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Eternal Thraen




If there were a disadvantage to driving direction into a charge it was that someone who did so was immediately surrounded- it served his purposes for maximizing his magic, but not for being immediately accessible to come to anyone else's aid. Faust's initial encouragements, Megrez's join were acknowledged, welcomed- but as the first vines and flowers spread out and he dodged an agent's halberd he'd lost sight of them both in a see of uniforms and furious shouting from agent's who'd not encountered him before.



His name was very rarely called-he heard it faintly. He was no leader in the forces of order- a creature half of the Guard and the Shadows that came and went to bring what he could. But never gelled into a member of anything, no circle of friends. It simply wasn't a name known to call. But there was the certainty of one, in all his time as a senshi.

Thraen jammed his fist into a captain's mouth, breaking teeth and scraping knuckles before hauling down on the body part to pull free what could be of muscle and ligaments. In the way. You are all in the way. Faust- I hear him yowling. Get out of my way.

How many had he been surrounded by? They'd formed something of a ring around the perimeter of vines and flowers, leaving those fellows of theirs already caught to their fate. He heard faintly Megrez's voice in breaking fury.
Her mind broke long ago, her fury is always broken, but it must be triggered to get going. Faust was with her. Faust.




Some stupid captain reached at his back for his starseed and everything flashed blue-green-white and he was thrown forwards into some other agents. But he knew what it was, and was up again, treading stone to their faces in hurry rather than wait. If they didn't warn their lessers not to go after the Transcended's starseeds then they deserved that.

He saw Penthesilea. Her hands.
Faust was not moving.
The stars of the battlefield, the auras all around dark and light all blew out to grey twilight.

Megrez had her knife to bear, Was certainly a lot to pay attention to. Blood and swaet were thick in the air already, his general perfume somewhat lost in it. Thraen went for the corrupted's rear-flank. If she was expecting the blow from Megrez-
Krav Maga, she'll go after the weapon arm to break and disarm.
Penthesilea. War, I will make your garden and buried the earth will cleanse your corpse.
He aimed a kick for her spine.



His shoulders were too light. Too cold. No rush of pin-p***k claws or fluff.
Everything felt too slow. Stone swimming slow.

Knight Næryofjord of Earth (Titanlåvenite)


It was concerning that there was any amount of people running OUT of the hospital. They'd needed more practice over the years- yes there were people that might not be there with you when the time came, but leaving the evacuation point to get them just meant more people died, or the portal was flooded with twice as much later and not everyone could get through. It was like airplanes. They always told you to secure your own oxygen mask first. People assumed that it was selfish, but it really wasn't- the self was just fastest and then got more done before you could then see about what was left to be done.

But he could hear and feel Hver near, which was as much as he needed for right then. It seemed like Niflhel and Snowball also were coming. There'd be a mauvian guaranteed to help those fleeing- Good. good. Some will be covered.

Then there was another explosion of things going on as Ida's magic exploded out behind them in their dash and a press of enemies came predictably from all sides. When it came to the Negaverse, there were no rules of engagement, no constructions of men and honor in then end. Killing those already wounded and unable to stand, or corrupting them, or whatever worse, was not off the table.

"If only they'd stop panicking." It was muttered under his breath.
"IDA!? "

Where did she go? Why did she stop from getting to the hospital? When even the princesses weren't following the evacuation procedures, things were really wrong. "Are any of the Mirror here? Are they getting people out? Someone check inside near the mirrors."

There was no point in him going in to the tents, between size and his strength being better suited to the literal defense unless there were no others able to carry something. He wasn't even sure he fit through the mirrors even. As much as he was friends with the Seagull Mirror Princess, he'd never checked it with her.






General Schörl


Everyone was required to attend, so attend she did. The General did not run in the charge, that was laughable. The initial clash of forces was always the most explosive anyway, and she had no interest in getting caught by runoff. There were better ways to take injury than just happening to be in a crossfire of Senshi magic. Or knight magic from the looks of it. Or...tar.

