2024-08-30: Defiance

• Log: Defiance
• Cast: Elisa Kafim, Wendy Yuan
• Where: The Silent Castle, Kaffeklubben Island
• Date: August 30, 0099
• Summary: Two Ends come for the Silent Castle and Elisa Kafim's domain. With divine power, she strikes out at death. The world will be made ready. (Trigger warning: blood, gore, death)

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<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.

A moment ago, Elisa Kafim was in space. A moment ago, she was in the hangar of the Shandor, taking possession of a dying woman from the ruins of her mobile weapon. And a moment ago...

The rage of the Empress clamped down. Elisa, traveling through the Void, was prepared. Holding Wendy's dying body, she looked up at the terrible maw of ten thousand teeth and countless Eyes looking towards her--

And smiled.

Then, she was gone from that realm, and back in the material world. Specifically, Elisa touches down, still Macronized, in her laboratory in the North Wing. Wendy's body is tiny, compared to her, but easy enough to set down on the table. Stretching out her arms, the witch focuses--and shrinks. Green energy pours off of her as she changes her mass and size in defiance of the laws of physics, until she is small enough to work the delicate weaves that will be necessary to save this woman.

Well, 'save'. This is far beyond medical expertise. But she channels power into Wendy, power enough for one thing: to keep her conscious, to keep her active, beyond the limits of her body.

"Wendy," Elisa says. "Do you yet wish to remain in this world?"

She will bind her, either way. But it's easier, if she doesn't want to die.

"I can make it so. You can remain with the one you love. The ones you care for."

"...But you must trust in me."

The black aura surrounding Wendy does not abate, but it cannot last forever; Elisa must actively channel the Void's power to do this. It's best not to think of how many lives fuel this very moment.

It's best not to think of any of this, at all.

<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.

        Fear reigns in the Silent Castle, now. The adults remember when continents rained from the sky -- but the children do not; they are left to absorb the terror of the adults, as they gather in the library. There, they grasp each other, Maksim with Swordtooth coiled protectively about his neck, Makar clutched about his waist; Shufen and Xiulan and Yaling, Pavel and Anastasiya, Soth and Sona and Suchart. Their parents and grandparents shield them; even Makara Mau, who was simply told they would be caring for the three orphans who came here, wraps Soth in one arm and Suchart in the other, as Sona cowers in their lap. Elisa's elites, Teodor and Ingvar, stand fast around the Mistress's family and those they've taken in; just as Wendy and Parminder roamed afar to meet the threat as it fell, their task is to be a final wall between the Castle's residents and tragedy.

        In the South Wing, the servants have clustered together, as well; they've brought up the ones with dull eyes, to keep them safe in numbers, though they're simple people now. They bear witness as one of them falls, crumbling to dust and less than that; they look amongst each other, and they are not only scared of the sky, knowing that any of them could be sacrificed -- and there, another, consumed by the Power. They cannot help but think of it, the purpose of their hazard pay, the cruel reality.

        What she needs to save them all.

        They couldn't know that Elisa is focused on saving one of them, right now.

        Wendy is beyond sense or reckoning, as Her jaws beat down; even so, bent to the incoherence of death, she knows she ought to be afraid. Awareness of fear leads her -- through Elisa's concerted effort, though she couldn't know such a thing -- to awareness of words; her lips part, and her mechanical tongue struggles to function.

        "Guan...yu..."

        The maid she was set to marry, who, God willing, won't be amongst the fuel Elisa burns. Will she understand all the death before her eyes, when she learns it was for Wendy's sake?

        That name on her lips, her desire is clear, though it takes her a moment longer to choke out: "... he..lp... m..."

        ... she'd always been the one amongst them who most counselled caution in relying on Elisa's gifts; she, amongst Yuliana's friends, has always had the healthiest sense of fear regarding the eldritch Queen. She must know what she asks; even now, she must know the price of asking.

        But she promised her fiancee... she'd come back.

        If it's in a coffin... that's too cruel.

<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.

God is willing. Elisa will not burn Guanyu, now. She has ascended to something... else. Will she ever forgive either of them for it?

Now, though. Now, Elisa waits, channeling Power in order to keep Wendy alive temporarily. She waits in her laboratory, which is cavernous here, designed for us Macronized and Micronized both. The table on which Wendy rests is already slick with blood. The terror continues...

Guanyu, Wendy calls for.

"I shall aid you," Elisa intones, and it has the finality of the grave that will not claim Wendy this day. "...She shall see you again."

She lifts one hand, and iron and steel carry themselves through the air from a depot nearby. She lowers it, and they come to the table, where she can Work.

"This will be..."

Elisa considers how best to prepare her. "Painful. But pain is how you know that you yet live. Treasure it if you can, and know that I am with you."

First, she must stop the bleeding. Then, she must replace what has been sundered.

And the body will not last in time... What to do? How can she save her?

She lifts her other hand, and there comes a crystal. "The darkness will soothe you while I work. Do not fear. You shall return to your body soon."

The crystal glows brilliantly.

Elisa has spoken it. It must be true. But how to do it...? Where will she get the requisite Power?

<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.

        Elisa says she'll see her again -- and it's all Wendy can cling to, the machine which powers her heart struggling against the trauma which the metal has inflicted on it. That she is partly machine only gives her more edges to impale herself upon, now.

        "uhh," she groans, and in her incoherent response there is pain.

        "nnh," she feels fear, as she is drawn into a crystal.

        And then, her body is silent.

