Lup (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
necromanswers) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
faesphere2019-01-20 11:03 pm
necromanswers) wrote in faesphere2019-01-20 11:03 pm
Calibrations Text References
Just a place for dumping calibration info/writeups w/ included HTML.
UPDATE: also for storing memories for Hugtopia Memory share, for Lup and Noctis.
UPDATE: also for storing memories for Hugtopia Memory share, for Lup and Noctis.
Mikleo
toplevel
Mikleo is sitting by the bed, cross-legged, flipping through an old notebook. A beautiful feathered staff rests against the wall nearby. Visitors to his calibration room from a prior year, if they remember, might notice a change: where once his items were located on a table in front of him to be examined, instead they're arranged in a more organized fashion on a set of shelves lining one of the walls, carefully compartmentalized like items in a museum exhibit. Remembered, but... distant, now. Glass doors hide them, but they're not locked, so visitors will find easy access. Within the glass are a set of objects:
-a daisy chain of dried flowers
-an old, weathered smoking pipe
-a golden circlet with an emerald center, covered in dried blood
-a huge, gnarled and snapped-off dragon’s horn
-a feathered earring
-an orange feather tied up in leather cord
Friends might also be drawn to a particular ancient book on the shelf, hidden amongst a set of other, less noteworthy titles.
Mikleo looks up when visitors get close enough, lips pursing- not displeased, but mostly unsure.]
Oh, it's you.
(( ooc: more details on all of Mikleo's options found here if you want to know what you're getting into! ))
circlet
A charred, barren field opens up around them, where a blue-scaled dragon lies bound and wounded, screaming in pain and rage as it slowly suffocates in a pool of blood.
Zaveid and Dezel, working together to end the beast's suffering, chain over chain to hold it down.
Sorey, rushing down a hill and getting between all of them, rejecting the efforts of anyone else to stop him, or to hold him back. He's shouting, crying, desperate.
"It was supposed to be me-! I’m the human!"
"He just can’t die alone. Not Mikleo."
The ghost of a ruined soul hovers above the dragon, begging for salvation, for death, slowly falling to pieces.
kill me, KILL ME
The gentle touch of a human hand on broken scales, green eyes gazing into a single violet slit as big as a dinner plate. Stroking, soothing, as a monster breathes its last.
"It's over now, I'm here. You can rest if you want."
The end, at last.
it's okay.
you'll be okay.
thank you.
And just like that it's gone.]
pipe
"Does he never cry at all? I've never seen a child so quiet and serious," A kind-faced young woman murmurs, holding a stone mug into a fire. The flames part around her hands and focus on the base of the mug, warming the milk within.
An old man sits and smokes his pipe at her side, calm as can be despite the noise around them. "Oh, he cries alright. Just not when the babe is watching. Just let him be."
You pay them no mind. Instead you watch the wailing baby swaddled up in layers of cloth in the floor bed in front of you. You lean in, touching his cheek, holding his hand. Your fingers move to cover his mouth and he pauses to suckle instead.
"Stop," you whisper. It's a little annoying, but you don't leave his side. You know why he's crying, and you want to tell the others but your mind doesn't know the words for it yet.
(it's because they haven't given him a name. if you didn't know who you were, wouldn't you cry, too?)
The woman arrives with a cup and a cloth, soaking the warm milk into a corner and giving it to the infant instead. You are pulled, gently, into the lap of the old man, the pipe in his mouth with barely a wisp of smoke left inside. He rests a hand on your head.
"It's alright, Mikleo," he tells you with an understanding smile, "We'll find it soon."
You feel a little better, as the baby stops crying and the old man strokes your hair. He always knows.
"Gramps... Gramps, let me try it!"
"You won't like it, Mikleo."
You pout, as best as you can, cheeks puffed and tiny fists clenched. Sorey's been coaching you- he's always been the best at pouting, as he's younger and more genuine with his expressions, but you're getting better. "Let! Me! Please!"
Gramps is rarely affected by this, by neither you nor Sorey, but he relents this time, and lowers his hand to let you take in a puff from his pipe, eager and itching with curiosity. Regret floods into you as the smoke does, and you cough, and cough, and cough. Gramps laughs, not unkindly, and pats your back while you struggle to clear your lungs. What a foul thing that pipe is!
