Freyd

Change, they say, is never easy. Freyd had no idea what that was supposed to mean. People were weird in the way they clung to things because they were afraid to explore the unfamiliar or unknown. Yet that was where he stood, himself, staring down at the capped opening to his former home. It was a well, or meant to look like one, hidden away of yet another forgotten ruin on the edges of Angel's Point. A lost hole in the corner of a lost floor, where no one would ever have thought to look for him or sought to bother. The Liminal Blind had been his hideaway for years, pristinely minimal in

A shade pulled itself from the stillness of the chamber, rent from the fabric of absence to stand upon its own two feet and appointed with a task. Lean and lanky, it walked in silence to the terminal to convey its master's wishes in silence and solitude. Selection made, its umbral digits wrapped around the conjured item and absorbed it into the void. Staring at the polished walls and surfaces, its reflection was unfamiliar, even alien, to its unseen eyes. There was no substance in shadow, only the opposite. Pausing to survey and memorize the ornate, pristine features of the hall, its pres

Falling in alongside Katoka's charge, Wrath burst forward to chase the arrow loosed from her bow only to veer left as the temporary archer's shot found its mark. Fortunately, there were others. Reckless abandon jointly unleashed with ruthless calculus manifesting both aspects of Freyd's psyche in a single instant. One mob felt the concussive gravity of Samael's pride in a brilliant flash of white. Its counterpart felt the sting of the infinite hunger within as the weapon's sword form cleaved clean through, leaving a massive glaring wound where its digital flesh should have been. Behind bo

"Damnit, Bob..." The words were somewhat muted by Freyd's face currently being embedded in the previously solid stone wall at the rear of the chamber. Peeling himself out of a personally stylized crater, the lanky Whisper staggered for a step or two while trying to get the duplicate mobs in his wobbly vision to recombine into one for targeting purposes. "We've talked about this, at length, Bob. Manners maketh the man. So man up!" Stumbling while reaching into his cowl, the feign instantly turned to recovery only to launch a very startled inky black mass from its comfy sleeping quarter

Seizing a moment's advantage as Kat went all... whatever electric magnificence it was that she'd just pulled out of wherever and managed to shove Ryland forward to the end of the dock. The skiff was there... kinda. "Ugh... it looks even worse than I remember from last time." It wasn't much to look at. No, actually, it was barely anything to look at, given how punky the tiny vessel's deck boards looked, bits of shy shining through the absent hull below in a few places. It was only modestly redeeming that skyships didn't really need to keep any water out. The heavily corroded cont

"I really hate this bloody dog." Groaning after a searing, magma-drool laden bite had tried to sever his left shoulder Freyd watched as the glowing globules of bile sloughed off thanks to Zandra's timely intervention, adding to those already melting parts of her instead. "Oh, uh... thanks? You're okay there, right?" The unhinged healer's maddened, yet cheerful, grin signaled disturbingly to the positive. Healers. Weird, but effective. "Fine, puppers. You want to play it that way? Let's see how you like this." Clenching the void-like wraps hard, Freyd's teeth audibly clenched a

In a surprising act of courtesy for someone renown for irreverence, Freyd actually pulled back his trademark cowl to expose an unruly mop of black hair slovenly draped over a pair of piercing blue eyes. Slender, arched brows gave him a slightly predatory appearance, but his face was otherwise surprisingly commonplace. "Erm... I'm pretty sure the king is the one that did said betraying, actually," he offered Wulfrin, eyes boggling a bit by way of explanation, "but the quest provides little to no detail. It might explain the dilapidated castle motif and bloodstained upholstery surroundi

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"Bitch got what she finally deserved!" Ryland just couldn't help himself once Calas had fallen, calling out his old nemesis though she was now nothing more than a sprinkling of glitter on deck boards some fifty feet back. All of her men had fallen with her, leaving them all still being swarmed by an especially surly bunch of pirates. "Dude," Freyd barked, smashing a random swashbuckler hard enough to send him flying back against the advancing throng like a wrecking ball and slowing their chase. "You really need to shut it." Glancing sideways, Freyd managed to pull out a healing cr

