Solo Artful Apocalypse

[Aislyn Leavold]

83rd of Winter, 515 AV
Morning

An artist in the apocalypse was of no use at all.

Or, at least, that was what Aislyn had been telling herself.
Other professions had purposes, had things to do and places to be. Sellswords had monsters to chop. Blacksmiths had swords to sell to the sellswords. Nurses had sellswords to patch up when they got mauled by the monsters they chopped up with their blacksmith’s swords. Chefs had food to make and anyone that could hold a bow was sent out onto the field. Aislyn had been one of such people, of course. Except now she had a fair few more cuts on her various body parts and an ache that extended further than her bones, and all she really wanted to do was draw.

But what use was an artist in the apocalypse?

She had pondered it whilst she had lay on uneven ground under an uneven tent next to a hundred other Alvads that were sleeping just as well as she was. She’d poked a hole in the roof of her tent to stare at the sky, just because there was nothing else to do. The moans and groans of dying and pained soldiers around her was the only lullaby to listen to, and the smell of people absolutely everywhere was almost too much to bear. Not to mention the fact that the battlefield never seemed to be far enough away. The clang of bladed steel and twang of strung up bows was never a fair distance from the Southern Bastion, leaving Aislyn to hear the faint sound of death and destruction as the night grew on. She’d managed perhaps four bells- maybe less- of sleep the first night, if only due to her paranoia that someone would happen into her tent while she lay, unillusioned, in the night.
That night, she couldn’t remember sleep ever actually reaching her mind.

The sky had been empty; devoid of all signs of Zintilla, Leth, or any other celestial body, for that matter. It certainly hadn’t looked cloudy, however; it had just looked empty.

What level of Hai had Alvadas fallen into?

The next morning, the 83rd, Aislyn had felt the exhaustion wearing on her. For the first time since she had ventured through the Door, she changed clothing. She had brought a spare set, of course, but she hadn’t planned on being in a complete other dimension for an extended amount of time. Thus, she only had one.
Nonetheless, it felt good to not be weighed down by the dust and sweat and blood of the days prior. She even managed to drag a brush through her hair before pulling it back into Maya’s ever present ribbon. A ribbon that was aging just as quickly as everything else in the never-ending war for Alvadas. Frayed at the edges with a patience that was long past its prime.
Aislyn felt a certain sort of empathy for the piece of cloth.

After folding her tattered clothing into her bag and setting off into the battlefield once again, Aislyn had tried to tackle the question of what good an artist could be when the end was upon them. She had yet to find an answer. So she walked. Away from the painful cries of the Alvad’s homebase, into the dangerous unknown.
Like anything was all that unknown anymore. If they didn’t know anything, nothing could really be called ‘unknown’, could it? Everything was the same level of ‘known’. From the dusty streets to the abandoned houses. Everything was in someway, familiar, and in others, completely foreign.

It was Alvadas, alright, just not the Alvadas they all knew.

[Aislyn Leavold]

The streets were quiet. Far too quiet for her liking, if the woman was truthful. The Southern Bastion had been unbearably loud, but silence- silence was another kind of discomfort. The streets still moved, like the Alvadas of before, but they were slow, moving when no one saw, or could see. If Aislyn chose one direction to walk in- as she had- she could follow her steps back and be back to the home base easily. That wasn’t how things were supposed to be.
A figure as silent as the street, the woman’s speed heightened, as did her paranoia. Eventually, however, the emptiness of the streets gave way to faint fighting. Then louder, then very distinct; the exchange of sword and flesh. The screams of both the living and the dead, mingling in one big wave of noise. The sound came before the sight, of course, and the people after that. Worried, nameless, faceless figures that came running past her. In their arms they carried anything from weaponry to bodies, both still breathing and long dead.

Lovely.

