Legion of Light VI (Tales of the Seraphim): Symphonia Destructio

[Wings of Endymion]

Yuka burst into the chamber with Valkyr only moments behind, breathing heavily from the exertion of the sheer number of steps she had just climbed. If she’d had the time to relax, she would have envied the Dwarf, who had barely broken a sweat despite half-carrying, half-dragging Amarie over her shoulder all the way from the depths of the castle. If her mind had not been addled by lack of sleep and food, she might have even found it strange that she herself – with no shortage of confidence in her endurance – had not managed to duplicate the feat.

As soon as she flung herself through the heavy oaken doors, however, her ears were assaulted by an intense cacophony of arguing voices: the entirety of the Winyaurient Council struggling to shout down the single Bladesinger who stood before them to warn them of their impending doom. Nimloth was quite literally roaring at the top of her lungs, mixing her words with enough curses to make a Dwarf proud, in an attempt to get the attention of the bickering elders. It soon became apparent that the councillors were fighting not only Nimloth but amongst themselves as well, as the debate raged on between those who favoured instant decisive action and those who were willing to risk their lives in order to ‘wait and see’.

I… don’t believe this…

Aghast at the chaos and completely taken aback, Yuka found herself unintentionally rooted to the spot. Were these or weren’t these the greatest warriors and councillors in the city, who had seen it through the countless perils it had faced throughout the war so far? What were they doing bickering over points of formality like small children? Surely they were not all so blinkered such as they could not detect the impending darkness that slowly but surely was pressing in upon even her own arcane senses?

“We…!”

The heavy doors swung open once again, this time admitting young Elenwe, followed closely by both Eldalote and Earane, into the chamber. The Sky Knight skidded to a complete halt just in time, almost bowling Yuka over in her eager haste. Surrounded by the loud bickering of her supposed betters, however, her expression quickly turned to the disgusted disdain that only a child could successfully manage.

“We managed to get everybody into the castle,” she repeated, this time in a quiet aside to Yuka and Valkyr. “Nobody believed us at first.”

“But Elenwe managed to convince the Sky Knights…”

“… and there’s no quicker way to get everybody’s attention than by flying overhead on a pegasus.”

The two younger Bards gave Elenwe proud beams; the young Elf positively blushed beneath their praise.

“In which case, ‘at leaves th’ Cooncil…” Valkyr surmised, unceremoniously dumping Amarie into the care of her sisters. The Dwarf exchanged glances with Yuka, unsure whether she had the right to take charge in this situation; the vagaries and intricacies of Elven politics were quite patently the least of her specialties. “Ah dunnae kinn, Yuka… whit dae we dae noo?”

“We ignore them,” Yuka decided in an instant, unable to leash her impatience any longer. Whether the Council agreed or not, there were lives at stake, and she had to act to the best of her judgement to save them. Freed from her hesitation, her eyes darted swiftly about her surroundings, ignoring the bickering elders and the regally robed guards attempting to subdue Nimloth in favour of attempting to spot the key to unleashing the power imbued in the mana crystals. Sliding over faceless marble walls and featureless frescoes, past slender pillars and beyond the intricately carved wooden barricade that separated the councillors from those that sought their audience, she finally settled upon an inconspicuous archway almost hidden in the shadows to the rear of the room, and the first of a spiralling set of stairs that her keen gaze could just about make out through the darkness.

“… don’t tell me…” she murmured, taking a step forwards in hope of a better look. Barely had she placed foot to ground, however, before she came up against the gate in the wooden barricade… and against its guardian, a tall Elf in ridiculously ornate armour tasked with preventing unwanted intrusion into the privacy of the councillors.

“None may enter without the express permission of the Council,” he intoned, barring her path with the haft of his halberd. The steely blue eyes that glared at her from within the depths of his high helm were cold and battle-hardened; the coolly delivered warning, laced with only a hint of the tension that tainted the attempts of his colleagues to restrain Nimloth, was backed by the presence of three more guards who eyed Yuka and her friends with wary hostility. “Do not force me to remove you from this room with force.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, the guard knew deep inside his stomach that they had been a mistake. Yuka had experienced just about enough of bureaucratic protocol, of the pomp and circumstance without any substance that seemed to permeate Winyaurient’s ruling class, to bandy pleasantries any longer.

“Try me,” she challenged, her eyes flashing in anger and daring. Before the guards could react, she darted between them and beyond, unerringly aiming her stride towards the beckoning archway as they floundered in her wake.

