hweb

A look inside the head of an upcoming character of mine, as well as a piece I mostly just felt like doing.
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“I do wish we could go somewhere without any mud for a change,” Fhionne sighed, picking a particularly odious clod of the stuff from a joint in her armor and flicking it distastefully back into the swamp from whence it came.

“I thought plants liked dirt like this? Farmers charged enough for it back home,” said Ogrud Mighty-Thewed, another of the scratch group of fighters assembled in Lion's Arch to track down this most recent menace to paying clientelle. 'Mighty-Thewed', the norn had admitted once when he was drunker than usual, was a name he'd chosen for himself. It certainly fit; the big man's thews were indeed quite mighty. It was too bad, in Fhionne's carefully considered opinion, that so very little of the rest of him was.

“Do I look like a swamp weed to you?” the sylvari woman muttered mournfully. “Mud is mud, it's no more pleasant in my boots than in yours and enough of it will ruin my rifle.”

“But my sister said - ”

“Perhaps you should ask a real live sylvari some of these questions your sister seems so fond of answering for you,” Fhionne interrupted, irritation plain in her voice. “There happens to be one right here, and she's confident she knows more about her own people than your esteemed sister does.” At least, she'd be incredibly depressed if she didn't. Ogrud's sister Olga Sigrunsdottir seemed to be the font from which all of Ogrud's own knowledge had sprung – the phrase “my sister said” slipped from his lips so often Fhionne was half-afraid it'd rub a groove in her ears and she'd never stop hearing it.

The distressingly opinionated norn woman seemed to have an especial fondness for filling her little brother's head with the silliest notions about sylvari. Fhionne had to wonder if the man was so misinformed about the other races of Tyria as well, and was secretly rather glad that there weren't any charr along on this expedition. She couldn't imagine one of the big, aggressive felines putting up with a single day of Ogrud's...slowness...let alone the two weeks of it she'd already swallowed. Really, she'd tried to be understanding and helpful with the big norn, show him where his knowledge was a little deficient, but that was before she'd realized that all his knowledge was deficient.

Ogrud considered Fhionne's advice for a while, during which Fhionne introduced her boots to several more meters of swamp mud. Finally, he responded with, “But...my sister said that -”

“Ogrud!” Fhionne snapped. She drew in a breath with which to scathe the blundering idiot, but stopped short when another voice turned up instead.

“Come off it, Oggy,” said Jayce Heron, human guardian and the expedition's second. “You're wearing on my nerves and you're not even talking to me. I'm surprised our little lily there hasn't shot you yet. Your sister Olga's no doubt a fine lady, but in this case I have to agree with Fhionne – she might want to recheck her sources where sylvari are concerned.”

The norn scowled fiercely, muscling his way towards the front of the expedition group, muttering imprecations the entire way. Fhionne glared after his retreating back for a moment, then glanced over at the fair-haired human. “Thank you, Jayce, Though I must ask...'our little lily'?” she said, a gleam of amusement in her eyes.

“You did introduce yourself to us as Fhionne Dragonlily,” Jayce reminded her, an answering smile on his own face. “Unusual, really – you're the first sylvari I've met with a surname.”

“It was something the Pale Tree said to me when I was Dreaming,” Fhionne explained, falling into step next to the guardian. “I was – am – quite, ahh...direct by my folk's standards. Forthright and aggressive, eager to fix problems. She called me her little dragon-lily. My name is Fhionne, but I decided that if folk from every other race can have more than one name, why not me as well? Hehehe, it gets me funny looks back home in the Grove, but I like the way it tastes when I say it.”

Jayce nodded in agreement. “I envy your people sometimes, you know that?” he said.

Fhionne looked up at him in surprise. “Why would you envy us?” she asked.

“Your people are new...fresh and young,” Jayce said, a wistful note in his voice. “You don't have a history yet, your stories are all yet to be told. No ancient wars twisting your past, no legacy of isolationism or xenophobia. You've got a chance to learn from all the stupid mistakes the rest of us have made...and there are times where I'd give everything I had for my own folk to get that chance just once.”

Fhionne was quiet for a moment, deep in thought as she considered Jayce's words.