Sticking close to the side of the street, Aislyn began to observe more than just the people. She wasn’t going to enter the fighting, and she certainly didn’t want to get caught off guard by something that wanted to fight her, so she needed some sort of plan. What could an artist do in the apocalypse?
Well, an artist could draw.
Draw what, she would have to decide. But for the moment, all she needed was somewhere out of the way, with a view of the battle ahead. Which meant she probably wanted somewhere inside. A building, perhaps?

There were certainly plenty of those.

Taking a detour down an alleyway, Aislyn tried the knob of what appeared to be a back entrance to a series of conjoined houses. Locked, of course. Problematic, but not impossible. After all, she had come into possession of a wonderful set of lockpicks after her earlier run in with… Herself.

Thank you, Thief.

Unfortunately, it had been quite a few years since Aislyn had actually successfully picked a lock, meaning she essentially had to relearn the ever-useful skill of larceny all over again. She had the tools, of course, and supposedly the knowledge to use it, and if she could just piece together the puzzle…
L-shaped stick in the lock, pushing down. Turn… Right? No, left. Counterclockwise. Then the pick itself. Rake the pins, then set them, then… Click?

There was an unfortunate absence of clicking. So she tried again. And again. L stick, pick stick, then the pins, then the turning.
After a very, very long five chimes, Aislyn finally achieved a click.

Feeling rather satisfied with herself, the woman swung the door open liberally, slipping “Thief”’s tools back into the kit. Then, she entered. And was met with yet another click.

But she had already unlocked the door...?

Click, click click click.

Turning into the dark front room of the building, Aislyn cautiously pushed the door shut behind her. Then, slowly, she drew her crossbow. On the side of the room facing the sun, there was a window. On that window, there was a sheet.
Or rather, there had been a sheet, until Aislyn said let there be light, and was immediately met with the source of the clicking sound. Not a lock, of course, but a large, grotesque beetle thing, sitting in the corner of the room. Easily the size of a small horse, it appeared to have been quite enjoying the darkness the illusionist had interrupted, and when Syna’s beams reached the thing, the clicking grew rather urgent. And louder. And angrier.

Right up until the moment a crossbow bolt shattered the beetle thing’s face into approximately four very large, very gooey pieces. The thing, in all its glory, collapsed into a heap of black and brown, decorating the floor of the home with a large splatter pattern that Aislyn made the executive decision to avoid. Upon closer inspection, the beast appeared to be composed- or had been composed- of an amalgamation of different insects. Eight legs, but with the mouthparts and antennae of a beetle. And wings. Of course it had wings.

With a shiver, Aislyn thanked Ionu her shot had found its target. There were many things Aislyn had faced in the past few rotations of Syna and Leth, many of which were not exactly the most friendly beings ever. Humanoid or otherwise, they had all ended the same way; with a crossbow bolt in the skull. Or chest. Or elbow, once. Aislyn was not the most accurate shot.

Nonetheless, she was getting better. Better at killing.
What a thought.
Even she, the Alvad artist, was learning to fight. To attack offensively, harm defensively, and kill. And she didn’t even know what she was killing. They weren’t alive, certainly, but they weren’t quite dead, either. They were commingled nightmares, out of nothing Alvadas had ever produced before. They were as unique as Ionu’s illusions, but… Miserable. Disconsolate beings that only seemed able to maim and murder. No one knew where they came from, or where they went when they were returned to death.

Perhaps that was what an artist was useful for. If others could see what they were going against, if they could understand, perhaps a solution could be found. A way to end the death.
What a thought indeed.

[Aislyn Leavold]

The house itself didn’t hold much to its name.
It appeared the beetle-thing had feasted upon any food that might have once been in the building, along with the very foundation of the place itself. On her way up the stairs, Aislyn had stepped lightly, for fear that the suspiciously bite-like marks on the rails continued into the planks that held up the floor. If the place collapsed and she managed to trap herself in the building, there was no one to hear her scream.
That was morbid.

