inked_eidolon | Self-indulgent sad Krile nonsense

The hamlet of Moore had survived the conflaguration that Exdeath had brought down upon the forest, protected most likely by the lake beween itself and the greater woods--though it hadn't escaped unmarked. When the four of them had dragged themselves back there, the thatch on the outlying buildings was scorched and soaked from the villagers' efforts to keep it intact, and the meal that they took at the inn was flavored with ash.

Not that they complained. Not that they said anything at all. One of the people at the inn tried to ask what had happened, alluding hesitantly to the change in their traveling party. The look Faris gave him could have set the inn ablaze again.

After that, the innkeeper had ushered them away from the common room. None of them complained. None of them said anything.

Lenna was having a bath, or so she had said, and the sound of water did mostly cover her weeping. Faris was holed up in the other room. Krile sat on the bed, her tears for the moment all expended. Bartz had left her reluctantly to stock up on supplies for the next journey they would take--into Castle Exdeath. She closed her eyes and popped them open again. Every time she did that, it came back--Exdeath, her foolish assumption that an ordinary Sleep spell would do anything to him, the ring of fire--Grandpa. And now she was going to do what he had done, because she had to, because he couldn't come back. When she'd told them, they hadn't protested. She hadn't given them time. But sitting here alone on the bed, she didn't think she could do it.

...He couldn't, and he still had. Brandishing his spear, roaring as he leapt into the air, crashing into Exdeath again and again...

She opened the pack that contained the broken pieces of crystal. They glowed faintly... the red mage, the knight, the geomancer, living in the depths of the facets. They stirred at her touch as she dug through them until her fingers closed around the one she sought. Rock-steady, upright... strong, like Grandpa had said to be strong, like Grandpa had been strong. She withdrew it from the pack and held it in her hands.

The ancient dragoon unfolded from within. It wasn't the first time she had seen it. Galuf had brought it with him when he and Krile had returned to this planet. He'd seemed surprised when she had pointed out the figure that stood beside him as he fought--he had spoken to it, learned from it, but it was one of those times when only she could see the form of the spirit itself. Faint outlines hung in the air, tracing a warrior--the wings of the helmet, almost like a crown, the spikes of the armor, the swish of the short cape from its shoulders. But whatever features distinguished the face beneath the helmet had been lost to a thousand years of quiescence in the crystal.

It turned its ghostly head back and forth, nodded solemnly, and looked down towards her.

You are the dawn warrior's heir.

She nodded and ducked her head as the tears welled up.

And now you take up his cause.

"Yes." A small voice, trying to escape the crushing weight in her chest. The spirit's outline flickered as it knelt to study her features, though how it could do that when its helmet came down over its eyes she wasn't sure.

You are smaller than he. Though, not by much. Are you afraid? Krile nodded and turned her face away, ashamed of her tears, but the dragoon held her gaze. They called me queen of the high winds. Enuo feared me, but I cared not for his fear, nor Exdeath's. You need have none yourself when we fight together.

"And I'll be able to do all the things that you do?"

Take my hand, small warrior.

Hesitantly, Krile reached out. The flickering outline clasped her wrist as solidly as a living person. Its power twined about her arm, growing and taking root in the raw physical strength that she now possessed. The shade of the dragoon faded from sight, but its presence was steadfast, undeniable. Krile tucked the crystal shard into her jacket. The listless sorrow had been replaced by something else... but whatever was there now would have to wait in line. The bone-deep weariness that she hadn't been able to feel through that haze was asserting itself. With no more capacity for thought, she lay back on the covers and shut her eyes. She didn't open them when the others came back and didn't even stir as someone pulled her boots off and tucked her into bed.

* * *

The illusion around the walls of Castle Exdeath shredded and collapsed. As one, the Light Warriors drew back. Krile's feet slipped on the cracked stone. Everywhere she looked, the walls looked back--leering, hollow skulls, still covered with some horror mockery of skin, twisted in rage or agony or fear. The tortured flesh around them beat slowly as though one vast heart somewhere in the fortress pumped unwilling life through them all.

And then the stench rolled into them. The castle was lit not by sconces or torches but just--fires, burning in the unliving walls, scorching the edges of the mass that they came into contact with and filling the air with its hideous reek. Krile swallowed, struggling to keep her breakfast where it was and struggling also not to think too hard about who or what the faces had belonged to.

She felt the dragoon beside her look around. I see no difficulties, it said. The ceilings are still high enough.

Bartz shook off the horror and nodded to them. "Come on."

The first guard beasts of the castle were huge, twisted leonine things that she recognized from the castle bestiary as some kind of bandersnatch. Faris roared forward first, and then Bartz and Lenna moved, moving so fast Krile couldn't follow what they were doing when.

