Artoria

lancaster? artoria’s eyes sharpen. thousands of names in idle remembrance and this one— had she heard this one somewhere? what stops her from examining that thought to pieces is the way mari almost appears to glow when she talks about her husband. for a moment there, she’s lost in her own little world. the last thing artoria wants is to be called another man’s wife, but… love is beautiful on the faces of others. she isn’t masochistic enough to sit here and watch it flourish in a pardoned killer. she smiles, polite in excusing her momentary withdrawal with a raise of her glass. “how s

they’re all gone. their hopes aren’t dead but inheritance has distorted them and they are bleeding. they invite new faces to their ranks every floor then more or the same leave, alive but never to be found. it’s nice to decorate oneself as a savior until one has to actually put in the work. artoria agrees, though, that their longstanding imprisonment is a bit of a boring topic for the club. she lets mari interrupt herself without comment. “so it’s not a welcome but a cheers to your return!” she clarifies. mari flusters more at complimenting her than artoria does taking it; her lack o

[UNMASKED] — lvl 54 — white birds. wings spread in flight. she spots them decorating the back half of someone's neckpiece, a long silver-and-gray pearled chain that stops mid-spine, drawing the beholder's eye to the open split of their black shirt. a stray bright light amid the club's prevailing red glow had caught on the birds, she thinks, she forgets, lost in her observation, and it had blinded her for a moment and she had chased the afterimage to its source. they vanish after a glimpse. featureless revelers turn and sway in each others' arms. had they turned around, they wo

reality checks itself as you land. belregor stands, flies even; with a spread of his wings, he takes to the skies. how is he not dead? you are more flight in instinct now. your footwork hammers up dust from sand. in the distance, jomei echoes his surprise as a few other combatants stall, noting a familiar interface tied to their target now absent. you don't look. your dash brings you past the frontliners who, amidst gawking, have forgotten their sole operative: if the boss remains alive, the fight isn't over yet. you jump after belregor, dam

belregor descends. arabelle, halfway to the sky, falls with him. she charges blindly into the dust cloud, disappearing from her team’s view, and belregor’s transformed chain sword winds around her. it misses… without her input. the system’s assist phases her through the interwound segments, as somewhere at the end of the line, jomei takes the attack and deflects it. the black flame pays her comrades no heed. she can’t even name them in the thereafter. she bypasses the coil, furious, and reaches belregor the moment his form starts to shimmer back into visibility. around her, the front

they’re running. running as fast as they can, the ground shaking beneath their feet. belregor had only drawn in the breath of the sea but the imbalance is felt, the land protests and shudders at the weight of the power that is being pointed at it from above. from the safer distance, acanthus is facing both arabelle and night and she’s screaming someone’s name. lessa is sliding down the hill they are climbing, her boots muddied, her face stricken in horror. they are asking nothing of her. so anyone else’s safety bedamned, arabelle only whirls around at the last moment. her eyes widen at th

arabelle blinks the rain out of her eyes. there’s acanthus with team 3, harried and desperate, directing everyone to attack the correct target as cardinal melts off belregor’s disguise. night lunges forward to execute her orders, and glimpsing the girl’s stoic mien in the aftermath of her failure, arabelle feels cold. hollow, then overflowingly hateful. to what, she can no longer tell. the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. arabelle rushes after her teammate, but they misalign each other. night, now withdrawing, jerks

the light fades and so does everyone else. arabelle walks toward her, holding a bright, burning blade. margaret is rooted to the ground. her eyes drop to her empty offhand. she feels nothing — it’s not her — then everything — it’s not her — all at once. an angry, broken sound she can’t name rises up her throat. and she’s running forward to meet the other halfway before the wiser side of her can remind her that she’s here for a purpose. we’ve answered this question before: her devotion is part iconoclasm. it only looks bad, because along margaret’s path of destruction is jom

the walls are unscalable and so high one can only see a strip of floor 25’s ceiling directly above their path. arabelle and yuki’s steps echo, and when they reach a split in the maze, it is shaped like the upper half of an asterisk — six branches in six directions. dim, past the first few meters. arabelle points to a white chalk mark on yuki’s left. “there!” it’s so small that anyone other than arabelle would have struggled to follow the trail itself. they don’t talk this time, either. every moment spent in the maze carries the risk of one or four of its monsters popping up

ARA: Thank you! I’ll wait here. ARA has shared her current location. she doesn’t answer the question right away. the typing indicator flashes once or twice, then vanishes for a longer interval. everything? she settles for something safe. ARA: Senbei. Not the sweet type. not long after, someone is calling out to her from a distance. “hello! it’s been a while.” arabelle raises herself from the ground and wiggles her fingers in a little wave of greeting as yuki approaches. even without the benefit of her memory, the paladin is an eye-catcher. pink hair and cute

arabelle primes her scythe for another swing. another. another. another! until it's dead! until she's cut the head off its neck and the rest of him is in pieces at her— unwilling, she's forced out of the fray. belregor is quite close to person-sized, even restored to his full height, and there are more than a dozen damage dealers trying to land a sword art on him before the turn is up. arabelle restrains herself and hangs her head, impatient. then her mind bends to a sudden curiosity and her focus shifts across her vision until she finds jomei and lessa at the corner of her eye.

this is all new to her. she had just scarcely learned the man's name. "attack dogs? familiars?" even with the question voiced, arabelle can't resist cutting her teeth on it herself. freyd carries them, hayate said, and it is strange to refer to human bodyguards in that way unless she were to consider the uncomfortable alternative. (she will not say a word about the woman on a chain; the frontlines are the saviors! not they.) so they are companions. the system allows one per. there are fringe cases, like herself, but her friends' souls are moored to her house and she would struggle to

pity for the both of them. she meant it as an offering and a slight. the longer of arabelle’s nails click on the table, dissatisfied, as hayate pours his tea first and drinks. the next he breathes, it’s with her name. margaret. somewhere, in some long forgotten archive, the record of that old trial must still exist. when the strongest of them clumsily declared themselves justice, pinning the totality of a crime on its first confessor, they extended to her a feigned mercy in signing it underneath a name she could so easily discard. they didn’t tell her their authority hinged on condem

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13:07 aincrad standard time. three messages drop into yuki's inbox. it's from a contact she has only met once. ARA: Hi. ARA: [b7e9c24f.jpg] ARA: Can you help me kill? ( •̯́ ^ •̯̀) like a frightened wife pointing out pests for their husband to dispose of, the blurry shot of floor 25's maze weaver, front appendages raised and charging at the retreating camera, is meant to speak for itself. as she would tell yuki later, arabelle had been unlucky this time. she is ordinarily a competent boss hunter. but the twists and turns of the maze and her dwindling consumable hoard had formed a