where we are." "Do you think if we head back they way we came... or would be just be seperated again if we did that..." Skipper says, looking backwards, when the darkness speaks. "Um." "Is this... a trial?" Skipper guesses. "Like in one of the fantasy stories, the heroes just need to give the right answers to the riddle." Yes! That has to be it. And with that Skipper has Contributed instead of just being a hanger-on. Yes.
Petra Soroka	Their face and voice is your own. They say-- Being confronted by her own face has become upsettingly usual for Petra. Not, usual in such a way that makes her immune to the whims and wiles of her doppelganger, but instead making her uniquely susceptible to doubting herself in the face of her reflection. Between Betra, Qetra, Psychonautra and the fractal facets of Petra inside her mind, the undeniable thematic synergy of mirroring the translucent girl forces her to take her double's words seriously on their face. So, she has to go in. After a flinch and a double checking glance around to see if everyone else saw 'Petra', or 'themselves', she's ready to charge in after Roy, but Guinivere goes into the pool of black first. "Ah-! Not alone, Lady Guinivere!" Petra would absolutely be the type to hold someone's hand while going into the darkness, if there was anyone whose hand she'd hold (Lilian's, naturally, but only if Lilian was the one to offer. So soon after the wedding??). Sophia's predictions are helpful, but not entirely comforting-- the worst thing she can imagine, maybe even beyond dying, would be stepping down those stairs and ending up isolated in the complete darkness alone. So it's a good thing that she's not holding on to anyone as she hurries down after the trio, or else the sensation of their hand fading away would leave her a pale sweaty wreck by the time the light returns. The dark. Petra has a long and complicated relationship with the void. A thousand years ago, in the House of the Seven Worthies, it was already an old friend, familiar like drowning. Synonymous with oblivion is release from the obligation of 'wanting', to unclench, listlessly, senselessly. For most of her life, Petra's mission had been to think, and her guilty pleasure was to imagine stopping. But that's not really the case anymore. Now she 'wants' enough that the lack of feedback, with no sense of place or progress, is terrifying. Her steps get faster, and so does the soundless pounding of her heartbeat in her ears, which is the one reassuring stimulus left. The first sign of Petra is a tangle of Silver tendrils creeping out of the shadows of the stairs, clinging to the walls and pulling themselves forwards. Petra emerges a few seconds behind, not surprised by the light because of using the Silver to grope around in the darkness until she felt the walls of the room. She exhales and smoothes down goosebumps with her hands, grappling with the sudden realization that she's kind of afraid of the dark. "Oh, thank goodness you're here," "Lady Guinivere!" Petra brightens, then swivels her head around as if there might be some secret corner to the collapsed room where everyone else is hiding. "Er-- oh god, I hope that wasn't a maze. We'll find them, though." Reassured enough to joke, she adds, "You're heroic for getting down the stairs in heels at all. Like Rutger overusing a blade until it breaks." "Oh. Hey. It's you." Now braced for her doppelganger, Petra sighs, as if this isn't an unusual meeting at all. "Hello, Qetra." She puffs air out of her nose at her own humorless joke. "So want do you want from me? Is this going to be an argument, or a fight?"
Lilian Rook	Sofia is practically the sole reason Lilian didn't panic when Roy disappeared. Or rather, she did, but she hadn't reached the hole yet before Guinivere thought to ask the question that should have been obvious. Taking a moment to try and internalize what she hears, Lilian looks back towards the rest of her clothes, considering the possible absurdity of making sure to get fully dressed before rescuing Roy from the bottomless dark pit; only to abandon it when Guinivere jumps in and Sofia falls after her. "Oh for-- Princess!" conveys both halves of her feelings very neatly, in the moment she yells it. The secret, third half, which she hadn't considered until the next, is when she sprints the rest of the way to the edge, engages her legs to leap down, and then finds herself freezing up instead. Nothing bad happens, right? But what counts as 'bad'? Whatever is down there somehow makes her skin crawl. It reminds her too much of something she can't remember at all. Is her hesitation part of why Sofia foresees no disaster coming of it? Is everything fine because she, exclusively, is too afraid to go down? Goosebumps break out on her arms just thinking about it. Lilian grits her teeth. §Com on! This never happens to you! Or-- not usually at least! What's wrong?! Every other idiot is going to jump right down there without a second thought! Why is it bad if you go? Is it-- Is it because of what Sakura said? Are you really still thinking about that? Surely it's not Dictum? Or-- no, it couldn't be. It couldn't just be because you're thinking about . . . Come on girl. You can't let being married make you like this. That's what this is right? So if you cave here, you'll never get it back. It'll keep being like this forever.§ Lilian, fully well knowing that the thought isn't entirely correct, decides to use it as fuel to jump down anyways in the seconds she has before that momentum fails too. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 'Oh, thank goodness you're here,' "Oh my god I am." Lilian gasps in relief, then pauses at the fact she did. She becomes only belatedly aware of how badly she was tensing upwhile unable to hear her footsteps, walking through the dark for so long. It feels like she's on the verge of shivering. To prove something inexplicable to herself, she bizarrely chooses to pinch her skin, then pull and push as if to check her own elasticity. 'You'd think I'd learn to take these things off before I jump into pits,' "Oh no, the reflex takes a while." Lilian groans. "I actually had to start getting specialty work done on my shoes for a while, until I got the magic armour. I broke both of them back at the terminal when we had to go undercover to spy on Murdock, and they were brand new!" 'Where's everyone else?' "Different parts of the same complex, most likely. We didn't take a rope, so we could have scattered along different paths for the slightest deviation." Lilian says, half hope, half cope. "Give me a moment to . . ."