Bustling in through the front door, Freyd carried a long ream of paper that might have passed as annual gift man's naughty and nice list, the tail end trailing out into the street behind him. Persi was playfully batting at it like some sort of string toy. The Whisper, meanwhile, was wholly absorbed by its contents and clearly crunching some serious math behind that silly cowl. "Hey, Kat. Need to restock the larder before we get too close to the next raid, and everyone else at the guild is tied up with other business these days. Not to mention that your goods have always proven reliabl

Having wrapped up a quick visit to The Knight Shift while he waited, Freyd continued his clandestine patronage of Ren's shop in the hopes that they would continue to bear fruit and foster the growth of new players. Stationing an agent to watch his back had also kept opportunistic riff-raff and a few disgruntled neighbours off his back, to good effect. 'Plans within plans,' he thought, quoting one of his favourite novels, even as he spotted the gaggle of newbs gathering in Tomoika's square, two of them already known to him. Not so newb no more. Good. Nodding as if just finishing a hand

Spewed forth from a harrowing dive through the thin veils and shades cast by the Magistrate's throne, Freyd had escaped a solo fight with a boss he felt might otherwise have been much beyond his own abilities. Suppressive effects of the gossamer webs spanning the treetops about her lair prevented complete success and shunted him sideways into never-never land. In this case, that meant emerging from a crook between two butt-cheeks of a particularly gnarled oak on the outskirts of the Fire Forest, darker, nastier cousin. The Flaming Heebie-Jeebies Forest? Farted out the ass of the tree,

Sitting in solitude at a small table set in a remote corner of the newly minted Witherwind Rest, Freyd stared at two objects resting on the table before him. The first was a chest board of simple make, with pieces painstakingly carved by hand from random pieces of wood collected from across the explored levels of Aincrad. Judging by the layout of its opposing birch and black walnut factions, the game had been in progress for some time, though there was no evidence of a second player in the room. Both teams were deadlocked with moves and counter-moves layered a dozen deep in twice as many di

Moving like an ethereal wraith between the triad of barking, snapping maws, Freyd faded from view again and again only to reappear and resume his assaults mere moments later. Inferno's rage had lost interest in the other two players, which had been precisely the point. The only catch was that all three heads were now clearly and furiously focused on him instead. "Frikkin life of a tank," he muttered to himself. "And here I am dancing with death in an outfit that could be mistaken as pajamas." Seeing Morningstar resume his fighting stance and clip the first head in just the right manner

Streaking past his allies like dusk chasing a setting sun, Freyd explodes through the centre of the remaining mob scattering it to the corners of four completely absent winds. Only then did his companions notice what he hardly seemed to have. The Whisper's goal had never been the lone remnant from their current fray, but a locked bead on yet another pair beyond already surging forth from tainted soil to challenge them. Eerily, neither horse nor rider made the slightest sound as they rained methodical chaos down upon the field, large swaths of amorphous, monstrous wrongness being smeared eve

"Well... that certainly explains the nickname." Watching Zandra charge recklessly into battle in complete contradiction to their plan should probably should have surprised him more, but they'd actually fought side by side before. Freyd was also preoccupied dodging his appointed head while flailing about in full Matrix bullet-time mode. Cries of alarm nearly broke the concentration required to maintain such a state, along with a preconditioned alarm from his party status tracker Star's slumped and injured form rolled to the ground next to him, instantly raised both hackles and concern. Not

Listening attentively, the natural tension in Freyd's shoulders seemed to ease slightly. So it is the same for most of us. "You'd be amazed to discover how many people feel the same way when in your situation. I know I did, back in the day, and it really doesn't feel like it was that long ago." The bobber on his reel swirled momentarily, caught in a minor eddy forming in the brook's meandering motions and gone just a quickly. Epiphany could be just as quick and subtle. "Don't feel like you need to rush. The joy is in the journey. It's cliché, I know, but with good reason. I felt th