Tar everywhere all over everything. Can't really keep it to yourself can you. But...those puddles might help panic them even more now, ....yes. She pulled out her Pipe, already filled and tamped it with a finger as she stood outside the tightening ring of Negaverse forces.

One wild General King ...possibly, if he's not paying attention...for burning away all the tents and piddling barriers, catching the wounded in the flames? Yes, that is an acceptable loss, I think. She puffed the implement a few times to get the embers well stoked. Then Schörl pulled out her kerchief and knotted it to increase the burning and heat possible with the thin fabric. She kept her matches out and looked back up at the battlefield for a moment. Precision and details and all that.

Then in a blink she vanished, reappeared. The kerchief was struck lit and tossed to the tar, and a few other burning matches added for surety.



There are tar pools throughout the battlefield - watch your step! (And someone is now setting them on fire. Sticky AND burny.)

The moment she had one set of children through and had shown Remarque the way, Cruithne was back and heard her compact. Flipping it open, she heard Leto's voice and very nearly did a happy dance right then. She wasn't going to leave them!

"I can bring you. Quicker than trying to describe the place. Meet me in Ari's roo..."

Her voice broke off when she saw the Youma King appear. And saw who had placed herself so willingly in his grasp. Choking through a suddenly thick voice, Cruithne forced herself to do the job she'd been given.

"Ari's room. You know the mirror. B-bischofite's here... And he's got A-amytis..."

Without another word, she threw herself into the mirror and thought of the huge mirror in Arilee's room. The one that she'd teased her foster mother so much about. And all the while tears streamed down her face for the foster mother that she was abandoning to Bischofite's atrocities. She would bring Leto, she would do her job. But right now that didn't mean she had to like putting duty first.

---------------------------------

The moment that she smelled the tar, she knew. It looked like they'd be using the OH s**t flare tonight.

"Emergency flare! Now!" she bellowed, trusting that one of her little worker bees would hear and obey. Where the scent of tar was, Bischofite followed. Exactly what I had warned them could happen, she thought with an icy stab to her gut. Bischofite loose among the non-combatants.

Thank you, God, that Amy got the babies through first thing, she thought. And then immediately felt guilty for thinking it. Shaking her head to clear it of such thoughts, she pelted in the direction of the tar scent, hoping to distract the Youma King from the hospital. If she could lure him away, it would be best for the evacuation.

She wasn't entirely sure of what happened next. She looked up and saw Bischfite lunging for her, claws extended and then... and then she was slamming into a tree as a blue of pink and dark green knocked her away. Shaking her head dazedly, she tried to get her eyes back into focus, tried to understand what in the ever-loving hell had just happened. And suddenly understood far too well when she heard the small, strangled cry.

Amytis. Struggling to get to her feet, to do something, anything other than wait for her poor scrambled brain to get it's act together, Chariklo could only watch as her Amytis, her Avacyn was tormented. As the edges of her vision began to tinge with pink, she heard Amytis call to her, tell her to run.

Not going to happen, my love. Not leaving you to that ******** beast.

Even as her vision went red, she thought she could hear a thundercrack nearby accompanied by a strange roaring, rushing sound. She saw Amytis struggle as her face, her eyes were tarred. It was like she was moving in slow motion. Like hiccups in a film projector.

Hiccup. She glanced down at sizable branch in her bloodied hand quizzically. Where had that come from? The thundercrack? Had she broken it off the tree? Broken it? Hiccup. She was broken, the roaring noise became clearer, it was her voice, only different. More animal. A screaming, keening wail of rage and grief and hate. Hiccup. She was close enough to see Bischofite drowning Amytis with tar. The roar seemed to come from deep within her chest now as she focused her red-tinged focus to him. The Youma King. He took our Ava away! Hurt him!