Lilian Rook	"Having fun on your little adventure?" Lilian stares into the dark with a silent, blank expression, for what feels to her like hours, though it only lasts long enough to be worryingly notable. The experience of hearing her own voice spoken back to her without ever having come from her is the very epitome of 'strange-familiar'. It takes her nearly half a minute to get over it. 'Familiar' because this happened before. 'Strange' because it was §still just herself§ who said it. "Presently?" says Lilian, managing to loft an eyebrow and everything. She almost laughs, then clamps down on the urge, the very instant she recognizes it as the exact same way she sarcastically laughs at her own bad decisions. She was aiming for an aloof deflection. "If it was an adventure then I'd be having fun." she says, with a little more gravity than she wants. "Right now I'm very sick and tired of war, and the only reason I can't feel like I wish it were over right now is because I'm not looking forward to the end of it either." Her thoughts, unfortunately, are magnetically drawn to Zephiel and Iðunn. Every day of the campaign is a terrible risk. Every day is another minute chance to think of something before then. "Not that I actually believe you know anything about me, but I know my own tone." Lilian says, finally managing to fold her arms. "You've either already given it to Lord Roy and you have doubts about the rest of us, you've already made up your mind to give it to me and you're having fun with it, or you've already decided you're not giving it to anyone and you can't imagine any of us taking it from you if we tried." If she really felt as casual about this all as she sounds, she would've thought twice about openly psychoanalyzing herself in front of other people.
Marigold	"Oh, there there...?!" Guinivere has just kicked off her shoes and moved to offer anyone who might need steadying her arm (Petra or Lilian, given Skipper is being allowed to hug her leg already), when she hears her own voice behind her. She tenses. But she doesn't tense as much as she 'ought' to, really. "Hello, Bramimond...?" she calls out, waveringly, but there is no response for a moment. Guinivere swallows in the resulting quiet. "The Shrine of Seals... isn't an evil place, Petra. Nor a violent one. Not that I've been to it before, but... the Fire Emblem being passed down in my family, I do know things. I doubt we'd be stopped from leaving, if we wanted to, but 'a trial' might be just the way to think of it." She raises the Fire-Emblem-on-a-string towards the dark hallway at the room's far end. It casts just barely enough crimson light past the violet gloom to show the hem of a robe. Its wearer walks closer, and the light spreads up their body to show... "Huh? What the hell would fighting you prove?" Petra, or 'Petra', only wearing some kind of antiquated robe that might be either violet-green or tan-blue. Faded age and lighting make it impossible to tell. "No, I'm here because you're screwing this up, and I think you know it." Argument, then. "Bramimond..." Guinivere starts reproachfully, now a bit more unsettled by the imitation, but she speaks too slowly. Her own voice cuts her off. "I'm sorry, do you have me confused for someone else? I'm the Princess--" "--Lilian Isabelle Rook--" "--one of the heroes who brought peace to this land, a thousand years ago." Three more figures, behind 'Petra'. Your face, even mostly down to the expressions; your body language, only constrained by an ancient robe; your voice, not the offputting way it sounds on recordings, but as it actually sounds to you when you speak. 'Skipper' makes a little face of nameless unease, and adds: "... Um, not that I'm much of a hero now." Identity and un-identity have a small hiccup in reconciling. They form up, two to either side of the near-pitch-black corridor, as if inviting you to pass. But it still seems as though there's going to be an argument. "I'm sorry, I value my time more than that. If you're not having fun, then why drag all this out?" 'Lilian' says to the real one, with a slightly arch look. Her expression's a bit flatter than Lilian's really are, though. "You could end this without the Blade, all on your own. Don't tell me it hasn't crossed your mind." "The last time the Binding Blade was used, it was, like, the last hope of humanity against their ancient oppressors," 'Petra' continues smoothly, eyes on her own opposite. "And now you're going to use it to, what, beat up somebody who wants to make the world a better place in defense of the status quo? When did you start defending 'normal'? That's not what it's for." "The last time anyone drew this, it almost ended the world. Blizzards, famines, the sky going dark... do you think you're the kind of person who should be making that call?" says 'Skipper'. They seem notably droopier than the real one. "I mean, sorry, but... we both know. You don't have to answer." Guinivere steps forward into the dark corridor, lighting the way with the Fire Emblem. But she stares into her double's eyes and hesitates. 'Guinivere' silently dares her to say something; to defend herself from the accusation they both already know. She doesn't.
Skipper	Oh! There's also... Lilian Rook and Petra Soroka, two people with ? marks in their entries in Skipper's relationships journal. They seem friendly enough, though? Skipper still has to put on a good showing, though! That they've been slotted in with a smaller section of this group makes this even more important that they step it up. > "... Um, not that I'm much of a hero now." Skipper stares at Skipper. "..." The moment stretches out. "I mean... I'm not yet, but I'm trying to be one! I'm going to save the world," Skipper says eventually. A moment later: "I mean maybe more than one but one at a time, right?" They cough. "Also... I'm sorry about what you've gone through, and that you can't... talk except like this." > "You could end this without the Blade, all on your own. Don't tell me it hasn't crossed your mind." "... That powerful...?" > "Do you think you're the kind of person who should be making that call?" > "I mean, sorry, but... we both know. You don't have to answer." "I... I mean, we have to, though, right?" "I just..." Skipper makes a frustrated noise. "Whether we are the sort of people who should be making that call... I mean, we have to? Because nobody else will?"