“It is a great and terrible responsibility,” she finally responded. “We are the forerunners of our race...the heralds for what is to come. All that potential you speak of is in our hands, and we can make of it a great gift for those yet to come...or a bitter curse. Your people's path is known to you, well-worn and familiar, but our own is an uncut tangle, thick and obscure. A single misstep now, a single one of those stupid mistakes you mentioned, and we could cut the start of a path to somewhere none of us would ever wish to go. It is...frightening. Will the sylvari born a century from now praise us for our wisdom and boldness, or will they revile us for the mistakes we never knew we were making? To be honest...there are times when I wonder if it wouldn't be better to've been born much later, after our race has had time to find its course and settle on the way.”

It was Jayce's turn to fall silent for a time, contemplating Fhionne's words. “I suppose the grass really is always greener,” he commented, staring idly at nothing. Fhionne's eyes, on the other hand, narrowed sharply.

“If that is another bad joke inspired by Ogrud's bizarre notions...” she said warningly. Jayce only laughed.

“No no, it's just a saying my folk have. It means...”

Self-assigned, no word limit. Something to prepare for upcoming games.
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I used to have a meditation room for things like this, back in my manor. I do believe I prefer this, though. It's unusual to think that you're as safe out here in the wilderness as you are back at your home. That would...mmm, not be the case where I matured.

“I wouldn't exactly call this wilderness,” Belle responded wryly to the voice in her head, “but it is a nice park. And frankly, your home dimension sucked goats. I suppose that should be expected from a place that openly acknowledges itself as 'Hell', though. Hell is not usually a tourist hotspot. Well...not a voluntary one at least. I imagine it gets tourists, and they get plenty hot.”

Dragonfly gave a wicked chuckle, as well as the mental sensation Belle had come to associate with the physical gesture of shaking a finger. Ah ah, Belle. You know better than that.

“Doesn't mean I can't snark.”

I'm coming to believe that nothing does.

Belle grinned and let her automatic response die unspoken. Dragonfly could sense it anyways, and they had come out here to try and get some work done. The well of power that had been Mistress Dragonfly's and was now Belle's was there – Dragonfly had shown Belle how to find it, how to feel it within her, but the rest was proving difficult.

You have to forge your own connections with the power, Dragonfly had told her. It's the same power I used, but you are not me. You don't fight like I did, you don't think like I do, and you won't use this power of ours the same way I did. You can't even touch it the same way I did – you don't have the paths and channels I forged to draw on it. I can show you where it is, and I can teach you how to make those connections and what you might do with them, but until you can draw on that energy through your own channels, rather than the shadows of mine, you'll always struggle with it.

And apparently the way Aris devils made those connections, at least before they learned their Names and could really come to grips with themselves, was to meditate somewhere safe, secure, and free of both distraction and threat and sort of...stare intently at the energy until it did something. That was a terrible way to describe it, but Belle didn't even begin to have the words to describe the sort of dreamlike, semi-lucid hyperfocus Dragonfly had shown her would be necessary to create the mental and spiritual channels and connections she would need. It would be difficult – Aris devils who made it this far usually had several years' training in the meditative techniques needed and had established at least some basic connections with their abilities first. But Belle had the advantage of prior experience, in a way, and secondhand knowledge of just what sort of power she was trying to connect to, if not how she would go about using it.

And at least she didn't have to worry about establishing a secure fortress before trancing herself so that she didn't get attacked and killed while she was vulnerable. Really, Dragonfly's home dimension had been just a shitty place to grow up.

So Belle had taken some time off from Rana's classes and hiked herself to Miteyose Park, two hour's bus ride away from Central and a half-hour's hike away from the bus stop on top of that. She had a small pack of field supplies, enough food for about three days and a purifier canteen Sara had let her borrow for the trip. She had to get a grip on this; trying to tap Dragonfly's power directly, beyond the trickles of it that flowed through her body naturally, was intensely difficult and tended to cause her nasty headaches. Even then, she couldn't do it well; when she could call up Dragonfly's power she could rarely do much with it beyond radiating it uncontrollably, which didn't last past Rana clamping down spell-dampers on her and smacking her soundly across the mouth. Trying to take on this Advanced Course Hell that dear old sensei kept threatening with nothing more than her hammer and some minor improvements in her physical conditioning wasn't an option.

“So...what do you think of this spot, huh?” Belle asked. She was at the edge of a clearing in the woods, along the edge of one of the cliffs than ran alongside the Miteyose River. The clearing was centered on the large boulder which had caused it in the first place, warmed under the sun and with a clear view of the forests around and beneath it.

As good as we're likely to find, Dragonfly agreed. Let us set up camp and commence. There is much to do and little time to do it in.

