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 Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2021 6:44 pm
Something was lurking around the corner. There was a sickening twist in his stomach, a heavy weight of ill feelings. Maybe the years of fighting meant he was getting used to telling them apart from normal civilians, but this one he didn’t even need to sense. He could smell the ash and soot.
He was just a civilian for a moment longer, before powering up into Sessrumnir and announcing his presence by stepping around the corner, the chain of his stormglass in his hand.
“Why don’t you crawl back into the hole you came from?” he asked, his head tilted to the side as he took in the sight before him. A general, and part youma, but not the mutt he’d come across before. The one he’d sent home with his tail between his legs.
“You get one chance to leave,” Sessrumnir warned.
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Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2021 7:01 pm
An aura unfurled behind him, blazing brighter than his core, searing over skin and wracking his body in recoil. The presence at his six spoke as he dragged his mind back to the present, back to the here and their words gathered meaning seconds after they were spoken.
Threats. Always threats. Always dehumanization. Better that the enemy never know its rights to the hallowed hollow of this earth.
"And what?" He asked as his shoulders turned with his ire. "Bother someone else? Become their inconvenience? Get gone with your benevolence; your rights are no better than mine!" Teeth pressed into a hiss, he lunged, and his fire danced its glow along the brick to silhouette their shadowed tussle.
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Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2021 7:37 pm
“If you’ve got someone else to bother in your hole, yeah, go for it,” Sessrumnir growled, watching as the small statured half-youma lunged at him.
The smell of ash and fire was strong, and Sessrumnir found himself stepping back, his expression twisting with distaste at the strange being attacking him. He’d seen animal hybrid youma, but this one looked like they shouldn’t even be alive.
Still, they looked young, and while Sessrumnir knew they were likely fully capable of making their own decisions within the Negaverse, he didn’t like hurting teenagers.
He swung his stormglass, already too close in range to use the magic properly, aiming for the glass, and the liquid inside, to shatter against the youma’s side. Or if he missed at least close enough to try and douse the flames.
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Posted: Sat Apr 10, 2021 2:55 pm
The blow struck true, the glass ruptured, and what poured into Faustite's missing middle billowed up in a gout of flame. Faustite felt the heat crisp over his uniform, catch, and he dodged right to get away from it. Part of his uniform had caught.
He kept moving — always moving, while he hastily patted out the damage. Then his missing guts wrenched and the world tilted on an unwelcome axis and he heaved more nothing before him.
Twice.
Consequences were coming.
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Posted: Sat Apr 10, 2021 3:46 pm
Sessrumnir put his arm over his face to protect his eyebrows from the sudden engulfment of flames. He’d never actually used the stormglass as a stormglass but it would make sense that it seemed to have the same chemicals of the ones he’d researched when he first became a knight.
“Ready to retreat?” Sessrumnir asked as he yanked on the chain of the shattered stormglass, but he still had the glass shards that clung to the top, attached to the chain.
He had better use for his magic, either way.
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Posted: Sat Apr 10, 2021 4:09 pm
So kind of him to pause, to offer an out. Faustite glowered up balefully from his hunched pose, from his hands braced on his knees. So merciful of him. Faustite coughed, shuddered, the wrick of his body twofold cursed by ammonia's retch and alcohol's numb. He groaned into another rolling heave.
"Maybe." Eyes closed. Sweat traveled to the tip of his chin, pooling and dropping down to join with a few thin strands of discarded spit.
A second passed. Two. Three.
The image in his mind circumscribed, his thereness in the private mouth of the alley became his thereness at the unnamed knight's side, and he turned his body through a kick aimed at the storm glass sailor's side.
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Posted: Sat Apr 10, 2021 4:22 pm
Maybe he was curious about this teenager’s strength, or maybe he was just stupid, but Sessrumnir did nothing to block the kick aimed at his side. He hissed at the pain of it as he was knocked back and into the brick wall of the alley, realizing that maybe he should have focused more on the General’s shoes than his assumed lack of physical prowess.
Still a General, even small, Sessrumnir reminded himself as he clasped a hand over his ribs, checking for injury other than the bruise that was likely to develop. If this General hadn’t been weakened by the sudden burst of flames, Sessrumnir expected he would have ended up with a broken rib.
“Alright, if you’re not going to retreat, what’s your name?” he asked as he cracked the tension from his neck. Maybe it was pity that had him lingering. Surely he wouldn’t have bothered hesitating if it didn’t seem as though he’d done actual damage to the General.