Petra Soroka	"Oh my god I am." "Lilian!" Petra's face lights up when she sees her, highlighting how unusually withdrawn she'd been after coming down the stairs. She scampers over to glue herself to Lilian's side, shivers and goosebumps melting away rapidly. The worst danger that could happen down here, isolation, is now totally gone! The voice of mirror-Lilian does make her pause, even more than her own. If this is going to be an argument, then it's a good thing that she has Lilian on her side, because having a Lilian against her kneecaps her confidence just from the sound of her voice. "Hello, Bramimond...?" <J-IC-Scene> (NPC) Guinivere says, "I just can't imagine being unable to recognize your own name as a good thing." <J-IC-Scene> Petra Soroka says, "It's sort of like, I don't know, entrusting yourself entirely to the people around you. Or to the world, in Bramimond's case." Really, 'Qetra' feels like the most appropriate name to refer to the Bramimond-Petra by, even knowing that Qetra herself acts completely differently from this. A hollowed-out vessel, that happens to catch on the outline of Petra's own image for convenience, like the pareidolia of a cloud drifting by. Existing as a formless will, with only the general thrust of the breeze to guide the ever-changing identities they inhabit, is the most profoundly, benevolently vulnerable thing Petra can think of. If she thinks about it like that, then Bramimond is almost... incredibly cute, actually. "I doubt we'd be stopped from leaving, if we wanted to, but 'a trial' might be just the way to think of it." "Alright. That's good to know." With Lilian here, the darkness behind her, and knowing more about Bramimond, the creeping horror Petra felt earlier is practically gone. "I love trials, actually." "Huh? What the hell would fighting you prove?" "All that time honing my killing-Petra skills, and they never come up when it's useful...." Petra laments, and then snickers. Her own mind can fill in floods of doubts the moment Bramimond!Petra reminds her that they exist, making the smile slide off her face. "Well, sure." "If you're not having fun, then why drag all this out?" Petra tilts her head uncertainly, attention seized by the shadow Lilian just the same. "Has Lilian ever been inclined to wrongwarp for anything?" She shakes her head like a dog. Too many Nika-thoughts for this scenario. "Lilian always works hard for everything, harder than anyone. The arc of a life is measured in effort and success. I don't think she's dragging anything out."
Petra Soroka	"When did you start defending 'normal'?" A little bit worked up again, Petra huffs and crosses her arms. "Look, we've had this conversation." She means, she's argued with herself about this exact thing, and forgot that wouldn't all somehow transfer over. "I'm not really, all that opposed to Zephiel. I'm not exactly humanity's biggest fucking defender, you know? The circumstances are different this time, I know. We're not fighting the ancient overwhelming tyranny of dragons, we're hunting down and killing one of the only ones left and probably the only person who believes in her, too. I'm not looking forwards to it." She wavers a bit, having done some of Bramimond's job by being very good at arguing against herself even without their help. "If I'd found this world on my own, and met most people instead of some people, then I'd be on his side and I wouldn't even listen to the alternative." "But like, hypotheticals are bullshit philosophical clutter. The reality is what matters, and that's..." Petra sighs unhappily. "We have to pick and choose who we're at war with, and who it's for. A status quo that can produce Fae is one that I can at least give a chance." "If this world was rotten to the core, then there would have been no chance for Zephiel at all. No matter where he grew up, who his parents were, who was around him, he would've been fucked some way or another. But that's just not really this world. I guess I hate to say it, but he kind of just had..." Petra's gaze slides away. "Bad luck."
Lilian Rook	'Oh, there there...?!' §You must look like shit if you've got the Princess worrying about you.§ "I'm fine. It was just stairs, for me." Lilian says. "I just didn't have a chance to hydrate and sit down, that's all." Lilian assumes that Guinivere, unused to strenuous exercise, will buy it. The way she reacts to more of them-- of Bramimond-- of 'all this', makes that much harder. ". . . I'll forgive you using my name just this once." says Lilian, nearly forgetting to breathe. "Because it seems as if you barely remember yours. I can't call it imitation if it's just my own projection, now can I?" Her pulse is still flickering on the edge of triple digits. "I'm sorry, I value my time more than that. If you're not having fun, then why drag all this out?" "So being a picky bitch it is." Lilian sighs. Sudden and rough; expaseration feels better than dissociation. "Because I think Parsons isn't completely wrong and that there's a structure to all of this." she says, at first, and then shakes her head very slightly, dragging out a blink over seconds. "Or, no, I suppose it just seems obvious to me. This is all happening because the previous-- you didn't quite do it like it was supposed to go. So very close that it staved off the end for a thousand years-- so don't get me wrong, I'm not about to criticize. But I'd be a rank imbecile if I completely discarded--" §What? 'The signs'? I wouldn't give that the time of day if it were me. But there's no way they can know what I know, right? Or is that how this even works? 'My intuition' would hang entirely on how much I respect someone. Obviously I respect my own, but . . .§ "--the fact that Roy, somehow, despite knowing nothing about anything and being ready not at all for this, has come all this way by tracing the same steps, but a little kinder. Without the entire weight of the world resting on him and seven strangers, but a metaphorical village that came together around him. It's an anomaly. An absurdity bordering on a miracle. You fought from the west to Bern before; you should know how utterly unlikely it is that anyone but the divine wielders themselves should be alive and kicking, much less in high spirits." "So call it fate or narrative or God's will or Mother Earth and Father Sky or the shape of how the world is trying to heal from the Scouring, but I'm not quite egotistical enough to think I can do by myself what all eight of you dedicated your lives to." "You could end this without the Blade, all on your own. Don't tell me it hasn't crossed your mind." §Ha . . . Come on, that's just not fair. I can't even be some generic, well-meaning hero in your eyes? What business does a bad person have reasoning with a bad person?§ "A lot of things cross my mind." says Lilian. Her fingertips subconsciously squeeze against her upper arms, but she tilts her chin up all the same. "If you know what they are, then it seems I only get credit for the ones that involve vanishing into the night and Zephiel found dead in the morning; not the idiotic fantasies where I say just the right thing and mean it just the right way and Iðunn returns to normal and begs him to stop all this. Are you being disingenuous or just catty?" she says, disingenous and catty.