"They're a weird bunch, that's for sure, but good people and it works." Poking his head through a beaded curtain marking the entrance to one of the few luxurious buildings to actually exist in Fortaleza, Freyd yelled something at an NPC inside. Both players instantly received a quest completion pop-up message, certifying that Abdullah's task had been done. "Give me a call anytime, Kyoto. You seem like a good guy, and I'm always happy to help. If I hear anything about Itzal or the others I'll be sure to let you know, but your best bet may be to retrace their steps and see if you can pick u

Grabbing Calas' hand on the backswing, he wrenched and twisted her wrist causing the criminal captain to cry out in pain. A blade fallen from her grasp met his foot and was launched into a nearby sentry, splitting him through the middle and spilling his motes all over the stained and worn deck boards. She tried to spin and met his knee with her gut, fresh of the spin of its projectile launch. Delicately coifed hair splayed forth, with a fair share of spittle. Freyd was in a frenzy. Her lone remaining aide came to the rescue, or tried, but found his spear deflected by a palm and repurp

"Anytime, Zee. You were trouncing badass mobs while I was still wearing my starter diapers. It would be my pleasure to assist." Cerberus sought to use their discussion to its advantage, clearly not having watched enough anime to appreciate how much dialogue during combat was accepted social norm. Some even argued that it made them fight better. "Ah, okay then," he replied, silently scolding himself for his assumptions about spare weapons. "No worries. We'll manage just fine, so long as we're clever and careful. Morningstar's got the geist." Following their other companion's l

"Itzal I recall only vaguely. We were in the raid against Shadow the Malevolent together, clearing the way to floor 26. Beatbox... I've heard the name, but always got him confused with Beat, who hung around with Shield. Can't say that we ever met. Same with Kaiser." Scratching at the back of his cowl as if to pry something loose from his memory, Freyd couldn't manage to find anything more. "Nothing's coming back about Itzal's guild. I just vaguely recall that we had the same look - like we went to the same tailor or something." He shrugged, not being able to find anything more. "I can

"Uh-huh," Freyd replied, deadpan and staring directly at Nari, clearly not believing a word of her denial, no matter how hard she seemed to be trying to convince herself. The point had been called out. What she chose to do with it was up to her, but, based on what dots he'd managed to connect from past observations, there was clearly more history at play than was being admitted. Pushing any further would only insult Nari, and that wasn't his goal or desirable in any way. She needs to face this in her own time. "Yeah. Alright. You called my bluff. Here I was going to manipulate this

"Guild?" That one piqued his curiosity especially. There had been so many since the game first loaded, but he knew little about most of them. "Which one were you in? Maybe I recognize it, or could point you towards some of its old members. Tracking has its uses, after all." They were already within sights of the walls of Fortaleza, feeble as they might be. Parched and sun-bleached, the packed earthen ramparts were literally baked to the point of crumbling and resembled little more than berms after so much deterioration. "My own guild has also gone largely dormant lately." It was a

Freyd had listened intently as Zandra referenced olden times, some pre-dating his own rise and involvement in the mainstream of Aincrad's daily affairs. Realization dawned that he was now the one referencing names that newcomers no longer recognized and tales they had never heard. Congratulations, Freyd, you've become a veteran and joined the ranks of the 'old men' to which you once aspired. It didn't feel like the accomplishment he imagined it to be, but then it likely never could have. Here, on the other side of the fence, grass was still just grass. Its colour never changed. Zandra and

A sullen, empty smile lined Freyd's face with weariness as he heard Kyoto repeat an all-too-familiar story. "I've heard a similar story from more players than I could have ever imagined," he added with regret. "We so many people miserable in our other world? Is that why people were so eager to enter this one, only to fall into Kayaba's trap?" Sighing at the lines of thinking that inevitably followed. "Whatever you do, Kyot0, don't let it get you down, okay? That's more important than you can possibly imagine - the need to feel like you have purpose and belonging. We're all going t