Freyd

"Yeah, yeah," Freyd grumbled, having messed up his own plan, though probably still saving their asses in the process. "You're already a studly, stronk Shonen protagonist, m'kay? Firm Anima doesn't hand out captain's titles to wet naps. So stop thinking you have something to prove." He'd have gone on longer, but the pressing throng of angry pirate-folk didn't look overly keen on continuing to parley. A look was enough to get the point across. Both players nodded and immediately scurried to the skiff, Freyd muzzling Ryland with his right hand and pointing at another, less hostile, dock

Well played, Elora. Well played... Freyd was still trying to squeegee egg yolk out of his already perpetually messy mop of hair, now stylized with extra body that was tangibly hardening in the open air. Her response had been more subtle and effective than he'd expected. Not that she wasn't capable of guile. He'd seen the play of her lips hinting at the secret monologue within, the sly glances out of corners of her eyes. Elora was no slouch. And, while not exactly an open book, he'd come to know better than anyone in Aincrad could likely claim. Time to use that... for the most fun-fi

"He's already in a church," Freyd called back to Wulfrin, drawing attention to the scattered sculptural remains and iconography embossed into the surrounding worn and faded stone. "Well... kinda. I don't really know what any of it means, but Bob here got uppity and tried to steal the show from his former boss. Looks like some agreed with him while others disapproved of his behaviour." Quickly jerking a thumb over his shoulder to the similarly dressed and intermingled skeletons strewn all over the chamber and outer courtyard, the likelihood of some sort of coup seemed high. The monst

"You hit plenty hard, Kat," he replied, scolding her from beneath the rim of his cowl and slender eyebrows combined. "Don't you be selling yourself short like that. We just need to teach you a few wumbo combos and you'll be outpacing me in no time." Ryland was too busy trying to operate the skiff controls one handed to do much blabbering, and his gut was still seething from the cut inflicted by Drell's poison blade. In fact, the Dockmaster was starting to look worse for wear; enough so that Freyd truly wondered whether he'd be in any shape to navigate them safely to ground, even if the

"I only know as much as they tell me. I trust that that's enough." Odd that such a throwaway line would make such an impact, simultaneously heartwarming and soulcrushing at the same time. His heart felt like it flinched at the statement, even while Elora meant to dodge further engagement in speculation. The wave metaphor for emotions seemed both apt and poignant, matching his own limited experiences. “Nice architectural reference, with the concrete,” he added, smiling meekly. “My father would have approved.” Crows’ feet clawed at the edges of his eyes as Mina clinically laid

“We’re deep in this floor’s labyrinth,” Freyd began, by way of explanation to Mina’s query. “And hip deep in a nest of spooky shit. This place is definitely hinky, in the darkest-side-of-Scooby-Doo kind of way.” Hirru and Ariel showed up before their conversation could progress much farther, the latter mocking Mina for sneaking off with him for special nooky time. A snorting grunt was all he could manage before Mina shot down the regal woman’s innuendo, hard. He, meanwhile, looked forward to mentioning it to Elora, with certain dubious embellishments about the turnip-shade of red Mina’s fa

"It's not a talent Freyd, it's using the right tool for the job --", "...and a tool is only so good as its wielder's skill and devotion," he added, finishing the thought while gratefully accepting her assistance. Listening as she dissembled and downplayed her own way of living, Freyd simply shook his head dismissively. "My life has too much structure. Even though I go to lengths to keep it changing, my constant focus on business lends to its predictability. You would never normally find me doing... this. Which is precisely why I need to do so." A strange sense of serenity pervaded Fr

Laughter filled the room as Freyd nearly busted a gut at her suggestion. It took a while before he could even mouth any words. "Haine tried to teach me to cook once," he finally eked out between gasps. "I used a sword art on a bunch of veggies and nearly destroyed half her kitchen." A cautionary wave of his hand dismissed any notion that he knew the first thing about the valued trade, or that he was making any fun over her suggestions. "Pre-packaged meals have been the norm for me, for as long as I can recall. If you say you know how to make these things, then please teach me. I'll

*SNAP* The entire crowd focused in Freyd's fingers, as fully anticipated and desired. It gave Persi precisely the opening she required. Having snuck into the crowd while the pirates were busy cornering their elusive prey, Freyd placed her as a trump card immediately after Katoka shish-kebabbed his tawny coat with her katana. Racing between a forest of hairy legs and pantaloons, the little shadow mongoose wormed her way up Ulric's leg to a combination of great surprise and consternation. "What the... GAH!" Most mobs panicked at the feel of inky shadows darting up their underpa

Watching as dizzying motion whirled around the lumbering undead mob, Freyd's HUD spawned its own secondary layer, as if the machine mind within himself could further deconstruct each element and action. Vectors and trajectories played out a projected potential, each analyzed and countered a dozen times over even as his limbs and torso took corresponding action. He'd always been good with numbers, coolly calculating even under the most dire circumstances and blithely setting aside any emotional influence. The Whisper's fury was dire by the utter cold and ruthlessness of its nature, and the p

Smiling and listening attentively as she recounted her day's activities, something glimmered silently at her from behind the blueness in his eyes. His cowl sat loosely resting upon his shoulders, the shield it represented equally lowered in a rare and deliberate moment of vulnerable exposure. Only with her. No one else had ever truly reached so deep into his core, nor convinced him that there was someone in there worth finding... and rescuing. Could that be the magic that had led them here, together? Reflections glanced his way in the nearby window. She is my opposite, staring back at m

Peering through the shadowed bowels of a nearby potted fern, the notion that he was somehow invading the thing’s privacy, or hers, never even occurred to him. Neither did the fact that ferns had no bowels, but they did have shadows, and that was all he really required. It should have felt odd, he knew, gazing beyond sight in such ways; like standing on the far side of the looking glass to catch glimpses of this world from another. Yet, it never had. Like Takeshi in Simmone’s famed mirror, life felt more natural when viewed from such perspectives. Hrm. Pondering why was never fru

"You're asking me!?" Freyd managed, half-joking and half-incredulous, too busy dodging an assortment of pilfered blades to pick either one in whole. "What the heck would I know about skyships?" "Ryland," he snapped, interrupting the Dockmaster's next idiotic retort before it could even leave his lips. "Get your ass in that raft and make it ready to save all of our collective cheeks. I can keep them off you for another few seconds." When dust and fractals alike finally settled, Freyd reset his stance in readiness for the next wave... which didn't come. Crowding around them like a

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

ph for grind thread *** stats go here

"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,