Nobody: A thousand words of Indiana Jones Adventure. Remember, buddy – you asked for it :p
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The Cult of the Golden Bars protected its treasures well. The Temple of the Crystal Courtesan resided at the center of a lake of fire, within the caldera of the active volcano locals called Mount Boom. Nearly a full kilometer high, Mount Boom was a massive, broken fortress of basaltic rock, almost entirely unscalable. Only a single path provided any realistic means of traveling up the mountain, and it was buried deep in the Jungle of Trials. The jungle stretched up nearly the full breadth of Mount Boom's slopes, harboring toxic plants, vicious fauna, and the long-hidden village of the savage, cannibalistic tribals known as the Fire People. All who attempted to brave the volcano's challenges vanished, never heard from again. Entire expeditions had been lost without a trace within the all-consuming Jungle of Trials, swallowed up for their hubris in seeking to plunder the Cult's riches.

Cee, of course, skipped the whole damned thing. Why the hell should she put up with all of that mess when all she wanted was the fuckin' TREASURE?! She'd just flown up to the rim of the caldera, leaving the Jungle of Trials and its myriad dire threats impotently behind her.

Next, of course, was the trek across the Sea of Flames, the massive pool of fire and lava which ringed the stone outcropping on which the Temple crouched. A single tortured stone bridge gave access to the temple; riddled with breaks, hidden weaknesses, and cleverly disguised traps, the bridge's best defense was nevertheless none of those. Its best defense was the relentless, fatally overwhelming heat that radiated from the Sea of Flames. No living thing without the protections of the Cult of the Golden Bars and their Courtesan-blessed magics could withstand the inferno that surrounded the Temple. Charred remains scattered across the bridge attested the final resting places of those few hardy souls who'd managed to win their way through the Jungle of Trials, only to be clawed down by this new, fresh Hell.

Cee...of course...wasn't a living thing. Not as the Cult knew it, anyways. It was hot, sure, but still well within her operating temperatures. A little frost ether flowing through her Ceramite-X, a little more spliced into her Ether Field to keep her protoskin from burning off in the heat, and she strolled across the bridge just fine. Powerful sensors easily discerned the locations of both hidden weaknesses and hidden traps, and jumps that had claimed their share of lives held no danger to someone who could frickin' fly. She just walked on across like she was strolling down goddamned Main Street, totally ignoring the insufferable heat and treacherous nature of the Sea of Flames.

That left only the Temple of the Crystal Courtesan itself, and a formidable fortress it was. Built on a massive scale to resist the immense heat of the Sea of Flames, the Temple was home to the Cult of the Golden Bars. Each and every cultist was utterly mad, driven by unbearably intense religious fervor and willing...eager...desperate to give their lives in defense of their Goddess' greatest treasure. They felt no pain, needed neither rest nor food, knew the Temple's every nook and cranny, and each of them bore a golden dagger coated with one of the most powerful paralytic concoctions in the world. A single nick, the tiniest trace of the poison in a man's blood, would seize up his muscles in seconds, afflicting him with agonizing cramps, pulling his every muscle tighter and tighter and tighter...until his heart crushed itself within his chest from the unnatural contraction. Only a single cultist needed to make a single, tiny cut for any intruder to die in torment...and there were over a hundred cultists.

Not that Cee gave a shit. Their toxin was useless against her, their golden blades bending, deforming and breaking against her sub-dermal armor. After the first dozen or so, she didn't even bother to retaliate – she just wandered through the temple, looking for the Treasure Chamber while screaming, frothing-mouthed cultists dashed themselves hopelessly against her armor. It wasn't even fair - those cultists who abandoned their daggers and tried to grapple her only got thrown into walls, and the rest were just kicked out of her way with no more fanfare than if they'd been sacks of potatoes, or beer cans, or fiscal conservatives.

Finally, Cee stood in the massive amphitheater surrounding the High Altar, and there it was – she could see it clear as day. The relic was about eighteen inches high, two fat discs of obsidian forming the roof and floor of a circular cage made up of...well...golden bars. Within the bars, clinging to them with a look of either crazed desperation or one hell of an orgasm on her face, was the Crystal Courtesan herself. She was naked, sculpted as every man's ideal fantasy, with a huge rack and some child-bearing hips connected by a disturbingly tiny wasp waist in an hourglass figure. No, seriously – the Crystal Courtesan was an hourglass, with blood-red sand stored in bulbous hollows inside her considerable bust and equally imposing hips and thighs, trickling through a narrow channel in her waist.