Krile clutched her spear, not knowing where she fit in. She had seen and even participated in monster attacks before, although mostly she was being hurried back to the keep by a soldier and zapping things along the way. But seeing this creature snarling at her with something more than hunger--malice, in this fastness of malice and rotting flesh and brimstone--she didn't know what to do.

Enough gawping. Jump! said a voice in her ear. There was a feeling like someone gripping her shoulder and pushing down. She crouched, gathered herself, and launched herself up. She had seen Grandpa do this, not just in Moore but when he was showing off the things the crystals had taught him, and she had said how fun it looked. But she had never actually felt it until now. Flying on the wind drake was one thing. But leaping two dozen feet into the air under her own power--

Is this a place to daydream? Turn your spear around! Look to your foe! There it was on the floor, much smaller, much less intimidating. 3... 2... 1...

She plummeted. The razor-sharp steel punched through the monster's body, and it roared in outrage. She bunched her muscles again and leapt backwards to join the others. "Good job!" Bartz said. But the creature wasn't done yet. It hurled itself forward in spite of its wounds. And the other good thing about the spear, Krile realized, was that monsters reached it long before they reached her.

With her first encounter over, it became easier. Krile watched how the others worked in tandem. Faris pressed onward, slicing away with four blades at once in her ninja gear. Lenna backed them up with her well-aimed shots, and every so often Bartz would bolster them with a spell to shield against strikes, against magic, silencing the robed sorcerers--and when those failed, running up and bonking one of them over the head with the Healing Staff. By fits and starts, Krile found her place in the cadence of their fighting. Whenever Faris moved to one side of a monster, Krile darted around the other to keep it in confusion. Every few steps seemed to bring them face-to-face with another pack of tiny demons or a double-sized lizard--even dragons and things that looked disturbingly like people until you saw the hollowness beneath their robes, the automation of their punches.

Krile wanted to ask if it would ever end. She didn't. Grandpa had told her of their grueling battles from the bottom of a tower to the top of it. The heavy purple armor with its surfeit of spikes might weigh more heavily on her limbs and the lance harder and harder to keep steady, but she leapt into the air to deal with each new group of enemies. Grandpa had done this kind of thing all the time, and he had been twice the age he'd been the first time Exdeath appeared. She had to be that strong, too.

Another dragon swooped down on them from the stairs. This one wasn't like the little ones that came in packs, spitting blue magic... although it was definitely blue. Decidedly blue. Blue as a glacier's eye. Even the inside of its maw and those rows of sharp, sharp teeth and that shower of ice it unleashed on the four of them. It found the joints in her armor and splintered through her flesh. Before she could fully form or fully restrain her gasp of pain, a wall of white scored across them, burning them with frost that rimed her armor.

Krile stood stock-still. Blood seeped into the padded cloth beneath her gauntlets and breastplate. Each heartbeat thumped into the holes the icicles had left, burning where the frost had scorched. If she moved, she would fall, she was sure of it.

Do this, said the dragoon. The image and the feeling appeared in Krile's mind. She jabbed her lance forward. Something in it kept going. The luminous shade of a drake plunged from above, tearing into the blue dragon with its teeth. Krile felt the creature's strength carry back on the contrail of energy into her body. The pain the icicles eased, and she sighed, too relieved to notice how sharply Bartz's head turned when he'd seen the glow of the lancet at work.

BONK.

"Ow! That..." hurt, except the glow of white magic whisked away the bump on her head and washed away the pain from the ice. "Grandpa was right. You abuse that thing!"

"Not as much as he did. You need to tell us when you're hurt." Bartz gave her another rap with the Healing Staff, marginally less sharp. She gave him a prod with her finger and gathered herself for another Jump.

* * *

Krile tried to cast a lightning bolt on the jug of water on the bedside table. She may as well have shuffled her feet on the carpet for all the power it had, and she frowned at the suspicion confirmed. "Why is my magic weaker than it used to be?"

Magic? There is no need to waste your time with that nonsense.

"It's not nonsense! You can get monsters before they can get to you--"

The spear can get monsters from quite a length.

"--and you can exploit their weaknesses."

Everything is weak to a spear plunging into it from twenty feet in the air.

"The lancet takes back magical energy, too. Why does it do that if it's a nonsense waste of time?"

It's a general technique to steal back your strength.

Crankier and crankier. Krile tilted her head. "You're just not very good at it, are you?"

You are truly Galuf's heir, the spirit said, and if she could see its eyes Krile was sure it would have rolled them. Can you try taking after him some other way?