Aspico found her quest bed in the center of a grove.
She'd been guided to it by one of her feline consorts after one of their therapy sessions. Her skills at seeing passed the enforced madness into the souls of her consorts, both literally and metaphorically, had made her land's challenge more a matter of keeping track of everyone's stability, slowly helping them back to their right minds.
And now, she thought, hear was her reward. It had the heart symbol carved into it, and as the consort left the grove, she moved onto the stone slab, taking out her pitch piercer. As she did every time she took out her spade themed rapier, she thought about Patior. Mage of Mind, the active understander, and the aspect opposite Aspico's own.
Their powers ran parallel, with their aspects veering in opposite directions. Rather poetic given their history she supposed to herself. In his own way, the indego blood had in fact believed he'd bene helping them, just as Aspico; he'd just come at it from a more practical level, too hard line logical, no movement, no accounting for emotions.
If he could only learn that his perspective was not the only valid one in the world, then he'd be respectable, admirable even.
Aspico bit her lip at this this thought. As she positioned her weapon to commit sebuku on her quest bed, she wondered about their classpects. Had she and Patior been destined to be what they were from the word go? Or had their personalities decided what they would be after the fact? Could she have just as easily been a Mage, or Patior a Seer?
She shook her head, ridding herself of these thoughts for the time being and driving her sword through her stomach. Only after the fact did she realize how ineffective a suicide strategy this was, as her rapier was too thin a blade to cause instant fatality after a single stab.
She withdrew the blade, body shaking from the pain and drove it back in, then a third time. Her Clear Mind Covers were stained with her olive green blood from the repeated punctures, but she at least managed to do fatal damage to herself before the pain became too great for her to move, leaving her prone on the quest bed, waiting to ascend while listening to the Exiled.
'Curious choice for a self destruction method,' she said, 'for a Seer, you don't seem to have much foresight.'
'Not my most intelligent decision I'll admit.' Aspico replied mentally to her Exiled, 'but the rapier is the only lethal item I carry, I was rather limited in potential murder methods.'
'True, but a few seconds of extra thought could have led you to simply leaving, finding something for a more peaceful or at least instant death and returning.'
'Are you simply going to berate me this entire time? Seems rather cruel.'
'I don't mean to be cruel, I simply want you to go into your ascension with this: don't knock logic and hardline facts. Doing so is just as harmful as ignoring the emotions and souls of those around you.'
These were the last thoughts Aspico heard before the wounds finally killed her.
And from this death, she to ascended, rising form her quest bed. Her body was restored, her outfit replaced with the long robes and eyes obscuring hood of a Seer, dark purple of the heart aspect with the pink symbol on her chest, and two thin, elegant olive green butterfly wings sprouting from her back.
She blinked as she looked around, looking around at the environment around her. Where before she'd been able to see the souls of living things around her through focus and patience, now she was simply able to see them effortlessly, seeing both the plane on which the souls resided, and the physical plane at the same time, overlaid over each other.
This would make her work with the consorts even easier. Her first order of business was alchemy; combining her god tier outfit with her Clear Mind Covers, creating the Sink Seer Shroud. As she did this, she received a message.
Upon checking it, she realized that the entire session had in fact received this message from Patior.
He wasn't even typing with his quirk anymore, which among trolls was a sign of things being truly serious.
EE: Before this session can proceed, the air must be cleared. I.. I have made mistakes over the course of this game.
EE: Yes, I know, please hold your 'no shit' comments and others along the same lines. I'm certain that it is obvious to all but me that things have been going wrong with me during this session. Fuck, it started before the session, long before.
EE: I just.. I never knew. It's been right in front of me this entire time but I could never see it. Maybe it's because I've known from the word go that others couldn't be trusted fully, because of whatever disaster happened to my lusus that even now with power over my mind I can't seem to remember. I've come at every issue from the starting point of 'I'm the only logical one, and I need to fix this' and ignored anything that might challenge the belief.