Lilian Rook	"Whether I can or I can't, I don't want to. Asking me to do it is absurd. I'm not going to gamble on even ninety-nine percent odds when the collateral is certain death for everyone in the world. So get thee behind me, Satan the accuser. We're using the blade." Unfortunately, she can hear the other arguments too. 'Blizzards, famine, the vanishing of the sun' aren't things she'd like to hear right at the moment. Lilian nearly stops to consider the implications-- to try and fit it all in her head before responding-- and then catches herself at the last second; because Brammimond or not, if she's arguing with herself, she knows how she would respond to that. A pause for reconsideration is like an opponent dropping to their knees. No matter what she says after that, she can't get back the momentum. This has to be like muscle memory. "And if no one else will, I'm using the blade." Lilian says. She raises her voice, then forces a step forward. It's not as casual as she like, but she manages a second, and then more, as if she intends to brush right past. "Even if you're right, and the worst happens, blizzards and famine are something I know I can rely on people for. I don't know what you know about the Otherworld, but you're looking down on me if you've neglected just how many mountains that will move if I tell them to start pushing. If I can't protect everyone, then I'll protect the ones who deserve it most." Lilian takes a deep breath. "And you're looking down on me if you think that anyone else can come along and finish the job if I couldn't. This is the best and only chance. If it's a small chance of losing everyone against a larger chance of some of them, I don't need to think about it at all. 'The many outweigh the few. The righteous outweigh the unjust. Stay thy hand not for unnecessary persons.'"
Marigold	As Guinivere walks down the corridor- just wide enough for three people- the Fire Emblem's red light illuminates the densely-carved walls. They are simple pictograms, like nuclear waste storage, like 'this is not a place of honor'. They show the wheel of seasons broken, constellations vanishing. They show dragons, unwounded, curling up to die like bugs. Magical symbols, less intuitive to read, chart the course of a sharp arcane decline. Guinivere looks queasy, and then fixes her gaze straight ahead. 'Skipper' walks alongside Skipper, and 'Petra' walks alongside Petra, and 'Lilian' walks alongside Lilian, and 'Guinivere' takes the rear. "It's... okay. Thank you," 'Skipper' says, with a kind of shrinking avoidance. Do they really understand what Skipper is giving them condolences for? "But... that isn't true. I think you know it isn't. You want the world to be saved, but do you want to be the one who does it? I mean... all these other people have been here from the start, and you just got here. This once, it's not on your shoulders. There's heroes already. You could leave it to them. Why won't you?" 'Lilian' looks back over her shoulder at Petra, softens her gaze, but then frowns. "I'm not asking her to slack off. I'm asking her to stop... playing games." Hm. Another odd persona-'hiccup', like she was going to say something else. "This isn't even what's good for Fae, though. Or Arcadia," 'Petra' says to Petra, and cranes her neck briefly in the direction of the Skippers. Her hand trails along the warning-pictograms. "You've heard people talking about the Ending Winter, right? When the Binding Blade fucked up magic for everybody, it fucked it up for dragons worse. Thatstupid sword is why Fae needs her rock. It's probably why Roy's mom got sick and died, too. Maybe this is the most 'broken' the world can get, and maybe it's not. It's a risk. But if you use this to fight Zephiel, you're saying a future where Fae dies is okay if Elibe lives. Can you accept that?" "The twelfth," 'Lilian' says to Lilian. It'd almost sound impatient, eyes straight ahead, but she's starting to wear into an almost-comfortable company with her other, realer self. "How about the sixth? The seventh? We could be here all day."
Marigold	The corridor ends. The room ahead is larger, but half-collapsed. There's a glint of gold in the rubble; the handle of the Binding Blade. Guinivere gasps, and rushes forward; the Bramimonds don't stop her, but she finds it's bound by two black chains, one of them wrapping around the hilt-socket where the stone will go. "It's no use, Princess." "I don't have to convince you. You have to convince me." 'Lilian' struts in after her, sighing, putting her hands behind her head, and adjusting her hair restlessly. "So you'll do it the hard way, the 'right' way, and whatever messes come of that, you and the world will take it on the chin and muscle through. Is that right? ... I thought so, too, once." On the floor, concentric circles spread out from the Blade's sword-in-the-stone home. Within them, as nested chapters of a story, flaming slaughter turns to the emergence of eight heroes, which turns to valiant struggle, which turns to... A ghoulish dragon's countenance, horned and gruesomely snaggle-fanged, unlike any you've seen in this world. It's a bit like a demon, a bit like an alien's skull. "You were right. We were only almost perfect." "I guess heroism can only get you so far." "We ruined the world and we didn't even kill her. Go figure." "You're weak enough to need the Blade, but strong enough to do better?" Guinivere and 'Guinivere' have still barely spoken. "... Don't look at me that way," she murmurs, in an off-moment.
Skipper	> Do they really understand what Skipper is giving them condolences for? Skipper goes for the hug, just in case. > "Lilian always works hard for everything, harder than anyone." The next set of questions from 'Skipper' are hard enough, but they are not helped due to Skipper's untimely fanboying- er, fangirling- ... Fanpersoning? Is that even a word? - over Lilian after both hearing Petra rizz her up and Lilian blaze her way through the questioning without hesitation. > There's heroes already. You could leave it to them. Why won't you? Skipper looks over their shoulder at Lilian. "I just think I can- I mean-" > "Do you think you're the kind of person who should be making that call?" The earlier words echo in Skipper's ears without being said, cutting their words off before they can form. > "And if no one else will, I'm using the blade." "I could leave it to them," said Skipper softly. Focusing on someone else's problem feels a lot easier right now than trying to tackle Skipper's own. > "... Don't look at me that way," "It's tough," offers Skipper to Guinivere. "It's really easy, it's tempting, to just stay silent, isn't it? If you don't speak up you don't need to deal with someone judging your words. Letting someone else speak up instead is easy." "But... if you want to change things, then you need to. It's tough. It's awful. But... you can't just stand by and let other people do it." Skipper offers Guinivere their hand. This is not really the sort of thing a commoner should be offering a noble, but Guinivere seems like she might need it. "But... I'll try, if you'll try. I'll support you, if you support me?"