Outside of her frenzied brain, Chariklo, Dark Mirror ******** Princess of Seagulls swung the thick branch she'd torn from the tree with every ounce of furious strength in her body, aiming for Bischofite's arms. Break them, her mind hissed at her. Break the b*****d. And even as she swung, she was calling up her magic, intent on making the b*****d regret ever ******** crossing her path.

"Mobbing Cacophony!" she howled and released the magic in tandem with even more berserk swings of her branch. And even as the one attack call left her lips, she was calling on another, not caring about the personal cost. All that mattered was hurting him and getting him away from her Avacyn. Though the swirling red in her eyes and the general chaos around her, a distant, clear corner of her mind thought that it had seen a not-so-small, limp patch of dark fur. And even as that tiny corner registered and identified what it was she'd seen, she felt her rage escalate. Faust. Wasn't it enough that these ******** freaks had stolen her wife away? They had to ******** go and take her friends too?

It was too much. Hard on the heels of her Eternal magic, she called up a magic she'd never used, but instinctively knew all the same. She would make them all hurt!

"Chariklo Crystal Feather Flurry!"

Drive them off, drive them away, stay away from Avacyn. She's mine!

All she wanted was to stay near her wife, drive the b*****d away and keep Avacyn safe, her fractured mind babbled. Stay with Avacyn. The animal inside of her chest growled in agreement and briefly regretted it's inability to do the same for the Guardian Cat.

Drive him away!



-----------------------------------

Haumea grinned as Aludra joined him in the fray. All right, so she wasn't as good as one of his siblings, but she'd do for now. At least she was eager.

"Yes," he heard himself agreeing calmly. "We are going to kill them all."

Fai hadn't been moved in time to watch Bisch get Amytis, her eyes widening as she reached for the woman, but was too far to grab. "No...No don't..." She couldn't tear her eyes away as Bisch killed her, in a terribly cruel way.

She felt the tears rushing, her arms digging into her arms until it drew blood, so tight. She wanted, in that moment, nothing more then the opportunity to do something, to fight. But she couldn't and she had a baby inside her and needed to protect it. Selfishly, she needed to leave.

Her hands came out to reach for Seireitei, gripping the knight. "I can't, I can't the magic doesn't allow me..." She sobbed lightly, then wiped her tears away. She would do no good crying like a child, in this time, she was meant to be everything she trained to be, A lady in the midst of the war. Calm, collected.

"The evacuation route, we have to find a Dark Mirror." She breathed out, "We can go to Safe haven, Magiore is there, Magiore isn't here." She led the knight away from the field. "The children, take as many as you can, I'll be fine. Take the children, find a dark mirror, go to safe haven and move them from there." Her hands fumbled around in her pockets. "W...We just need a dark mirror senshi."

[[CW: Gore, death]]

Amytis's struggles kept up, even as tar flowed into her mouth and her nose and her throat and they became weaker, ever weaker - because gasps fro breath brought only more tar, and more pain, and she knew it was over.

She had thought, because she was afraid of everything, that when Death came for her (never mind that it came on tarry, skeletal wings, and she was in so much pain) she would have been afraid of that, too. Strangely, she wasn't. If anything, she was a little afraid of surviving this - but that was so far out of the realm of possibility that she couldn't be scared for long.

Mostly, she was just glad that the children were out, that the other Dark Mirrors would be evacuating the noncombatants - and that she had stopped Bischofite from getting Chariklo.

She'd always heard poetic descriptions of things going black when you died, but for her, the world was already black - and death was like falling asleep, or the best anesthetic int he world kicking in. Because when death came for her, Amytis knew no more pain.



Lyonesse had been all prepared to stand up and argue against going for Metallia, because well - the source of Chaos still was a source of terror in his heart. She was a creature beyond understanding, with power that was so much more than could be comprehended by those who hadn't been near it.

But...well, Metallia sort of made his argument for him. There was a sudden blooming of dozens of Chaos signatures, and he swore, pulling Fang towards him. A pull in the opposite direction, though, and their hands were separated.