EE: Contradictory behavior I realize now, nothing logical to it at all. Add to that my bloody minded determination to play into the 'villain team' roll, acting like it was important when in reality it's an utterly arbitrary label, in place only to provide a framework for the game, and my classpect playing into my ego.. It was perfect storm.
EE: I'm still not altogether certain it's cleared, but the clouds are farther apart now than they've ever been before at the very least. All I can do is offer apologies. To those on the opposing team for what I've done, and to those on my team for what I've convinced you to do.
EE: Java, when you see this, find Arvis' quest bed and kill him. He'll be revived with his mind and body restored in full regardless of your efforts, and even if he isn't fully back mentally, you can use your abilities to remove it from the surrounding area and return it to him. Try not returning all of it though.. As a blood player a sense of connection could be exactly what he needs to unlock his full powers.
EE: Aspico.. I know you're the least likely one of us to overlook all I've done, but for the sake of the session, we need to work together. I'm ready to if you are. Even as the session's Seer, Aspico couldn't have predicted this. Whatever he and the other players had been up to must have put the Mage's ass to the fire and kicked his brain into gear at last. The desire to reply with a long drawn own, self satisfied 'I told you so' message was strong, but with a deep breath, the Seer resisted it.
OP: No need to be so dramatic indigo. I think we've all caught on by this point. I'm more than willing to work together and form a plan for finishing this game in one piece. I suspect Risura and Mutosi won't be so willing to put things behind them and move on without some resolution to their pitch laden arguing. And conveniently, after the others read your little apology, they'll be the only two who've not yet ascended.
EE: Indeed. I suppose someone will need to organize a more civilized meeting sand brawl between them, perhaps both should have someone on hand to take them back to their lands after they're done.
CD: I can be Ris' second, least I can do after he did the same for me.
DT: And I can probably be in place to get Mutosi or what's left of her to her quest bed. Not exactly a teammate I'll admit but if we're all finally working together it hardly seems to matter.
EE: Good. Dustine, how's god tiering treating you?
CD: 1. Purple is officially my color. 2. Caped rule, fuck the Incredibles. 3. I just slammed my mace into a moat and it exploded. This rules.
EE: Fair enough. Standby for further information with Risura and Mutosi. Me and Aspico will be preparing a plan to finish this game in the meantime.
Java and Arvis had reached the top of the mountain they'd been climbing.
Curiously, the summit had only one thing of note on it: a stone bed with an odd mark on it, looking like a rough sketch of a bleeding wound. It reminded her of the bed she'd found on her land. Wellm, the bed she'd broke her neck on.
The memory alone seemed to bring a crick to her neck. She considered asking Arvis if he knew anything about it, but he'd been drained completely dry by now, practically a walking corpse.
He sat down on the stone bed next to Java. The Rogue sighed, looking away from him and taking out her messenger to see what Patior was going on about.
As she read through his message, her eyes widened more and more as she realized that the instructions she'd been given from him had been wrong, and her instincts on the matter had been correct.
Before she could break down however, she reached the part of the message specifically addressing her. She was weary to follow anymore of Patior's orders, especially orders that involved finishing Arvis off, but when she saw Aspico agreeing, she realized he may have been telling the truth this time.
She put her messenger away, taking Arvis in her arms. Hugging him in the state he was currently in was akin to hugging a showroom mannequin, but still. She adjusted her hold on him, arms around his head before she jerked her body to one side to snap his neck.
Quick, painless.
He slumped lifelessly on the bed, and thankfully began to ascend before Java could wonder if she'd been tricked again.
He lifted from the bed, Java using her powers to return at least eighty percent of the wind she'd taken from him back to him as his body was healed. What caught Java most off guard was the outfit that Arvis gained as the Page of Blood.
The dark red cape, hood, and shirt with the blood red Blood symbol on the chest she could understand.
The extremely tight short shorts of the same color that left Arvis legs bare and left little to the imagination from the waist down was a bit more surprising.
More surprising to Arvis, once he'd returned fully to consciousness that is, was the almost hungry look in Java's eyes as she asked him not to change or alter the outfit in any way when he suggested changing.