Lilian Rook	It'd be a lie to say that Lilian doesn't look more relaxed near Petra too. It's not the same thing; she doesn't react to her with the relief of a captain at storm-wracked sea catching the glint of a lighthouse in the dark and the rain, but like a hiker hearing a bird chirping for the first time in an hour, and suddenly feeling the crawling dread that'd hovered over their shoulder finally receding into the forest behind them. 'All that time honing my killing-Petra skills, and they never come up when it's useful....' Enough to frown at Petra for that joke, at least. "I'm not asking her to slack off. I'm asking her to stop... playing games." "You and I both know that all I ever do is play games." Lilian punctuates with a 'pfuf'. Now she's convinced that Bramimond does know, or rather, the dark absorbs everything she thinks and shows her what she expects to see. A mirror, rather than an extraction. "If I don't play games then I cease to be human. If I do that, then I can't ever care about Elibe again. And before you try, don't tell me it isn't my problem; you sacrificed everything because you cared about it too." 'This isn't even what's good for Fae, though. Or Arcadia' 'It's probably why Roy's mom got sick and died, too.' Lilian takes a deep breath. She can't rid herself of the memory of that dragon skeleton curled up in that cave on the mountain, so she doesn't try to. Holding onto it works, in a way. "The most broken the world can get is charred wasteland where nothing will move ever again." she says. "Not even Iðunn. Once she completes the work Zephiel entrusted to her, I can't imagine anything awaiting her but . . ." Lilian uncomfortably tries to stifle down any sign that it bothers her. "Sitting down and ceasing to be." "How about the sixth? The seventh? We could be here all day." "If it were you and me, two weeks." says Lilian. "But Petra is almost as good at changing my mind as I am, and the two of us have two brains to be us while you have to split the difference." she smiles to herself. She stops quickly. "God didn't bestow the blade to Hartmut. They bestowed it to mankind. If the positions had been switched, I think they'd have bestowed it to dragonkind instead." says Lilian. "I won't contest the sixth. Every part of me would much rather solve this with my own power and nothing else. But, I'm not here to bargain with you for power." Lilian often does this when she argues with herself. If it's fierce and rigorous enough, underlying, unspoken feelings are dragged from subtext and forced into focus as often as not. She does that same distant-staring blink, too, automatically showing less emotion. "I don't want the Binding Blade to strike down Iðunn or invoke a wish upon it to save Zephiel's soul. If things don't work out the way I intend, then I want Elibe-- at least Roy, to not be damned to the consequences of my decisions." Her fingers find her face, holding her cheek, then tracing self-consciously across her scar. "The Binding Blade is what it would take. The things I can do are things that nobody here can undo without help." When the sword finally comes into view, Lilian only looks on t with dread. "It had to be--" Her lips twitch in a funny way. "Does anyone else see black chains?" That's less of an assumption. "I don't have to convince you. You have to convince me."
Lilian Rook	"If I wanted a dragon-slaying sword, I could ask for Durandal from Rutger at any time and she wouldn't say no; but I haven't, and I don't want to. Do you get that? I'm not 'nobly giving up power' to preserve my moral virtue. There are people I want with me and I want them to live. I've already fought Iðunn. She spoke to me. I know that what they have now is--" Lilian stops to force herself to stay level. She balls a fist by her side, but rests the other elbow against her own sword at her waist. "If you deny us the sword, it's all of them who'll suffer; not me. I already know, in my heart of hearts, I'm not going to die for Elibe; no matter how much I love this world and the people I've met, I can't bring myself to sacrifice my life for anyone; it's just like that. Fuck--" §It's just Petra here. Skipper won't understand anyways. Guinivere doesn't have enough context.§ "If I did die, there are non-negligible odds that it dooms Elibe right alongside Iðunn. If you're me then you know what I'm referring to. So . . ." "You were right. We were only almost perfect." "Yeah. Me too. Almost perfect. If it's ninety-nine to one that I win, even by myself, taking the Binding Blade with me doesn't make it a hundred percent; it makes it ninety nine point nine. And as I said, I won't gamble with everyone else's lives. It has to be a ninety nine percent bet that I save everyone and a one percent chance that the others save most of them. I can't fight with a clear head otherwise." 'You're weak enough to need the Blade, but strong enough to do better?' '... Don't look at me that way' "Besides. The First Code is the razor that the others are split against. If you won't protect the people who saved you then you can't save the people who need protecting."
Petra Soroka	"I'm asking her to stop... playing games." "That's not right and you know it." Petra points accusingly at Bramimond!Lilian, but lighthearted, like she's caught her playfully cheating at a hand of cards. "Games are the most important thing. When there's not rules to follow and a structure to it all, none of it makes sense anymore." "That's exactly what I mean. Tyranny over the narrative's pace just makes it all white noise. No one likes a spoilsport, and no story where you skip to the last page lasts the moment you look away." "When the Binding Blade fucked up magic for everybody, it fucked it up for dragons worse." "Yeah..." Petra doesn't take her eyes off of the pictograms as they pass by. She trails slower, even, expecting the other Petra to fall back and keep her dragging pace to indulge her looking at the warnings set up precisely for this kind of group. Rather than looking ill like Guinivere does, Petra's expression is unreadable but raptly focused, mirroring the other Petra by tracing the lines of the pictograms with a finger. "I don't think there's any denying that. We've been able to look up at the sky overnight and watch the world heal over the past couple years firsthand. It's like fighting a goddess. It's pretty easy to figure that that's the stain of the Binding Blade wearing off, and the degredation of the other Divine Weapons, all the stuff with Elimine, and everything else, is the constructs of humanity's era collapsing from her mere presence." "That's why Sophia can't transform at all too, right? It might not be unreasonable to assume that that's the state every dragon will be in indefinitely if we use it again." A Fae without her bigness... Petra's interacted with Fae at full size more than maybe any other Elite, so the image of Fae frustratedly stuck small grips at her chest when she conceptualizes it. She pulls out her mirror, drawing a college ruled notebook out and tearing out a piece of paper. Laying it out over the wall's drawings, she starts tracing the former night sky, filling in all the constellations that weren't there before. Even if she's left behind by everyone but the other Petra, she keeps focusing on that while talking until she's got it all mapped out. "But that's fine. Isn't it? Fae's a big girl. I want her to grow up happy, not... untarnished." "What's best for Arcadia might have already happened. The future we've got, either it's left empty and in ruins, or in the worst case, it's a little sadder, and takes a little more work. But the ideal future, I think, is where everywhere on the continent is an Arcadia, and, you know, humans are kind of half of that whole equation." "That's sort of the thing, I think. I never really say it, but my philosophy is that the universe loves people, and so do I." Satisfied with her little star map, Petra drums her nails against the pictogram of the seasons thrown into chaos. "The beautiful things of the world are beautiful because they're observed. I don't think there's any value in a pure, sterile world, even if it's 'less broken' by some abstract metric. The stars miss being seen, I think; they don't miss shining." "I don't have to convince you. You have to convince me." Tucking the paper away, Petra scampers after the group, rejoining just as the hallway ends. Slowing her pace in the chamber, Petra murmurs in confirmation to Lilian, not even pausing to consider whether the question about the chains needs to make sense.
