Alkor

He pondered for a moment over the conversation. The way she saw the world, right down to her admission that murder was such a casual topic of thought. Alkor's sunset gaze remained stoic, locked on the moonrise and undaunted by the prospect of his own mortality. He had faced death before. He had taken life. He had all but slept the corpse's sleep. The chill that followed Setsuna was a familiar cold. A frightening cold, at least to those who were not used to it. The ashen taste in his mouth and the heat that still smoldered in his lungs offered no comfort. Alkor withstood it in other ways.

What happens when I do? A million or more questions across a million more lifetimes in a single sentence fell from her lips. The future was something people sought solace about even in reality. They paid psychics to divine it, pouring out fortunes. Even in ancient times, civilization looked to the skies, gazed into flame, and cast bones simply to glimpse the unknowable. Anxiety was this small girl, wondering what all of them had always wondered, and simply because no one had ever given her peace about it. Anxiety was Alkor, who knew her pain all too well. "Hesitation and fear ar

As @irisconcluded her appraisal, Alkor carefully withdrew his blade and stowed it at his hip. Her smile was bright, small though it was. Positively radiant. And her words matched the brilliance with no small amount of magnanimity. She wasn't like Alkor- beyond being reserved and quiet, perhaps. He respected and appreciated the way she treated him. Like he was a person. "It's because of what you and others do that this sword can help protect people. I'd be glad to speak with you more later." Alkor gave a bow as they were quickly swept back up in the tide of the meeting, and he was abl

"Reality is often disappointing," he said from a place of vast experience, watching the woman as she approached. He said little else as she espoused her thoughts of self-worthlessness and even hate, all but affirming the demonization of her entire persona. She fumbled with her weapon in the way of a murderer for a moment, but relented. The blade settled on the ground, and she relieved him of his pipe. Alkor studied Setsuna as she took an unprepared hit from the pipe and her eyes watered from the burn. She said that she wanted it to stop. She said that she didn't know how, but she wanted i

He watched and listened, because that was his nature. Be seen and not heard, learn, and adapt. The social anxiety had taught him to survive by making himself malleable but not conforming. In the group, yet not truly a part of it. He was working through it, little by little. It was with several comments from starkly different perspectives that he finally got a sense of where he was, and who was around him. Ariel, who's information it seemed rivaled the direct source, felt that raid meetings should be more exclusive; and Freyd, who he had met briefly, thought that they were scant few for a

He'd almost assumed people stopped trying to progress. Everything had fallen into a pattern, a monotonous rhythm that felt almost comfortable in harmony with their discomfort. They did quests, they ate, they slept, and on fancy occaisons, the game deigned to throw social events at them. For a prison, it did a good job of keeping the masses sedated. So when news spread that someone had defeated the Labyrinth Guardian, he was startled to hear it. The Frontlines were moving again. Those same Frontlines he had left behind, shadowed by the guise of death. That was then, though. Alkor

"I answered a question that you didn't want answered, because the one you asked is subjective. There is no good answer. 'Enough' is quantified by a person's appetite. Yours is insatiable, because you've created a ceaseless hunger for justice. Enough will never be enough. Not until they're all dead, or you are, or this world ends." It would have been so easy to get caught in the trap of circular logic, the game that the victim creates to justify their abused mind's rationale. Alkor didn't have the ability to empathize with that. He was a machine when it came to logic. The correct answer, parse

Alkor sighed. He was the last person on earth who could help someone struggling with their identity, yet here he was, faced with someone who probably needed help more than he did. The way she was talking was indicative of something deeper than "take a timeout" or "go walk it off." But how many licensed therapists had logged into this game and gotten trapped? That would have just been too convenient. "I can't sleep," she said, "I can't eat." So the logical recourse was then to kill people? He watched her with his pipe dragging smoke into his throat. The burn ached in a good way, the

He cast his eyes toward the floor. How many times did it matter? How many times had he been late, admonished, but ultimately been able to continue on from it? How many times had it altered the very course of fate? He couldn't know, or he couldn't remember, but to put that kind of weight on something seemed like the effects of anxiety than anything firmly rooted in reality. It smacked of his panic attacks, things that seemed massive in the moment, but that held no real bearing on his life. At the same time, it was an experience they did not share. Her Survivor's Guilt drove her to tak

Alkor blinked. The woman mentioned something about how it wasn't an elaborate scheme to get the two of them alone, but that wasn't logically consistent anyway. Alkor had met the woman perhaps once before, and he certainly didn't know her well enough for anything like that. She was joking, obviously. He gave a 'heh,' trying to be kind despite not finding humor in the joke. "I didn't figure you meant anything hostile by it," Alkor replied when she stated that she didn't mean to interrupt. "Honestly, there wasn't much business involved. She wanted to check out some kind of rumor, but it seem

She spoke of hell and of paradise, and Alkor wondered. Where did the barrier between the two begin to fray? Christian depictions of Heaven for thousands of years described it as Paradise, as a perfect place where pious souls spent eternity. Yet by contrast, those souls gave up debauchery and fulfillment in life to find their way there, casting aside precious experience, beauty, all the things that made life living. In pursuit of a dream, they spent their fleeting moments on Earth denying themselves humanity. What was paradise? What was damnation? Did any of it matter? Alkor looked ag

"Normal people," she said again. The way she spoke inferred that she included him in that grouping, and Alkor smiled faintly. Setsuna was probably one of the only people who would ever place him into that category. He reached into his cloak and rifled around the contents of his inventory until his fingers rested upon the prize he sought, and when he found it, the long, rustic pipe spun deftly between his fingers and into plain view. "Normal people," he repeated once more, whether or not to agree with her. With a quick motion of his left hand, the pipe was between his lips. He leaned forwa