"I told you, you fool," he mutters, giving your head a solid thwack with the pipe and returning it back to his mouth. "Next time maybe you'll heed my warnings."
You doubt it, but you do at least hope that Sorey will heed your warning about the pipe. Their grandfather really must be the strongest person in the whole world.
Sorey has been growing like the grass lately, all gangly limbs too big and awkward for the rest of him, his voice taking odd tones and faltering in embarrassing ways, so he's taken to hiding in the forest a lot. you go hunting for him sometimes, but other times it's best to let him sulk and come back. You've always been better at the waiting game than Sorey.
Gramps calls it puberty, a human thing; you call it annoying and wish it would stop. Why can't humans just be who they're meant to be without a fuss? It works fine for seraphim.
"What is it, Gramps?" you call out as you enter his house, summoned at Kyme's request, likely for loitering about the gate to tease Sorey when he returns. Your voice has changed too, with far more ease. When his began to change, and Gramps told you it was a matter of becoming an adult, you decided that you needed a new voice, too. That's just how it goes.
(Sorey sulked more than usual that day, and you didn't understand why it mattered so much, but there wasn't really any going back. you like your voice now.)
"There are things I need to tell you, Mikleo, that must remain between us," Gramps answers, gesturing you closer. A map is sprawled out on the floor in front of him, one different from the little sketches inside the Celestial Record; it looks older, dated yet more detailed than any you've ever seen. At once you are delighted, but concerned. Why not Sorey?
The question is in your eyes and Gramps tugs you in and touches your hair; the gesture is comforting and stern at the same time. "The outside world is a place that Sorey, inevitably, will leave to explore for himself. He will see and experience things firsthand as a human should- with his own eyes. I shan't sully that with what I know. But you... you must be his guide, Mikleo. I will teach you everything, so that when he goes, you'll know how to protect him from the evils of that world."
To guide and protect Sorey... it's what you've been doing your whole life, anyway, so this is nothing new. It feels deceptive, yet exciting, and after a moment's thought, you nod. Gramps is trusting you with this- you, above all the others, are Sorey's irreplaceable comrade. Who better to lead him safely through the world of humans than you?
Gramps isn't surprised. He smiles and lights his pipe, rests a hand on your shoulder, and begins the first lesson. When Sorey finds out, he'll be so surprised.
He's laughing at you. He's been laughing at you all along. Heldalf sneers and lifts his hand, and in the center of his palm is the screaming face of Zenrus, the very seraph you'd been searching for since leaving Elysia. Gramps. He's absorbed Gramps, as surely as he absorbed Maotelus years before. Malevolence pools around him dangerously, and to the very core you want to flee the field, hide within the safety of your vessel, but you've come too far, and there's no turning back. Now you have to save Gramps, too.
You watch Heldalf turn Gramps' lightning on Sorey, you hear him scream, and in desperation you beg Lailah for aid. Surely, surely, if the purification is complete, Zenrus will be saved. You hope and hope and plead but she won't answer, and that itself is answer enough.
"Do you feel it?" Heldalf mocks them, as the voice of Gramps cries out from his hand, as the lightning crackles once more. "The pain of hurting one's beloved children? Go on, save him, if you can."
You fight on, dodging the lightning, healing the others, struggling with every arte as he laughs and cajoles all of you. Use your weapon, he urges. Free him. But you know you can't. You have four bullets to fire and every one is crucial to sever the ties between him and Maotelus, to save Glenwood, to save the world. They can't spare a single shot. Not even for this. Not even for Gramps. You ache to volunteer, but you hold your tongue. Conviction has carried you this far. If you die, let it be for something greater than your own selfish love.
Rose charges to try and kill Heldalf, but you stop her, and then the lightning finishes the job when you falter. And then- and then, Sorey steps forward instead.
You don't try to stop Sorey.
"This... this is something that I have to do myself! Stand back, everyone!"
He moves to attack, and you tell yourself to stop crying, to get up off your knees and face this. "I won't let you carry this by yourself," you tell him. The burden of this decision belongs to you both. If saving him isn't an option, then at least... at least let him die by the hand of those who love him.