Petra Soroka	"It's not just 'whether we deserve to wield it', but whether the world after it's been wielded is better than the one where it's not, isn't it? So... there's really only one answer I can have for that." Petra takes a deep breath, taking a completely different route than even Lilian does. "Roy's incredibly kind-hearted and emotionally aware, even with how much is being asked from him, and he's resilient in sticking that way through everything. I don't know whether it's better praise for the world if he's like that because of his circumstances or his spirit, but either way. Raigh's a dark magic user too, and he wanted so badly to be useful to the people that he loves in the face of all of this happening that he walked across the continent all on his own, as a kid, in order to help protect them. Lucius is selfless and gentle and endlessly patient and everyone around him is always better off for it. Echidna is incredibly fiercely protective of everyone in the Western Isles, and she's so confident in herself that it's funny, and then funnier when she's basically always right to be. Sophia loves her home so much that she beats herself up about the ways she's distant from it, and even if Idunn spared her for being a half dragon, imagining that home not existing anymore is heartbreaking. Clarine's silly and kind of stupid, but even she's driven by a kind of inner excitement and interest in the world that'd put her above nearly anyone on any other world to me." "Um," A little bit pink-faced, but doggedly forging onwards, though she keeps her eyes on the !Lilian rather than either princess. "Lady Guinivere grew up just a little bit different from Zephiel, and she still ended up sincere and compassionate and willing to continually put herself on the line for a better future, even at the very beginning when no one was helping her." "Those are, uh, all the people who would die if Idunn gets her way. And way more." A little out of breath, Petra's momentum gradually dies off, along with her mood. "Zephiel too, by his own words. I don't even think he's a bad person. He's kind of cool as fuck. If it was just slightly different circumstances, I'd think he's probably the best guy I've ever met." "There's some sort of critical mass here, I think. It's not just chance that this world has so many people I care about, that are worth caring about. I think that'll keep continuing into the future, and... well, I mean, if there's blizzards or seasonal chaos or whatever, then I believe they'll stick together and help each other through it. It's only the end of the world if people actually die, and all." "You're weak enough to need the Blade, but strong enough to do better?" "A thousand years is pretty good. But I don't even think you were thinking past ten in the future back then, and I'm not really either. I think ten years would be pretty good too." Oh god, she talked so much. Petra shivers and rubs at her arms, embarrassed at her own sincerity, which almost never happens anymore. "World's not ruined, anyways. Lilian said so."
Marigold	"It's black chains." "Yep." "Lilian, why wouldn't it be black chains?" "Later." "Pardon? Is there something about black chains I should know??" 'Skipper' looks surprised, but then returns the hug, with a little squeeze at the end. It doesn't fully remove their droopiness, but it changes an element of it, and they flash a little smile after. "What are you here in Elibe for, then? Just for yourself...?" they say, and then hesitate, and slightly flinch. "No. I'm sorry, I'll stop. You've already said... we could leave it to them." They look at the other Bramimonds. Skipper's loss of confidence, too, might be contagious. 'Lilian' is pacing near the rubble. "Yeah. I do know," she murmurs, and Guinivere glances at both Lilians in soft confusion, but 'Lilian' shakes her head. 'You sacrificed everything because you care about it too' makes her attention snap back over her shoulder at the real Lilian, with a glimmer of green. There's the look of an identity-hiccup again, the glove not quite fitting the hand. She cares, and they cared. That much is true. But Bramimond sacrificed everything; and Lilian is still a living 'someone', so she can't have sacrificed everything; but Bramimond is Lilian, so... "... I hate this, you know." She straightens up with a breath across her teeth. For just a moment the voice is Lilian's, but the words and feelings aren't quite; her face is averted, but if you looked just now, would it be Lilian's face at all? "For all the prices we paid, peace should have lasted forever. And now keeping it chained is all I can do. If I keep the Blade, maybe our peace survives, and maybe it dies. But if I give it up, the peace we watched over dies for certain. It's cruel." 'Petra', around the same time, is lingering in the corridor with Petra. She doesn't have a need to study the pictograms. She's been down here for a thousand years with them. But she still watches where Petra's eyes roam, as if that could let her see them fresh. "Thanks," she says softly, about the tracing. "You're from somewhere beautiful, aren't you? ... The universe does love people. Maybe Elimine got that right. But we still find these... dumb ways... to hate each other. And so something awful, like that sword in there, had to exist. And... I wish..." Her back thumps against the opposite wall as she leans back a little roughly, arms folded inside the ancient cloak, and stares off to the side. "I wish for a lot of stupid things, I guess. If coexisting is so easy why couldn't we do it from the start. Or if the world was always going to be broken, why'd they have to show us something pretty and take it away? A lot of things, just in reach, if only we could do a little better. And the best I could do was... never really all that good. Glad it's nice out there, I guess." "Make me not regret this. And bring it back to me. Please." "I don't really know what the others will say, but... give this to someone who needs it." 'Petra' leans forward, and at the corner of the notebook paper, scribbles some kind of elaborate sigil about the size of a palm.