        The flesh has been rent and wracked, what remains of it twisted and bleeding over the metal. The machine still struggles to work, even bent and broken as it is; it struggles against her bones and her blood just as much. It bleeds out on the table, devastated beyond measure.

        Soon the Castle will be, too.

        "Mistress," a man's voice cuts through the loudspeakers, "we have incoming debris on a direct collision course." That's Wowser, one of Parminder's men -- and while he'd normally work on the Castle's network security, as an emergency measure, he's monitoring Junius Seven instead.

        Somehow, he manages to sound calm.

<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.

Flesh and metal, intertwined. It is not what Elisa usually works with, but she has been practicing with inorganic materials of late. Her hands are thick with blood as she begins to push aside bits of prosthetic and bone to cradle the heart, to shape it such that it will be Whole once again... though greener than it was.

But she pauses in her work, when the man's voice comes over the speakers. "Hss," Elisa answers at first, not to the man but at the temerity of the world to intrude on her work--but then--...Yes. Yes, perhaps...

Her senses activate; she can tell. "Yes," Elisa says. "This will be well..."

She extracts her hands from Wendy's body and then speaks up to answer the speakers, "Acknowledged. Brace yourself; I shall handle this."

Then, she smiles. "The veil will be thin," she says to the crystal. "...It will be all too easy, under these circumstances, to cleave soul to flesh and steel. Merely be patient, while I protect the Castle."

Yes. She sees, now, how she will do it. She turns her head, and a mirror shines; it displays in a moment the debris on its way through. There is no way to simply eliminate the debris...

Over the speakers Elisa's voice comes.

"Do not fear, residents of the Castle. ...We shall endure."

Elisa closes her eyes, and must focus all her energy on this, now. Black and green motes of power waft from Elisa's person as she enacts strange gestures with her hands; her very bones crack under the force she channels. She pays that no mind.

Dark radiance seethes about the Castle on the Island. Green crystals ignite with power at every direction, surging, until a column of power stretches towards the sky's limits.

Next to the castle, an iceberg of ruined Psychoframe glows, too. The power within could forge a thousand miracles.

Today, it must only forge one.

The castle begins to turn translucent under the Power, along with everyone and everything in it. It is a strange, weightless feeling for those within, but it is neither cold nor deathly. It is simply... strange.

As the Castle itself phases out of step with the material plane, ethereal as shadow itself.

<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.

        Wendy, outside of herself, can only bear witness. Separated from the pain of her body -- for there is no torment in this crystal, save the disconnected observation -- as Elisa reaches in, grasps her very heart, changes it.

        She has no hands to go to her chest, seeing that.

        She feels nothing.

        The veil will be thin...

        What is she doing to her?

        What is she doing to THEM?

        No -- she is saving them -- she is saving her, Wendy realises, and there would be pain in that, if she had any nerve endings left to feel. Even at cost to herself, as her bones fracture -- and the vision of the debris crashes down.

        When it lands on Kaffeklubben Island, that flat, uninhabited land is annihilated in an instant. Consumed with the force of megatons, it screams outwards, the very SHOCKWAVE forcing a tidal wave out into the ocean as the land at its other side is caved in. A listening post -- the poor sods NUNE sent to keep watch on the Silent Castle -- is consumed immediately. The military outposts of Alert and Station Nord have a few more seconds' warning... before they're annihilated, too.

        This will be reported as a blessing. This close to the North Pole, there are no civilian settlements for the debris to have hit, and the losses Britannia suffers here are relatively minor.

        No, the only people who dared to live in a desolate place like this...

        ... were the residents of the Silent Castle...

        ... who find themselves out of sync with reality, for a few desperate moments.

        "I'm scared!" Makar cries, clutching at Adharis's robes. "Auntieeee!!"

        Maksim stares at Swordtooth, more animated than she's ever been, as she slithers about his arm. "It's okay," he tells his little brother, strangely calm. "She's strong enough."

<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.

Elisa does not answer the details for now. Perhaps she will share later, if Wendy asks... but she may not have to. What she does to her, and to them, is not simple. The laws of time and space bend to her Will, the power of a god in her hands. The veil will indeed be thin...

Elisa suffers for her victory, of course. Her bones have cracked in places; ichor pools at the corners of her eyes like bloody tears, from there and from her nose and ears. She does not even try to save the listening post or the military stations.

The losses to Britannia will be minor, but their deaths, too, shall fuel her Power.

Makar is scared. Adharis holds Makar close. "It's all right," she tells him, but marvels at Maksim's calm.

...She is not sure 'marvel' is what she feels.

But Elisa, meanwhile, holds the spell until the tidal wave crashes back in. She holds it there, and holds herself together through sheer Will.

Only when the water returns does the ground repair itself, the ice building its lattice upward to meet the Castle's foundations. Only then does the Castle begin to phase back into reality, to come out of the shadows.

...Elisa herself stands still, and her eyes remain closed. Her hands rise again. "...It is time," she says. "O Earth, in your terror, you shall give life."

She picks up Wendy's crystal, and it glows brilliantly; the force of death and life both infuse it, giving Wendy vitality.

That same vitality rushes towards the body, and begins to knit flesh and steel.

Her sensation will be quite intact; if anything, she will feel more of her body than before, will be capable of sensing the metal sensations, tasting life freely.

...What costs there are are not negotiable.

"Now," Elisa says, "To return..."

"You shall sleep," Elisa intones, "To recover. When you awaken... you will see her. You will be whole."

A bleak miracle comes to pass this day, beyond only the salvation of the Castle.

For Elisa has given life to that which should be lifeless.