He didn't seem surprised to find someone in this place. It may have been more accurate to say that it was more surprising that whoever or whatever was here did not immediately attack him. Alkor was of course glad for that fact, but he seemed more preoccupied with the state of the world around him than anything else. He came here for the view, for the ambiance that was the silence at the end of the world. To be alone with his thoughts. Most people came to places like this out of a sense of dread fascination. Fear, loathing, a reminder that they were alive and that this was the altern

The sky was a fire, eternally lit over the ashes of civilization. Orange and red hues bled across the mottled, dusty landscape where trees once thrived and Elves nourished and revered the land. Where trees like jade once stretched toward the sky, now only the husks of buildings and whispered memories of a time long lost remained. Alkor stared out at the ruin with vacant eyes. This was a truth, unmitigated by the system's proclivity for beautiful lies. The first in a series of grim reminders that their fate was controlled by a power outside of their realm of control, and with each day tha

He wasn't sure of what she meant, but Alkor managed a slight shrug in response. "Yeah, if you say so." No one was telling him what was going on exactly other than that it had something to do with the Sanctuary situation Lessa had explained to him, with what he vaguely recalled to be some kind of Kool aid cult. If that was the case, he had to assume that these women were invested, and there were some details that probably skirted the line of personal privacy. He knew better than to press his luck asking questions. Realistically, it didn't matter if he did. Thom had always found it funny

...had he heard that right? The way she talked about not leaving her house reminded him of life back in the real world for him. The way it had been for several years since his Grandmother's health declined. It was hard for him to picture Lessa as the kind of person who could succumb to depression, but then, Alkor had to admit his pool of things to compare it to was woefully limited. He had little choice but to believe her- especially because if he didn't, wouldn't that be ignoring what was essentially a cry for help? ...but who in their right mind would come to him for help?? I

Alkor stared blankly down at the man who tried to cut his throat only moments before, head tilted and expression blank. These events had become more prevalent since... when had it been? They had been trapped so long that his sense of time had become skewed. The pirate was leering up at him angrily, trying to free himself, slashing wildly at the air as the blonde haired youth kept a foot firmly planted on his chest. "I just wanted to relax," the Knight-Errant muttered to no one in particular. "Ye'll be able to relax soon enough!" The pirate huffed. "When yer dead!" The golden eye

Taft - Floor 11 Settlement, the Weathered Wayfarer Tavern Nestled in a far flung corner of the city stood the Weathered Wayfarer, a hovel so easy to miss that it often went forgotten by the many players who passed it by in their hurry toward the Frontlines. Alkor was one of its few frequent customers for that fact alone. The only real denizens were non-player characters who were programmed to know, and even then, their routine found them there at certain times of day. It was the perfect place to go when one wanted to be alone. He ordered his usual drink, a lighter pilsner hopped just righ

He was alone for some time after that, watching the horizon with a million new questions racing through his mind. The sun dipped behind graying clouds as it burned a deeper orange and cast his long shadow back toward civilization, where his thoughts drew him back unbidden. "Why would I even care about her name?" he asked as if expecting an answer. "She came up to me out of nowhere and talked down to me like I was some kind of potential jumper on top of a building." The more he threw his contempt at the thoughts as he collected them, the more that they burned. Or was it that they stung? Everyth

"Is that why you let them die?" he asked quietly, not breaking eye contact. "Yes," she answered, her smile much softer, and perhaps sadder than before. He could not tell. "Because their feelings matter. Because they are allowed to lose all hope, and to give up, if that is the answer that they found themselves. Life is like that. Not everyone comes to the same conclusion, but every conclusion is valid. Even if we don't agree with it." She was sad, Alkor realized. Every death she'd watched, this woman had likely wanted to stop. She wept for people who she barely knew, some who she only

Theme "Have you ever thought its because the things you say are twisted and difficult to respond to?" he huffed and looked away from her, back toward oblivion. "You tell me that I'm basically a dead man walking and expect me to have a good and easy answer ready for you. Who does that?" "For a normal person, the easy answer would be to deny it, not argue with it and get defensive," she mused. There was a certain delight in the way she smiled at him. "You're not like the others, though. Not like the ones who jumped, I mean. There's something that makes you hold on. There's a reason tha

Aincrad was a lonely place. Trapped as they were, the Players could interact with one another, but no touch shared between them could be considered "real." Not in anything but their minds. They could not hear the voices of their loved ones or feel the tears that were shed in their absence, and they could not know the fates of those who were beyond the immaterial barrier, just out of reach. For Alkor, the anxiety associated with the possible imminent loss of his grandmother drove him to the brink time and again. It was his unseen battle, something that went far beyond the conflict that he outwa

Put me in as casual, just like my flings. ;)

His armor subtly clicked as Alkor took a seat and listened to both men in turn. It was good that Morningstar recognized the shortcomings of energy for long term engagements so early. That economy only exacerbated with level, as strong Sword Arts still heavily taxed the limited pool of resources that Players had to call on. As a DPS, micromanagement like that was key for survival. The young man was well on the way. He nodded by way of agreement, and did not move to correct or call to question anything that the first youth had said. When his eyes moved to the other, he understood implicitly

He didn't know either of the young men, and it sounded like they weren't incredibly familiar with players outside of their sphere of influence. He gleaned that from how they introduced themselves. Alkor had considerable doubts that either of them would know much about the Frontlines, or the names of Players who frequented boss battles, or who were believed to have died in them. With some relief, he accepted the handshake offered by the boy named Remiel courteously. "Alkor," he told them both at once, "and you don't need to call me sir, I'm not so much older than you are." Alkor looked fro