"Fang!" He called, and his initial reaction was fear - until he saw who had hold of the Pluto Knight. Then, it just became rage.

"Lellouch! Let him go!" He snapped, raising his weapon up. "Or I swear to God I will beat your head off your shoulders." (Something in the back of his mind said Damocles would be upset but why, per se, was completely lost on him - never mind why he was so damn concerned about the Dark Mirror Prince of Devotion. Damn missing civilian memories.)

Bischofite hardly removed his hands from the still corpse when one of their kind called to him - a warning of sorts, if it could carry a shred of weight. Bischofite offered Damocles a grin before the princess's shrieks tore his attention toward more pressing matters as a sizable tree branch arced toward him at an alarming pace. However, heavy wings allowed little mobility, and regardless of how much he yearned to dodge the blow, it struck him squarely in the shoulder. He rolled several paces, off the body and into the muddied ground from recent rains, where he lay but a moment before getting up with the assistance of his wings. The long spines aerated the ground while he hoisted himself to standing once more. Curiously, almost a memory haunted him - spatters of wings overhead that assaulted him in a blisteringly irritating fashion, threatening to tear holes in his skin with each assault. Even in gritting his teeth, he found little relief.

Yet the tide of battle afforded him no fortunes. Soon Leto made her presence known, her tiara forming into a peculiar shape shortly before she hurled the weapon toward him. Wary of the stacked odds against him, Bischofite teleported directly behind the brunette princess, back to hers, and splayed his wings out in hopes of catching her feathers with some tar before he departed. If nothing else, the sticky addition would weigh her down from any manner of flight and distract her enough to disengage.

After all, there were more delightful engagements to be had on the battlefield.

Chariklo, however, showed herself completely vulnerable in the fit of blind rage. "Oh Princess," he soothed, teeth displayed in a mirthless grin, "Worry not, for she isn't ze first you will lose on zis night." Another teleport parted him from Leto's company, where he stood on the opposite side of the medical tent. And if she kept her focus so trained on him, then he might find the fortune of her stumbling into tar and entrenching herself within.

Still, he knew no shelter from the pestering bird assaults. Raising his wings in a protective barrier made no difference at all.

The thunderspark of a feline taking human form drew his attention immediately, angling his line of sight toward the scene of Thraen, Megrez and Penthesilea in their trifecta of struggles. It provided some interest, if he managed to entrap the Princess of Seagulls.



"Evening, brother," she returned in mimicry, holding the hilt of her dagger precariously close to her cheek as if a rose in coy seduction. She shrank away somewhat while she smiled at him, eyes half-lidded in an interest displayed yet mirage. One hip thrust outward slightly while she stepped backward in one heel, raising a considerable display of skin from her short skirt when so absent her youma.

Cetus. Your mother needs you, dear. The prayer left her silent, seemingly enchanted by the man across the battlefield while she envisioned the blackened swath of tentacles. In time, she knew, he would come. His attendance proved invaluable here, Stara knew, as she searched the features of the man before her.

He wore the stars she once knew as her own, in times when her hair was blonde and her conscience pure in her pursuits of psychological social work. So she knew the beauty of his cape as something she once held, his bodysuit as pure and white as her star-studded dress. And, perhaps, that gave her pause. Perhaps it encouraged her. She liked to think it a little of both.

"You would, now? Oh, how thoughtful of you!" She cooed, shortly before her visage dissipated entirely. Reappearing behind him, Stara sought to aim a quick jab of blade into one of his kidneys. A vital spot, she knew, but mostly she wanted to watch his blood blot out the stars.

Oh, how she hated the stars.