And standing there next to the icon of his Goddess was the High Priest himself, a man in fiery red robes and a huge, ornate mask, bearing a golden staff topped with dozens of charms hung from a woman's skull. He smiled a fierce, ugly smile, leveled the staff, and discharged its blessed magic, the killing bolt that would strip the soul from any living thing and transform it into simply one more mote of red sand within the voluptuous body of the Crystal Courtesan.

Cee blinked as the bolt hit her...then looked up at the High Priest and sneered.

“What, that's all you got? Shit, and this was supposed to be hard.”

The pale-skinned, khaki-clad android strolled up the steps to the Altar of the Crystal Courtesan, ignoring the dumbfounded High Priest as she snatched the relic off its sacred pedestal, examining it curiously. Hell of a thing, this Crystal Hussy here. Lots of ethereal power, just like the legends had all said – it'd have to, given how many trapped souls it contained – but it had barely a quarter of the output of her own Fire of Order, when all was said and done.

“Tch. Disappointing,” Cee muttered, eying the idol with a mildly offended look in her eyes...even as a deep, ominous rumbling sound shook the Temple.

“You will not live to profit from your blasphemy, thief!” the High priest screeched as an absolutely enormous round boulder, at least fifteen tons in weight, crashed through a false wall and rolled swiftly towards Cee, triggered by a simple pressure plate beneath the Courtesan. The High priest would die, too...but it was worth it to see this invader's life snuffed out by the Goddess' final gambit.

...or so he thought, up until Cee drew Gunsmoke with her left hand and fired a single shot at the boulder, blowing it to dust with a blast of explosive ether.

The High priest sank to his knees, wailing in despair. “What are you?! A demon?! A black goddess come to defile Her holy resting place?!”

Cee smirked, a nasty, malignant grin creasing her lips as she swung the barrel of her revolver level with the man's forehead.

Leaning over and giving the Crystal Courtesan an irreverent peck on her strained-looking mineral cheek, Cee said to the man, “Demon...goddess...I'm the bitch with the gun.”

BANG!

Everyone else thought she was crazy when she went out and did this. 'Course, everyone else wasn't a Stormcrow.

The summer thunderstorm wasn't really all that hot by the standards of storms – a good brisk blow, but it wasn't going to wreck houses. It was, however, just about perfect for a bit of stormriding. Alexis Nightshade-Pierce was out just beneath the storm, riding the chaotic currents of the winds in her full Stormcrow form. A great bird, seeming halfway between corvid and raptor to onlookers, just over six feet long from tailtip to the point of her mage-steel beak and with a wingspan nearly double that, Alexis was only distinguishable from the stormclouds themselves by the brightly glowing, interlocking glyphs of electric teal power which formed her ethereal skin.

She didn't fly – flying implied that she was the one deciding where she went. Instead, she just let her wings catch and spill the air as they would, tumbling her about in a gloriously carefree waltz. She danced with the sky, allowing the wild winds to take the lead and show her where to go, where to be, and all the while she drank of the storm's primal fury and intoxicating power. It was easy for others to forget what she was when she was down below, wearing her human form, but this was as much a part of her as her arms and legs, as much a part of her as her love of ice cream or her perpetual need to poke fun at everyone in sight. She was a Stormcrow, an elemental being of the storm, a child of the sky, and she was never quite as at home as she was when she was soaring on the winds of a storm.

There were times she wished like Hell that she could share this feeling with Vex, share the sensual, deeply fulfilling delight she felt up here with her wings slicing the winds of the storm...but those times weren't when she was stormriding. Up here, there wasn't room for anything but her and the storm. Up here, she and it communed with each other, greeting each other warmly and sharing a hearty conversation in the howling of winds and the booming of thunder. The storm's life was brief, heartbreakingly brief to one who could hear its voice as Alexis could, but it had no regrets. How could it, when it was a thing of such inspiring majesty?

Too soon...always too soon...Alexis began to stray too far from the house she shared with Vex. She reluctantly turned away, leaving the storm to its brief celebration of the elements and flying back home. She transformed along the way – Vex had an extremely strict rule where her Stormcrow form and indoors spaces were concerned – and reminded herself, as she did after every time she went stormriding, that this was how things had always been.

This was a part of who and what she was.