“I’ll give you mine. Sessrumnir.”
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Posted: Sat Apr 10, 2021 4:43 pm
"What does it matter?" He answered between coughs. His approach was sure, steady, a stalk, with the back of his wrist pressed against lips while ammonia still burbled its bittersweet retch on his tongue.
"I'm the thing that doesn't belong. The —" his sentence curled between a cough and a dry heave, and the smokebound boy's gait faltered, and then he was pressing on again. He felt a pain that he couldn't assign to a part of his fire-bisected body. "The kid who can't stop burning. Better a description than a name, right?
"So what does it <********. matter." He stooped as he crushed over the shatter of storm glass and claimed a shard of his own.
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Posted: Sat Apr 10, 2021 8:00 pm
“A name is usually shorter, especially if the best description is ‘the kid who can’t stop burning’,” Sessrumnir frowned, watching as the young General picked up a shard of glass. “You know I can just stick my weapon in subspace, right? Nice try. Are you going to tell me your name now?” he asked as he banished his weapon and its broken pieces to subspace like he said he could.
A voice in the back of his head told him he was being too soft on this General. So far he’d managed to light him literally on fire, and got kicked in the side for it. But overall, this was a pitiful creature that seemed to have more anger and self-identity issues than anything else. So far.
Really, this kid did not look like he had the stamina to last very long in a fight, much less in the Negaverse.
“Why bother with the Negaverse? What is it to you? Which side has made you think you’re the thing that doesn’t belong. Mine or yours?”
Really, if he had much to go back to, he would have been more careful. But since that wasn’t the case, why not poke the dragon in the eye?
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Posted: Sun Apr 11, 2021 2:09 pm
Then his hard-earned shiv was whispered away, and Faustite opened a black palm to emptiness. "What?" His breath left him between a seethe and a sigh, and his fingers curled into bitter fists. Did he have to dig out this Knight's eyes with his own fingernails? He would if he didn't have to straddle the maypole's shoulders to reach them. Not that he would mindThat thought wasn't worth having. A couple wet coughs and his eyes started to water. Whatever was in that weapon was going systemic — he wondered what was in it. He wondered if he would drop dead from it. He wondered if the Knight knew exactly that, and if his disinclination to fight Faustite was due to extraneousness. Death warrant signed, he only had to bide time and learn about the victim he just banished. Faustite slowed to a stop, coughed into the crook of his elbow. He snorted back some black as his nose started to run. His posture skewed, Faustite sagged a little into himself. "Why do you even care? First you tell me to crawl back into a hole, now you want to know all about me. What's the ******** point? "You know I'm going to kill someone." Coughed again. "You know I'm going to drain people, feed their energy to the deathplague that runs this army. Isn't that all you people care about?"
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Posted: Sun Apr 11, 2021 7:36 pm
Sessrumnir’s eyebrows furrowed slightly with incredulity, an empty hand held out towards the General, palm to the sky, in response to his initial curse. The frustration he could understand, but this literal dumpster fire of a General seemed to be really ailing from his initial strike with his stormglass.
“Are you going to kill someone?” Sessrumnir couldn’t help but ask, voice grim. “Because right now you look like you need to retreat and get some medical attention. Look, more times than not, when I run into you Negaversers, you’re already draining someone. And you did try to attack me first.”
Really, if this kid was acting, he was doing a damn good job of it.
He was also a General, Sessrumnir reminded himself. He couldn’t have gotten to that rank while being completely innocent.
“You can barely stand, much less fight. Take that as your warning and go back to your Negaspace with your castle and crystals and run down buildings. For an army, I would have assumed they’d want more than child soldiers,” he frowned, a bitterness in his expression.
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Posted: Mon Apr 12, 2021 1:53 am
"Maybe," he answered lamely. Flame eyes cast askance, Faustite smacked a fist against a brick building as he leaned towards it. "You increased the likelihood of it by poisoning me with whatever that was." A stifled cough eked out.
"There's no 'medical attention' for someone like me. The Negaverse doesn't know what to make of their messes. The answer to injury is starseeds and energy." Another sniffle, and he wiped his eye on the back of an embroidered sleeve. "If I have to kill someone to fix this, I will, so stop making excuses and ******** fight me." A pause, then another half-stifled cough that he'd tried holding ******** whatever that was. Tears started to roll now, thin and black and staining his pale face even as he banished them with a sleeve.