Seireitei had to suck up the tears that threatened to spill over and hugged Fai to her tightly before allowing her to pull her away from the fighting. Luckily, they managed to avoid getting attacked. Heavens help her if someone attacked her with Fai, she would see blood red. Unfortunately, she had seen what Bisch had done. It was really hard at this point to keep it together. She had run across the horrors the Negaverse inflicted on the city but this was on a whole 'nother level. It seemed so personal.

She took a deep breath and gripped the other woman by the shoulders. "Fai, breath, look at me. Let's not panic. The children are taken care of. What we need to do now is get you to Safe Haven. You need to be there to help. Okay?" There was a grim smile on her face but her eyes were filled with kindness for her friend. "Now where can we find the closest mirror?"

Calm, that was how she needed to be. How long had she sat in her bookstore contemplating the inevitable battle that would rage between the two factions. It was now that she needed to put all her optimism to use. So that was what her friend saw, a sad smile that turned to one filled with hope. It lit up her whole face till she had nearly banished the darkness that had taken hold of her earlier. What was left, she held onto for it would fuel that fight in her.

The field hospital was in chaos.

Hvergelmir had left Niflhel and Snowball to hold the front entryway -- she'd ducked inside to make sure everything was in hand and check on the status of the evacuations. What she found were a few unfamiliar Dark Mirror senshi, a lot of people screaming, crying, and tripping over things, and -- most concerningly -- no one she knew who should've been there.

Cruithne had come racing through and into one of the mirrors, but too soon for Hvergelmir to stop her -- and then, a few minutes later, back again with... with Princess Leto. The Mad Terror. Hvergelmir felt her blood run chill. I hope you know what you're doing, she thought. I hope you're not our traitor.

But Cruithne couldn't be. That would've been impossible. Hvergelmir trusted all of the Dark Mirror senshi who'd always helped out at the hospital more than she trusted some of the people at camp.

There was a man standing at a bedside, holding onto the woman's hand who was laying there. Five beds were here, occupied with people who were in critical condition. They survived on full life support systems, powered day and knight by the gas generator whose propane tank lay hidden in one of the nearby tents, hidden and unassuming.

Hvergelmir crossed to the bedside and took the man's hand, pulling it away from the unconscious woman. She raised her other hand to his face and shook her head, then pointed for him to go. He stared at her for a few seconds, weeping -- then, like a sleepwalker, he slowly turned and began to shuffle away toward the line of people by the mirror, plodding forward at a snail's pace. She pulled the cheap little shower curtains they'd strung up temporarily shut.

Five people here who couldn't be moved. Five that wouldn't survive it.

She couldn't leave them to wait for the Negaverse to come pull their starseeds, crushing them out of the reincarnation cycle. Quickly as she could, she made the rounds from one bedside to the next, yanking the plugs on all their machinery.

When she was done, she drew the curtains closed around them again. Some of them were just starting to make quiet noises of distress, their bodies protesting their impending demises. The body struggled for life to the very end, after all -- even if it stood no chance. She could hear them through the curtain -- choking, gurgling, gasping. Dying.

It would've hurt less for them, having their starseeds ripped free. The last minutes she'd just sentenced them to would be painful and horrible -- the price they'd pay for a rebirth. She turned away.

Forgive me.

She could hear Cruithne's voice just outside, calling for her. Hvergelmir followed, running -- and saw the aftermath of a grisly murder by an obvious perpetrator. Chariklo was on the ground, Avacyn's dead, mangled form in her arms, half-black with tar and blood. People were trying to get her to come away.

Hvergelmir stood by Cruithne, looking for a place to intervene. Someone had to get Chariklo back to reality -- this was no place to break down. She'd be killed -- and they still needed her, painful as it was. Princess Chariklo couldn't take time out to grieve any more than the rest of them could.

The evacuation is taking too long, Hvergelmir signed to Cruithne. You need to get more people through at a time, if they have to carry each other. Please -- my people can't hold the Negaverse here forever. Ida is missing and Chariklo can't do it -- you're the only one here who knows the hospital. You're in charge. Leave us to this and hurry.