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  1. #11
    The Thayne Tantalus

    EXP: 106,923, Level: 14
    Level completed: 20%, EXP required for next Level: 12,077
    Level completed: 20%,
    EXP required for next Level: 12,077


    Duffy's Avatar

    GP
    652

    Name
    Lysander Anall
    Age
    Unknown
    Race
    Thayne
    Gender
    Male
    Location
    Corone

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    Lysander & Duffy

    Consequences. The word rung in Lysander’s skull like wedding bells and a death toll combined. Happiness and disaster had followed him through the ages. Now, they stood either side of him before the pride of ill will that had assailed him through every one of his lives.

    “He’s bigger than I expected.” Young Duffy sized up the titan on the horizon. “Sure you’re up to this?”

    “If you think I brought you here to be a spectator, Duffy, you are more of a fool than I remember.” Lysander too took in what he saw. Death. Wrath. Ruin. Marching towards them with earth sundering steps.

    “Oh, mate, you can count on me. But you said Apotheosis was an elf.” Duffy gestured to the creature ahead. “That isn’t no elf.”

    When Leopold had told him of the future he saw, Lysander had felt fear. The primal sort that overruled all conscience and intellect. He knew, the moment he heard, that he had to do everything he could to alter fate. He had failed so many times, and people, people he loved dearly had paid the price for his hubris. No amount of metaphor or pathetic fallacy could steal away the sincerity and sobriety he now felt.

    “If we’re to protect those who would have died in the future supposedly decided for us, we have to overcome this.” Lysander unsheathed his blade, the black hilted katana comfort in his shaking hand.

    “Fair enough. I’ve got your back.” Young Duffy, naive, or perhaps fearless, mimicked his older self and unleashed his shorter, but no less deadly Tooth and Nail. “But if he shoots fire or some shit, I’m out of here.”

    Appreciative of the humour, Lysander weighed up his options. Ahead, looming a hundred foot over the icy tundra of Berevar, was a monster. Trapped beneath the earth for centuries, Apotheosis had wallowed in a whirlwind of power unseen on this world for millennia. To circumvent fate, Lysander had done the very thing the last of the Forgotten Ones had set out to do. Kill the last of the Old Thayne.

    “Our power comes not from that which was given to us, false promise to keep us loyal.” He clenched the blade tightly and raised it into a defensive stance. “Our power comes from the very thing that monster abhors.”

    “Awkwardly timed metaphors?” Duffy peered out from under his hood, sarcasm dripping from his tongue. “Or pitiful puns?”

    Lysander smirked.

    “No. Our power comes from and will always come from our friends.” Lysander called out with his heart to the last light within. Though he had plunged Wainwright’s blade into his heart and shattered his bond to the Tap, something else dwelt within him that was far greater.

    “Wait. I thought that was the Aria?” Duffy shed his pithy expression and led shadows of doubt age him in the twilight.

    “It is. But the Aria is not the Tap. They occupy the same space, just as you and I exist in the same time. But the Aria is our will – as friends, family, and bards, given life. We made that realm together, and it has become something far greater than can be defined by gods or planes.”

    “But if the Aria is still there, and we are no longer part of it…”

    “You’re not listening.” Lysander pointed his blade at Apotheosis’s chest. A vibrant rune burnt on the creature’s torso, which Lysander had carved in the Forgotten One’s withered corpse to ignite the soul trapped within. “We have lost our divinity. Lost the gift of eternal life. But our bond to the thing which defines us is stronger than ever.”

    Now that their enemy was closer, the duo could see the cruel features aflame on the umbral and skeletal frame. They could feel the malice washing over them, threatening to boil the air where they stood. Dormant for centuries, the Forgotten One was rekindling the bond it once held so dear with the Tap; invigorated by it is new and blossoming life in Althanas.

    “You’re saying we can die, but we’ll damned well die singing.”

    Remembering when he and Duffy were one, he smiled from ear to ear.