But the last thing spoken grated him, goading him beyond irritability. Schörl's singsong voice mocked him from the distance of a memory, and his stomach twisted revoltingly, and through clenched teeth he hissed out his denial. "I'm not a ******** child." His hand raised toward Sessrumnir, splayed, and energy spooled toward him in thin wisps.
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Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2021 7:27 pm
His jaw was clenched together as he watched this pitiful creature. This pitiful boy who had to be younger than even Peter. Was there a way to tell the age of a youma? He knew very little about youma in general - that was Peter’s field of study - but being on fire all of the time couldn’t be a good thing.
Sessrumnir could feel his energy being drained and, against his better judgement, remained standing where he was across from the youma-General, just out of reach. In his current state, Sessrumnir was fairly certain he could end a fight against him rather quickly, and that was without underestimating him. The chemicals from the stormglass really didn’t seem to work with his burning body.
And he wasn’t prepared for the tears… if that was what they could be called.
“Alright, you’re not a child,” he conceded, and hesitantly took a step forward to allow more of his energy to be taken. He had plenty of stamina, and Fenrir as his backup, so he didn’t think he would be caught off guard too quickly, but he still wanted to be cautious.
“If this will help, take what you need. I didn’t mean to poison, just bruise a bit.” Ah, if only this not-child kid who couldn’t stop burning had been more of an immediate threat, then Sessrumnir wouldn’t feel as guilty about hurting him.
And no, he wasn’t going to call him out for being a hypocrite about calling himself a kid but against being called a child.
Sessrumnir drew in a deep breath, as though bracing himself for what he was about to ask.
“Have you ever thought of leaving the Negaverse…? About having the youma half of you removed?”
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Posted: Fri Apr 16, 2021 6:20 am
Soft, half-stifled coughs eked out while patiently drew spools of energy from the stormbound Knight. That he didn't retaliate or deter him was demeaning — the way he acted like Faustite could not be a threat, that he could not destroy this knightly jackass for infantilizing the General. He ground his teeth and pushed for more energy until a coughing fit broke out, and he lost the threads to scatter, and they returned to their rightful owner.
What a mess. Spit came up on his hand, or he assumed it was spit, but there was little to tell the difference in his bodily fluids when they were each as black as the next. He wiped his palm on the front panel of his asymmetric vest.
When he'd recovered, his hand splayed out, and he again called to the strands of life that he could unravel from the Knight's body. Sessrumnir's ensuing question was given a moment of silence, more for the flamewicked General to assure his own concentration before tackling it — loaded as it was.
"You don't know what you're asking." His stained lips bristled into a grimace. What a conversation to spring — like he needed a rescue. "If we're having this conversation, you're getting me food." Chinese food, pizza, he didn't give a damn, but he wasn't putting up with a heavy topic like that unless he got something out of it.
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Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2021 5:51 pm
“Do you carry money with you?” Sessrumnir scowled at the sad looking General. The nerve of this kid, thinking he was going to get him food just for a conversation.
“I hope you exploit everyone and I’m not special,” he grumbled as he opened up his own subspace pocket to pull out some cash that he kept. There was no telling what he might need, so it was always good to keep some around, but he didn’t think it was fair that this brat thought it was completely normal to just demand things.
He could tell this kid to stay put and find a place to power down and get food like a normal person, but he didn’t trust this guy not to teleport as soon as he powered down to find out what his identity was. It’s what he would have done as a Negaverse agent.
“Despite what you think, I do know what I’m asking. If you’re neglected in the Negaverse, if you’re so miserable being like that,” he gestured to the black leaking down the half-youma’s face and his body on fire, “Then why not seek out an alternative?”
But before Sessrumnir dared to turn his back on the youma to start looking for some fast food that was open at this hour, he took a step forward, frowning down at the General.
“Let me make this very clear. I don’t trust you. You obviously don’t trust me because you can’t even give me your name. But no one deserves to be turned into… something that makes them look and probably feel less than human. Even full youma were human once, weren’t they? However. If you do anything to threaten me or anyone else, I will not hesitate in putting you down. If you want to stay in the Negaverse, then I’ll treat you like any agent who has tried to kill me or others in my presence.”
Sessrumnir didn’t care if he was being harsh. He didn’t care if he hurt this young General’s feelings. He had to think about his family, his friends, and the innocents who didn’t deserve to be pulled into this war.
“Now… nameless General. Do you want onion rings or french fries, because that’s going to determine where I’ll get food.”
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