Marigold	And then it's Guinivere, holding Skipper's hand, and squeezing it for a bit of bravery, with a thin smile. 'Guinivere' lays regally across the rubble above the Blade. And Guinivere tries to offer her the Fire Emblem, but she won't take it. "R... right. She doesn't have to convince me. I have to convince her. Thank you, Skipper Whiskersmith." "Don't you know what I'm going to say, Princess?" "Say it for me. Just to be sure." "... We're from Bern's royal line. Hartmut the Hero was your father's father's father, on back for a thousand years, and this was the blade of his right hand. It would love no wielder more, you know. Why don't you take it? Kill your countrymen in the name of peace." "... I can't. You know I'm not that kind of person! Don't make me. Don't... hold the blade hostage behind that." "And yet you want someone else to spill blood for you?" "Someone not of Bern, yes! Someone who isn't Zephiel's sister!" Her nails almost dig into Whiskersmith's palm, now. "Is that so unfair of me to ask that you'd let the world burn about it? Can I really be that cruel to myself?!" 'Guinivere' sighs, tired, and outstretches her hand for the Fire Emblem. "It comes to the same, you know."
Petra Soroka	"You're from somewhere beautiful, aren't you?" In the semi-privacy of the hallway, occupied with tracings of stars, Petra is confronted with her own face and struck with the compulsion to care for its wearer. With a pang, she's reminded yet again how overwhelmingly lucky 'this' Petra was, compared to all the others that could've existed. "... You are too, eventually." The tense of the sentence is all mixed up, but Bramimond doesn't really exist at a specific point in time anyways. It's like talking to a ghost. Petra doesn't take her eyes off of the stars on the wall and her paper while she talks. There's a certain cruelty to Petra specifically transposing herself through proximity on a self-less cloud, in all her sharp awareness of being tissue paper plastered over the abyss. Giving them her face and then leaving them in the dark forever feels like shaving off a line of glass and letting the dust settle like poison in the black pool, adding a smudge of Petra's impermeable loneliness and alienation to the sea. Being nobody is the same as being everybody, she thinks, and so before leaving 'Petra' alone, she feels the need to grant her some of the scaffolding that's helped Petra herself too, before. "And so something awful, like that sword in there, had to exist." "People can't imagine something unless they see it right in front of them. It's just part of human nature. If you can ever create something 'new', even if it's imperfect and messy, then the best thing you can hope for is for people to look back after following and say, that the first person to try really did a fuckup job of it." "If coexisting is so easy why couldn't we do it from the start." "It's a billion stupid decisions made by a million different people over time, all just the tiny bit more self-interested than the alternative. Looking at the world now, it seems like it's proof that no one really wanted that end result. Even all the awful things happening in the war now are just, people making self-interested choices from their own small perspectives, and then they're burned away in the crucible of the world changing." "Or if the world was always going to be broken, why'd they have to show us something pretty and take it away?" "I don't think it's one-sided, like the world 'telling' you things. It's a conversation. And maybe the horrible things that happened made the world a little quieter, but it's not like it went away. Looking outside, it's not like the world is over at all." "A lot of things, just in reach, if only we could do a little better." "Yeah." Petra sighs, soundlessly half-laughing. Absentmindedly, her hand moves to pet the crude sketch of a dragon curled over in death throes like a worm on the sidewalk. "But you do what you can, and get to tomorrow so that you can do it all over again, right? And besides--" Petra steps away from the wall, in between !Petra and the receding group further ahead in the hallway. Arms spread wide, she does a little twirl, to gesture at 'the people behind her, and everyone else, in the army or the world'. "It lasted a thousand years! And these are the people that eventually came along, at the perfectly right time, to pick up the fight you left? Dog, you got so lucky! Half of the whole world is mobilized for this. I know it's hard to tell from down here, but the world's with you, here. That time a thousand years ago, you weren't just treading water. It's okay to count on the future a little bit."
Lilian Rook	'Yep.' 'Lilian, why wouldn't it be black chains' 'Later.' First Lilian sighs, just a little, and then the relief turns into a giggle. Seeing her own exasperation like that-- the flicker of the blade smoothly turning aside the problem and leaving the two halves sailing past-- strikes her as so very 'typical of her', about herself. For a second, she sees her own energy-conserving habit as sort of charming. "I'm a bit of a funny bitch, aren't I?" 'Pardon? Is there something about black chains I should know??' "Oh, not about black chains." Lilian says, and waves it off with her hand. "Don't worry about it." 'Yeah. I do know.' Somehow, Lilian looks more relaxed and yet less enthused. She smiles with just her lips and not her eyes; something wincingly apologetic and yet, if one looks deep enough, hungry for even the slightest moment of sharing that feeling with someone else; even if she committed the violence of projecting it on them in the first place. "So you know I've already thought about it. What a losing scenario looks like. It's a retreating action from Bern. People are conscripted until there's no one left. The divine weapon wielders are split up into dwindling pools of protection that crumble when the weapons do. Before long, we're hiding in caves, never going out in the day, trying to scrape up every lucky straggler we can find, always one eye on the sky. The world ends in less than a year, and humanity is extinct before the second one. If, for some reason, we couldn't do it with what we have now, no one will ever be able to do it ever again. And everything you did was like it never happened." '... I hate this, you know.' "I know." says Lilian. A moment later, like it's another phrase, which means something else, she says, ". . . I know." 'For all the prices we paid, peace should have lasted forever. And now keeping it chained is all I can do.' Petra has never once told Lilian what it is that she always deliberately tries to do when she's feeling this way. Lilian has never consciously noticed that she does it, or at least never articulated it to herself. Lilian has also never once tried to soothe herself when she gets like this; no matter how much self-pity she feels, self-resentment at being pitiable at all equally balances it. So it's a first time for her, when she sees that outpouring of grief. The kind that was dissected, sorted, labelled, packed back up again, recorded, and let go, all before anyone else was allowed to see it. The thing that has defined their existence for a thousand years is passed before her like a letter scribbled in a postcard; and so she instinctively knows that they've made up their mind; she would never disclose something so pathetic as 'feeling victimized' if anyone could change her mind after hearing it. And it's almost funny, in a way, that she does exactly what always seems to work on her. "It's fucked. It's not as if Zephiel is just that much more important than all of you and undid it all himself by force of will. It took scores of people to make this happen, and thousands of people to make them like that, and none of them have ever paid anything close to the same price. It drives me crazy thinking about it! Like all of humanity came together to smirk at you and say your master plan had one fatal flaw-- and the fatal flaw is that you didn't murder a child! Which everyone doing this has no problem with doing now, except the only one who cares about her!"