[Wings of Endymion]

“Yuka! Watch out!”

With a burst of speed, the young woman avoided the clumsy lunge of the nearest guard and put some distance between herself and her pursuers. Something in the tone of Elenwe's voice told her that the young Sky Knight was not referring to the guards but to elsewhere...

Her jaw set in a thin line of grim determination, she sprinted at full pelt up the spiralling staircase, taking the steps dangerously two and three at a time. Below her, the commotion arose in a cacophonous din that threatened to drown out her hurried tread, guttural Dwarven curses followed by an exaggerated whoop of glee as Valkyr too managed to break through the council cordon. But Yuka's keen gaze was trained skyward, past the glass dome that crowned the topmost chamber of the majestic spire, and upon the growing speck in the sky of cloudless blue... the blotch of black brimstone that threatened to blot out their very existence like so many insignificant mites in the path of the sledgehammer.

Slender chest heaving, she emerged into the serenity of the chamber above, ignoring the thundering thud of Valkyr's heavy boots upon the marble staircase behind her. She concentrated instead on the veils of mystic power that cocooned the sparsely furnished room, lingering tantalisingly in the still air like some artificial aurora. At once, she knew why the secrets contained within had not been exposed to the world over the long aeons of its isolation; her mind was quickly assaulted by multiple waves of arcane willpower not her own, of such a strength that they would have easily overwhelmed those who had journeyed up here out of simple curiosity. Yuka had to steel herself to take even a single step forward, even though her thoughts were entirely focused on reaching the glowing crystalline pedestal that dominated the centre of the room.

Though in reality it was probably no longer than a handful of seconds, her journey seemed to take nothing short of an eternity, wading through the heavy atmosphere that resisted her every step by coalescing in her path. The beckoning whispers in her mind, an incessant multitude of voices that tempted and threatened, coerced and cajoled her away from her goal, were only moments away from driving her completely insane. By the time she had forced her way through, her limbs were trembling with exhaustion, a cold sweat had sprouted upon her brow, and she was completely exhausted by the sheer mental effort.

But now she was faced with a new problem.

What exactly do I do?

There were no clear controls upon the crystal, no obvious mechanism that she could manipulate upon the waist-high device to elicit a response. There was naught but a pair of hand-sized imprints upon the top surface, which glowed coolly when she instinctively slipped her hands into them, but had no other effect.

“Hu... rry...!”

Valky'rs voice from behind her only served to increase her agitation, and her frantic glance to her rear did little to settle the situation. The Dwarf had become entrapped in the same mystic veil that Yuka had fought through mere moments ago and was making no progress whatsoever; her eyes, on the other hand, were entrained in horror upon the skies above, and at the speck of onrushing rock that had engorged itself to a large blob, the flaming path of its descent clearly discernible behind it.

They did not have much time.

Up! Yuka willed, bluntly concentrating the final dregs of her willpower into the tips of her fingers. The flaming shadow above slowly crept across her face, portent of their impending doom that only increased the adrenaline pumping through her veins. To her despair, there was no response from the machinery, not even the vaguest of hints that her urging had any effect.

Up!! she cried again, and this time the crystal glowed very faintly beneath her outspread fingers. But even such a minimal response resulted in a sensation akin to her entire life being sucked from her body; clearly, manipulating such esoteric energies required mental and physical efforts of nigh-titanic scale. Yuka nearly passed out, so drained and faint did she feel, but the calamity hurtling towards her from overhead gave her beleaguered mind enough strength for one last try.

“Up!!” she screamed aloud, straining mightily against the boundaries of her body and mind as her voice echoed hollowly about the chamber. Desperation was written all over her contorted features; her back – and the backs of everybody else within the town – was pinned against the ground with nowhere to urn and only death awaiting them should she fall. White robes billowing from the forces in action, strands of her fine black hair whipping about her face in an unruly manner, it was all she could do to maintain her focus upon the task of evading the onrushing catastrophe.

Her body was lost in a column of bright light that erupted from the floor, the violent flow of energy cutting her off from her surroundings and from Valkyr's frantic bellow of rage. The force of the vertex caused her to close her eyes instinctively, the swirl of power assaulting her from all direction such that she didn't even have the chance to flinch. Floating in a timeless oblivion as apt to tear her apart as to save them all, her agitated mind cycled quickly from panic to desperation to enforced calm.

If we're really meant to do this, I'd much rather go down trying to win than just give up.

