Freyd

Something about that laugh made even his unruly mop fall in line and stand on end with the rest of his hair. Kasumi's cry of alarm brought him back to reality just as a spray of splinters peppered the ground where he stood, instantly locking his sights on the immediate threat. Celeste's disinterested comments rang in the hollow between his ears. Now was not the time. A turn and dash brought him in close to the Ancient's frame, where he could inflict some real damage. Slipping from shadow to shadow, Freyd seemed to be everywhere around it at once. Bark shattered and burst to pieces al

"Look," he said to Setsuna as she muttered her complaints. "I grabbed the first one listed. It's alpha-numeric, and not my fault that the smelly one ended up at the top of the list. I'll tear it up, though so it doesn't happen again." Glancing over to Mina's fallen form, he watched as she started to rouse herself and berate him about stuff. He wasn't quite paying attention, at first. "Yes, she's fine. Let's get her back on her feet first and make sure she gets out of here. This area of Floor Thirteen is especially inhospitable." He sniffed at the wind, then spat out whatever had g

"What the... Nisa?! How the... why the... What are you doing here?!" Freyd suddenly lost all focus and attention on the raid-level battle that was already unfolding before them. To have experienced what he recently had, then have the very woman invading his dreams appear randomly on some beach was just a little too convenient. Scanning the shadows confirmed what his eyes saw, though he scarcely believed either. "Where did we see each other last? What were your final words." His tone verged on the threatening and demanding, too troubled by her sudden appearance to acknowledge a

A relaxed smile curled extra-high at the corners when Koga declared his penchant for trouble, mixed with confirmation that he had no intentions of endangering others in the coming battle. The man meant every word, without doubt, but misfortune also tended to follow those who anchored themselves to such habits. They could only hope that he'd fully shaken free of its influence and learned his lessons. Otherwise, the players at his side would be the ones to suffer. If he'd truly rewritten his decision-making algorithms, all the better. "Agreed," he spoke, firmly reinforcing Baldur's poin

"Yes. That's the place." He wasn't quite sure why his tracking wasn't narrowing down the quarry's position more accurately, given that he'd already faced it before, but the whole thing had seemed too much like a dream. Maybe it was? Facing this monstrosity again was inevitable. He'd likely do so again in the future, many times. For now, Freyd followed the ironclad before him that was father to his friends, and the best damned smith he'd ever seen craft steel. It was said that Griswold could sweet-talk metal when no one was looking. Freyd also believed that he shaped it with his ba

Surveying the devastated landscape of the vale, Freyd's icy gaze swept the ruins laid was by Lun'Rael's pride, ambition and self-loathing. The elven queen had chosen suicide as a vessel for vengeance in defeat, and been denied her accepted fate. Twisted into some malevolent, reincarnated thing, she turned upon her own kin, infecting and exploiting them and any other mob desperate or gullible enough to follow. He couldn't help but see a risk that Nisa could bear the same curse, but targeting players instead of mobs, and starting with those closest to him. She wanted something, or different

Struggling to keep it together was a little too literally applicable in this case. Freyd's hands were crumbling under his own weight, and his arms threatened to follow. There was no true pain, but the effort was taking its toll. Closing his eyes, the Whisper's consciousness drifted, listening to the sounds of Eruda's relentless efforts, Kasumi's perfection of form and technique, and the water flowing over Lium as he struggled with the falls. Persi's gentle hum - the closest thing she ever made to an actual sound - hovered around him as she inspected his form. Even with his eyes closed, Fr

"Hey! @Shiina! If that thing's got eyeballs, save one for me!" A quick nod of confidence to his campfire brethren and Freyd was back at trying to pry whatever this connection point was out of the wall. And then the wall bit him from behind, somehow. Or the world burped and went topsy. He remembered his face going 'ouchie', then the ground being in the wrong direction before fire and light scorched half the pixels off the left side of his face. Palming his cowl to keep his brain from wobbling out accidentally, he recovered enough to glance about. The first group had been spared the