Lilian Rook	"It's not fucking fair that you got strong enough that you could find room for a little mercy, right at the end, and like always, everyone sees it like a chink in the armour and thinks 'this is my chance to crush her legacy once and for all'! It's so--! It's so . . . So . . ." Lilian's anger, reignited secondhand by Bramimond's spark, dies back down to its core. ". . . Cruel. Yeah." She lets it settle for a while. Too long to be comfortable for anyone but her; because she hates when people rush to the reason it's not so bad. "But, the cruel part is already done. You know that, right? The cheque cleared long, long before the shrine came to this. The peace isn't going away; it's gone already. And you and I and everyone else are both so unbelievably fortunate that, for once, the fighting that's happening now is because everyone wants it back. In the end--" Lilian suddenly balls up her hands tight enough to sting her palms with her fingernails. Something raw and unprocessed catches in her throat. She blinks back the burning in her eyes and shakes her head to clear it. "Nobody forgot about you. Nobody saw your work coming to ruin and told themselves 'ah well, it was good while it lasted' and abandoned you. The price you paid isn't just 'mystique', just clout for them, you know? All of Elibe is furious about it. Even the people who are too scared to fight right now still love your peace so much that they can't stand the people who spat on it. This world is so special because that kind of unfairness and cruelty ignites its survival instincts, not just-- apathetic acceptance." It's not all that usual that she steals someone else's words, either; especially someone she didn't know for long. But someone who'd given up hope, whom Lilian succeeded at inspiring, is rare enough that he burns in the forefront of her mind. "This world only allows for so much cruelty before it puts a hilt in someone's hand. When it was directed at mankind, it was the Divine Weapons. Now that it's your legacy, it's us." 'Make me not regret this. And bring it back to me. Please.' "I'll bring it back in pieces if I have to." Lilian says. Something silently clicks. She adds "Ideally, even. It'd be nice if this thing stopped existing along with its reason to be." 'I know it's hard to tell from down here, but the world's with you, here. That time a thousand years ago, you weren't just treading water. It's okay to count on the future a little bit.' "Tenth Code, by the way." Lilian says, and tries to smile about it, beleagured as she feels. At least for Guinivere's sake. "I've made a lot of promises here, to a lot of people who asked, and I've yet to break any of them. You're not asking so much that I'd start."
Marigold	'Petra' is rubbing at her eyes with the back of her fist and her arm, when Petra looks back from the murals. Her shoulders are scrunched in, head a little lowered. It's not a bad scrunch, though; maybe just one a long, long time coming. Being called 'dog' is what bubbles her out of it. There's a short, awkward laugh, and then she blinks-and-headshakes back up. Her smile is at a point past Petra, at the people and the 'people' talking in the Blade's chamber. But it's also for Petra herself. "I-- yeah. Fuck, it's, a little bit mean of me to wish I was even luckier, huh." She walks to stand shoulder-by-shoulder with her twin, hands trying to find a place under her robe to rest where jacket-pockets would be. "... I should be happy. I can't even take credit for, like, a lot of it. Being honest. Like, you're not from around here I'm pretty sure, no offense to the outfit. And you're still doing your best for everybody. ... So, thanks. Uh, if I didn't say thanks before." She can't, of course, know what the real Petra is thinking. But she's a solid B-grade imitation, so making sideways eye contact, 'Petra' can make a foggy guess. "... For coming here, too. You didn't-- I mean, I'm glad we met, okay?" "You know," 'Lilian' agrees with Lilian, in an almost defeated tone. She looks back, hand restlessly trying to touch a Night Mist that she wasn't formed with, and clenching air instead. "It is fucked. And that's always how it is. The universe can tell when you've put just a tiny bit more faith in 'doing the right thing' than you ever have before, and then it pulls the fucking rug." The spark is gone from her too, though. She rubs her face with both hands, and something like "'unnecessary persons'" slips out as a murmur, and then she's cleansed herself of it. "... Because we didn't murder a fucking child. Yeah. There was a second where it would've been easy. But you know what those dead eyes look like on a girl that age." "I can't... I don't want to believe that the world would be a better place right now if we did it." Her hand finally relaxes, going limp. "In pieces. Please and thank you. Between you and me, I like heaven's deliverance better this time around." 'Guinivere' reaches down to one of the chains on the Blade, to put the Fire Emblem in. Guinivere smiles weakly up at her. But there's a little pause, as her eyes swivel up, and... "Pardon, what were you saying about me a minute ago?" "Huh?" "'Sincere, compassionate, willing to continually... something something?" "Oh, they were talking about me? I thought--" "N-nothing!! I mean, that was her!" 'Petra' shoves the credit, or maybe the blame, off on Petra. Guinivere and 'Guinivere' are just opening their mouths when the dark chain breaks, and its snap is like awakening from a dream on the black pool's shore. It's daytime, and the army's still here, and just a few minutes have passed... But the sketched page is still in Petra's hand, with the odd sigil Bramimond drew at the corner still wet, and the Fire Emblem is no longer in Guinivere's.