The words were Ingwe's but the voice that spoke them now was her own. Cocooned in the midst of the void, it would have been easy to simply give in and let go. After all, the chances of their hare-brained scheme actually succeeding were close to nothing, and her strength was ebbing faster than she could spare.

All these years, I've envied you... In the feverish haze behind her closed eyelids, she remembered the scene from her dream in which her three former classmates had slipped away from her sight, always so strong, always so far ahead of her. Now, by doing this... could I...?

Could she grow just that little bit closer?

“UP!!”

With a sickening, gut-wrenching crescendo of rumbles, the castle tore free of the ground, powered by the relentless hum of mana flowing from the set of crystals embedded deep within its core. Slowly, inexorably, it rose away from the tendrils of darkness that had encircled it for months on end, rising upwards into the high noon sky like some rocky artificial diamond. Still trailing a cascade of loose rock and earth as it gradually gained altitude, the castle spires had barely cleared the clouds when they crossed paths with the spellcast meteor, now irreversibly bound to its fated landing in the remains of the city below.

The rock impacted moments later, with enough percussive force to shatter a million eardrums. The collision sent a massive plume of earth and rubble erupting into the sky, as the ground quaked and shattered mightily below. The shockwave from the explosion buffeted the castle once, twice, and again, knocking everybody from their feet and sending unsecured furniture and ornaments flying. Briefly, the fear that they would all crash and burn swelled amongst the escapees like an uncontrollable tidal wave; then, with visible effort, the castle righted itself once more and settled serenely into position, a skyborne fortress floating in the clouds above the devastation that had been wrought by the massive crater below.

Only then did Yuka Kanamai slump unconscious against the control crystal, drained from her exertions and the effects of her previous wounds. But she did so with an angelic smile of satisfaction and relief engraved upon her features, in the knowledge that for perhaps the first time, she had managed to successfully and positively make a difference to the lives of others.

[Taskmienster]

Legion of Light VI: Commentary where necessary, and as needed. I’ll be working on this for you. Just PM me if you have questions or concerns.

Continuity 7.5

:: The flashbacks, the memories, they were perfectly timed to allow for the reader to get a good idea of who Yuka was. However, I’d suggest a little more, maybe focus a little more on the present path than the past. The goal was clear enough, to escape, but beyond that it was a bit lost amidst the flashes of past memories and present weather.

Setting 8.5

:: Exquisite, to the point of bordering perfection. My only qualm is what I feel like I’m reiterating to death… there’s simply too much setting and not enough of everything else. I feel like it completely envelops your posts, the story, and the attention of the reader.

Pacing 5

:: You tend to write very long, elaborate, and overly flowery sentences. It cuts the pace to a degree because it makes the reader invest more time into following the flow of the sentences and finding where one thought leads to another amidst all the comma’s. I’d suggest trying to throw in some shorter sentences to serve as means of delivering emphasis to the aspects of the narrative that are most important. It will help slow the pace enough for the reader to follow, without completely killing the style of writing you prefer.

Dialogue 8

Action 6

:: The actions that you did were well formed, as if you know the character very well, but are hard to follow with how long the sentences are that I remarked about in the pacing. It’s hard to really get into the action of the character when the setting and narrative are so dominant in the writing, leaving the reader knowing more about the dynamics of a snowflake falling than what the character looking at it is doing.

Persona 6.5

:: [[Another time, perhaps, the dark-haired, alabaster-skinned young woman might have admired the skilful magic that had crafted her foes; for now, she was simply content with sending it a silent curse.]] From post 4 :: Why would you admire something that is trying to kill you and has nearly destroyed everything that Raiaera once was? I’m not really sure what it is that makes you want to admire that, maybe the magic that went into it and your appreciation for complex spells… maybe just because it’s a worth foe? Whatever the case, a little bit of reason behind it would have helped a lot with developing the character a little more.

Technique 8

Mechanics 7.5

Clarity 5.5

:: [[The snowfall seemed to symbolise that Lady Winter herself realised this, and had gathered her powers unto her for one last show of might before she finally relinquished her grip.]] Post 1 :: The way it is worded is confusing, despite making a little sense. I’d suggest taking things like this and reading it out loud to make sure that it makes as much sense out loud as does when you’re writing it.


Wild Card 7


Score: 69.5


Rewards:

Wings :: 3200 exp * 1.5 for it being in the FQ = 4800 exp | 1500 gold * 1.5 for FQ = 2250

[Taskmienster]

Exp and GP added!

Wings levels to 4!