Calibrations Text References

[necromanswers]

Just a place for dumping calibration info/writeups w/ included HTML.

UPDATE: also for storing memories for Hugtopia Memory share, for Lup and Noctis.

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pipe

[tsunergy]

"Where’s Gramps?"

"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... everyone... please be safe."

"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.



"If everyone else was safe, Gramps must be too!"

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.


"Walk the path you believe in and live your life to the fullest, and I know you will not go astray."

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.


"Sorey, Mikleo... well done."