    “As far as the Orrery is concerned, we are already dead. But if I have taught you nothing bar this, I have done wonders: the mortal frame will wax and wane and crumble. What remains to make us immortal?” Lysander drew on his heart’s desire and channelled it to his blade. He prepared a song to bring the sword to life.

    For the first time since his rude rebirth, Duffy finally understood what it was he was destined for. Lysander's insistence on ending their immortality had brought them the one thing they were now short of: time.

    “Our songs. Our words. Our actions.” He clashed the daggers together and the snow beneath him shook thunderously. “It’s time for a swan song!”

    Together the duo charged across the snow, something more dangerous and divine stirring in the pit of their stomachs than the gods could ever muster: the First Song.

  2. #12
    The Thayne Tantalus

    EXP: 106,923, Level: 14
    Level completed: 20%, EXP required for next Level: 12,077
    Level completed: 20%,
    EXP required for next Level: 12,077


    Duffy's Avatar

    GP
    652

    Name
    Lysander Anall
    Age
    Unknown
    Race
    Thayne
    Gender
    Male
    Location
    Corone

    View Profile
    Try as they might, they could not muster enough momentum to resist Apotheosis’ opening blow. The great arms descended in balled fists and broke the tundra asunder. Catapulted into the air, the duo flailed amidst a hailstorm that began to whirl around the titan. Lysander clicked his fingers and conjured a grappling hook. He caught it as he began to descend and whorled it over his head.

    “Aim for the head!” Young Duffy screamed, oblivious to the very real prospect of crashing to a painful death.

    Lysander threw the hook towards the titan’s chest. He loosened every muscle in his body for the impending jolt. The grappling hook chinked against the titan’s hide and skittered off, catching an edge just as Lysander started to roar with anger. Realising how lucky he was, the roar turned to a scream as he slammed to a halt mid-air and begun the nauseating swung down and through the titan’s legs.

    “Aim for me!” Duffy pleaded, already falling and suddenly aware of his mortality. He flailed outwards to try and right himself, but the roar of the tundra’s snowstorm drowned away his protests.

    Time seemed to stop. Regret came first, then hopelessness, then terror.

    “Done!”

    Lysander ploughed into Duffy and scooped him up, his swing carrying them both upwards and into clear view of the titan cleaving his fists from the broken earth. They hung for a few, clarion seconds. Their minds still twinned; they came to the same conclusion.

    “Arden Janelle wouldn’t shit himself at this.”

    Together, they vanished in a whorl of ribbons and re-appeared ten feet closer to the titan. They circumvented the rising fists and scattering boulders of ice with the guile of the Silent Swordsman summoned to their bodies through the Aria. Just as Lysander said, they had a power no god could muster: their friends.

    “I still might!” Duffy vanished as the fist drew through where he was, spinning him mid-blink so that he re-appeared disoriented and off-course. “Definitely will!”

    The young bard slammed downward onto the titan’s shoulder; the wind crushed from his lungs with the same force as the wit fell from his tongue. Lysander fared better, a third blink bringing him three feet away from the glowing rune on the titan’s chest. Duffy managed to scratch and scrape enough to gain a foothold, but Lysander’s broiling song came out of his lungs with thunderous force. He drew back his blade and drove it into the rune.

    “Our lives are always intertwined. Our hearts are all as one. Our dreams will never die because, our family’s never gone.”

    The words that had given birth to the bridge of ideas that connected worlds gave destructive force to the katana. Its broke hide of night and malice lost blood of power and promise. Arced bolts of crackling light shot skyward. Apotheosis arced back in pain, arms bent, and eyes hollow. Duffy felt hopeless turn to hope. Lysander felt the recoil of his actions rock his arm: the katana flew away, repulsed by the swell of power which erupted from the titan.

    The icy heart of Berevar, for a moment, was illuminated by the radiance of a high summer sun. The orb that formed crushed the bed rock beneath the ice and sent quakes out across the wilderness. Their fortunes turned, the duo was sent haphazard out into the night air once again flailing in a storm of swords and profanity.

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