Walking with his hands concealed in his pockets, Freyd mused openly about the state of the guild - something he wouldn't do with just anyone. "Firm Anima has always had a habit of attracting people with potential." A sideways glance and smirk looked in telling manner towards the aptly dubbed 'Cerulean Storm' striding at his side. "Many of them have simply needed time to come into their own. And if you're worried about your gear, I've been working on a few things to help provide you a leg up. You and Sam just need to get along with that wedding ceremony you want me to ruin for you, so

Freyd lingered behind the others, taking the opportunity of Lium's eagerness and Kasumi's distraction with Persi to have a brief conversation. "Lium has suffered in much the same way as Freya. We rescued him from a group of PKers. Apparently, he has history with Sam, though I didn't get all of the details." The Whisper gave her enough to satisfy the broader query, choosing discretion regarding the few particulars he knew beyond that point. "He needs something to focus on, or he'll unleash the anger within him over anything set in his path. Kasumi could help him, a lot, and I'm gratef

He stared at the hand pressed upon the glassy surface, lined in the very film of white which Morrighan had claimed to have given him. It trembled. He would later think of it as some sort of tremor or shake, incapable of permitting an alternate notion of taking root, even if it was correct. His mind wasn't ready for that, yet. Clenching into a fist as he withdrew his touch from the sphere, he returned the cloth covering to its previous placement while mentally reviewing whatever that had been. A vision? A dream? Too many protein consumables in a single day? She knew the rose.

A twitch in his eye. And in his ear. Damn. He didn't know whether to tense his shoulders or relax them. "Aww fu--... yeah. I can hear you. But you look inverted, and have somehow managed to wear even less clothing than the last time I saw you. Congratulations on your anime promotion, I guess. Chainmail bikini next? I'm getting definite Albedo vibes here, which probably doesn't bode well, for me." He'd already pressed his glasses back against his face before recognition dawned that he was even wearing them, or that he'd just pulled a Raidou. Blinks followed, and a progressive dow

Freyd shrugged, deflecting the potential accusation. "To be fair, this one had nothing to do with me." He pointed to his outfit as proof. "I was firmly on vacation, trying to get some rare R&R in when I got the call that you were in trouble." A deep gasping sound opened beside them, like a sealed pocket the size of Ugzeke's arse had just puckered. Out walked Setsuna, along with the final few floating dregs of the unfortunate woman who'd triggered this particular mess and fallen prey to his dastardly fishing line. "And that other time was That Guy's fault, not mine, so by

The door crept open silently as a black-hooded head craned inside the vestibule to Simmone's shop, wary of dramatic entrapments. No Sam wrapped in passionate embrace around a Katoka half her size. No Freya on the floor, striving to devour her own soul in an effort to redeem it. No Eruda drowning in doubts and certainties. And, thank goodness, no Blueberries full of irrelevant, self-delusional cheer. A whispered sigh of relief and he entered fully. "Simmone, are you about? You said that you wanted to talk. I have a few moments before... stuff and things. You know how it is." Langu

Watching as her health ticked gradually downward, Freyd's face remained unmoving. A twitch at the corner of his lips when she refuses the antidote. Foolish. Stubborn. But hope remained that she could awaken and be molded into a serviceable tool, for her own purposes and also the benefit of others. A difficult transaction had been completed. A hard lesson delivered and hopefully learned. From his perspective, a point missed. She had tried for the wrong reasons and clung to her delusions as justifications. 'Better to let her season awhile and see if she grills herself into shape,'

"Someone found it. I don't even know the details myself. My attention was elsewhere. But, yeah. They've found the next raid boss and it's already time to go headbutt the thing into oblivion." Freyd was clearly disinterested, but the reasons for his dismissal were buried deep. Part of it was strightforward concern about some repetition of Shadow's shenanigans. The scars were still too fresh, as his earlier chat with Katoka had confirmed. "A meeting was recently held at Ariel's dojo, not far from our guild hall - nice place, by the way. The scouting party found and defeated the laby

Freyd listened to his friend's words, hearing them as if mirrored back at him by himself, as they had been only weeks earlier. The anguish and uncertainty in Freya's voice struck an unexpected chord for which he lacked outward symptoms. He simply didn't know how to express them. Emotion had always been viewed as an affliction in his worldview, and assumed to be a debilitating weakness that could cripple any titan or monolith. Yet part of him had fought so hard to infect itself with their insidious source of malignant mischief. He'd watched emotions nearly consume Raidou in the battle agai