Both of them, together.
Sorey calls your true name (luzrov rulay, a song in your soul that calls and calls and pulls you in) and you converge together as one, Sorey's body with both minds co-mingling, only a singular goal set in crystalline focus. You nock an arrow to fire, charging, energy flaring around you with a power and strength never felt before.
You don't falter this time. You don't stop.
Are you sure?
Are you?
You are. And when the blade of your bow strikes Heldalf's hand, you feel that old, steady presence wrap around you one last time, as he's purified, freed, killed. He's gone, gone forever, and all you can do is scream and cry through your pain.
The fight isn't over, but oh, oh, you wish it was.
staff
With his last breath, with the sacrificed blood upon the altar, he curses a man named Heldalf-
"Oh ye who brought us this misfortune... I grant thee eternal solitude! Heldalf... live now and forever in a hell of your own making."]
daisy chain
A young Mikleo sitting in the grass, quietly humming fragments of a particular tune. Sorey of a similar age rushing over with a sloshing bucket in hand. The air smells fresh and clean, the wind blowing across the mountain; there's a protective domain of Zenrus permeating through the whole area that neither notice because it's all they've ever known, but any observer might feel it, that quiet sense of peace, safety, something spiritual and holy.
The two bicker lightly and pointlessly, as they always have and always will. Sorey leans in, eager and excited, as Mikleo parts his bangs to reveal his circlet, just barely big enough now for it to fit on him properly.
"How come you get one and I don't?"
"Dummy, it's because it was on me when Gramps found us."
"I know that. I was just wondering."
"You're jealous of my treasure."
The children argue, then wrestle together, tickling and laughing until Mikleo surrenders.
"Here, close your eyes. ...Don't look at me like that, just for a minute!"
And then the soft rustle of grass and flowers against hair as Mikleo sets a woven crown on Sorey's head, a treasure of his very own.
"Thank you, thank you, Mikleo! It'll be my treasure, too!"
"...W-well... it better be... I worked hard on it, you know."]
dragon horn
"Why are you here, Mikleo?! Go away!"
"You know why. Why are you!?"
"You were right all along, mortals, humans, we're just- we're all just rotten. I thought we could be better but I was wrong."
"Sorey. Please. Come back... come back, so we can handle this together."
"How many mistakes? How many, huh? These mistakes are lives lost, and dreams shattered and- these aren't just mistakes!"
They begin to fight, wrestling inelegantly in the storm, Sorey's sword against Mikleo's staff. A third person enters the fray, blocking Mikleo from Sorey's attacks- a silver-and-green haired man in dark clothes and a hat. His voice rings out over the wind, shoving Sorey back, on the defense. He's hunched over, struggling just as much in the swelling darkness.
"If you really hate what you're doing-- then stop doing it!"
At last Zaveid joints them, standing with Dezel and Mikleo, all three facing off against Sorey. Despite the numbers, they have the look of people fighting a battle they've already lost. The dark, choking mist surrounding the area is weighing on them so heavily they can barely stand.
"You know we're here too, with you. We just want to help. All you need to do is come back."
There's a moment, almost like a held breath shared amongst all four of them. The briefest of instances where it seems, somehow, that this can end here, without another fight, without loss, without more pain. There's a plea in the howling wind, an aching feeling.
no, no, no
don't give up
I need you
please come back
Suddenly the darkness swallows Sorey whole, and the wisps of it abruptly blast outwards like a shockwave that nearly bowls them over. Fighting against it, Mikleo somehow rises to his feet, facing off against the devouring cloud. He screams, his voice barely audible over the wind.
"Get out of here!! Dezel-- break the pact!!"
And then he's running, running as fast as his legs will carry him. He runs straight into the shadows, and the whole world goes dark again. There is pain. There is screaming. There is an eerie crackling of bones breaking, growing, reshaping themselves.
There is a whisper, dark and cold in the wind--
filk
luzrov rulay
mine--
And the darkness parts like a curtain, revealing Sorey once more: cold, empty-eyed, affectionately petting the iridescent blue scales of a dragon.
"You're my one and only," he whispers. "I love you."
Mikleo's gone.]