"After the raid," he added. "But yes. We need answers. I can find Nisa. I can feel her, and the tethers between her and others, including yourself, Eruda and..." Freyd's voice tapered off as his eyes narrowed and turned to black. Walking the void stream was taxing, requiring him to stretch his consciousness to the brink of collapse; to the edge of existence in boundless nothingness without fraying his already questionable sanity. "This puzzle is already on my front burner, but we have real and pressing considerations that require tending. The Front Lines could fracture without Fir

"That's a good start," he offered, in a matching tone. One that had struggled for years well before Aincrad had sprung its trap around him. One that he had nearly lost, trying to decide whether to give it voice. "We all need to value our choices for what they are, and how they represent our intentions for ourselves. You want the strength that Tuatha represents. And you can have it. But never forget where you came from of the sacrifices you made in order to achieve it. It will matter, if that strength ever fails." ...or somehow betrays you. Already halfway down the hole, he reached

Freyd smiled at Kasumi's words, warmth spreading behind his eyes. Persi had been at his side for so long, and worked so hard, she deserved a little adulation. He could hardly think of a better source. As much as he wanted Kasumi's edge to be honed razor thin, it was crucial that she maintain the soft, gentle core of her identity, so that she could one day teach Setsuna how to find her own. Having left and right hands talking to one another? Imagine that. "Of course you can, Kasumi. She's a big suck, most of the time, and will gladly eat up any attention you wish to lavish." A soft

"None." An absolute deadpan dodge, laced with mostly truth to make it palatable. Freyd had no choice. There was only speculation based on partial data. Freya, as usual, was leaping to conclusions, trying to force connections that would prove a happy outcome. He was less convinced. But he'd agreed to help, so he would. "Persi. If you could, please." A slinking mass dropped from the Whisper's back, oozing down between the broken stones to the sound of sizzling. She had defeated the Boulder, mongoose-styles. No gravel-filled pit would stand before her. As the two players watched,

"So be it," Freyd responded with casual detachment. "If that's what it takes to open your lives and help save the lives of the people around you, I will gladly pay it." He stood to full height as the mob's corpse fell to dust all around them, the glaring orange tears in his body slowly starting to heal. Poison dampened the effect, but not by much. Reaching into thin air, he summoned a small bottle that looked like it was meant to hold Tobasco, or some other similar hot sauce. The contents were sickly green, with the consistency of vomited spinach and avocados. It smelled even worse when

"What? Didn't you say something about being locked up in a cave, or something? Last, I checked, most caves aren't above ground. Kinda, like, the opposite?" He gave her a quizzical look, as if she'd assumed more than he'd meant from simple divination. "Look, Nisa's just... weird. She isn't fate. That isn't possible. She's just a loony who says that everything that happened was 'meant to be'." Freyd waved his hands and arms around with grandiose exaggeration, mocking his own earlier statement and the image of the woman he had just described. "How the hell do you know... wait. Did

Freyd arrived without fanfare, hands stuffed in his pockets and the false hint of a smile plastered on his face for the sake of appearances. A nod and minor pleasantries exchanged, he steers them to the proper course, calling on Persi to lead them on their way. "She's done this quest before," he mentions, casually. "It took a while to convince the NPC to acknowledge it, but I finally wore him down." A strange certificate summoned from thin air, confirmed that Persi had completed the boulder quest and unlocked Martial Arts. The font was off, as if the system was struggling with the inp

Black hands, like the void, but chipped and blighted. Freyd stared at his palms with concerned detachment as he watched them slowly reconstruct. Samael's Pride had bitten him, again. It was happening more and more often now, whenever the weapon unleashed the seal containing its core. Its core was pure nothingness. Insatiable. Destructive. The very manifestation of oblivion. How ironic that he wielded a thing made of the stuff from which they were all trying so desperately to avoid. Persi sat up on a stool next to him, her eyes bearing an extremely rare and disturbing air of concern.