On the upper floor, Aislyn found the same scene of disarray. No wonder the thing had grown so big- it had eaten almost everything it could. The walls, the furniture, the floor. The possibility that there were more of the beetle things was certainly a concern, but for the moment, Aislyn had her peace, and her view.
A window that more resembled a hole in one of the second floor walls provided a glimpse over the battlefield. From the position of Syna in the sky, and where Aislyn knew her to have risen, she was northern-bound. The Northern Front. That was new.

Drawing out her notebook, Aislyn flipped to one of the few fresh pages left. She needed information. Drawings were good, yes, but they needed context. Who was fighting? How many were against them? How did they fight? What was the rebuttal?
Through the chaos, the artist managed to pinpoint two recurring themes. A man and a woman, leading the fight. Of the Craven family- Aislyn knew that much- but which Craven, she could only guess. The powerful ones, from the look of it.
From her perch, the woman could make out the apparent no-mans land in between the living and the dead, a line that it seemed no one dared to cross. Why there were no heroic fools pushing past the line in order to score a few more deaths on their sword was unclear. The fighting was certainly different from the Western Front, in that the forces moved together, fluctuating as one.
Or, at least, most of them did.

At one point, a heroic fool did come, brandishing more sword than sense, jumping the line no one dared to cross. Several others reached out after him, yelling words of warning Aislyn couldn’t make out, but were quickly ignored. For a few precious ticks, the man seemed perfectly euphoric, his sword held high and his head held higher.
Then the female Craven turned, spotted him, and tore him apart.
In a movement the artist in no way understood, she appeared to disintegrate him simply by looking at him, ripping his very existence to shreds.

So that was why no one crossed the line.

In a moment of awe, Aislyn let herself wonder. That was magic. Almost certainly, that was magic. A magic she in no way understood, but a magic all the while. What kind of magic did that, in the way it tore a man to pieces with a simple look?
Hastily, the woman began the newest entry. A drawing of the woman, then the male Craven, then their victim. After that, a simple step-by-step illustration of precisely what had happened to him. At first, she used a thinner charcoal piece, outlining the figure of a man, then less details, and a change in expression. In the last image, the “man” was no more than a charcoal smudge.

Female Craven -
Magic: Tore a man to shreds; flash of light. Off-white, gel-like substance left behind.
Dangerous. Powerful.
Gnosis? What God has the power to do that?
Similar to what Menna did. Shielding. Spiritism?

Turning her attention to the male Craven, Aislyn began a rough sketch of him, as well. Her job was made harder by the fact that he wouldn’t stop moving. Of course, he was moving to avoid death, but would it kill him to allow the artist a good look at him for just a few ticks?
In hindsight, it probably would.

Male Craven -
Magic: Shields? Made of light?
Seemed Gnosis-like. God of protection? Do we have one of those?

The man’s image was much rougher than the woman’s, his features distorted by Aislyn’s constant re-working of them. One moment, he looked one way, the next, another. Charcoal didn’t erase well, but what else was she to do?
By the time twenty chimes had passed, the woman had a page full of tiny faces of the man. Five chimes after that, she gave in. Looking down at the face on her page, Aislyn tried to figure out just who he was. There was a Craven heir- that much was common knowledge- but was this the one? Deadly handsome; a man of wax, he had been described as. Scrutinizing the image, then the real thing, the artist wondered.
Was this handsome?
Abandoning the sketch, she turned the page. It didn't really matter who the man was. And, truth be told, Aislyn didn’t really find men to be all that handsome in general.

Shaking out her wrist, the artist titled the next entry as cheerily as she could.

The Undead.

[Aislyn Leavold]

Not all that special.
A fight of numbers; lots of dead, but not all that smart. Or strong.
Normal.
Can’t carry weapons, but work in groups. Horde-like.

Beneath the entry, Aislyn chose a subject to draw. Shambling and humanoid, it was quickly cut down, ruining any image opportunity. But, luckily, behind the once-again-dead, there were hundreds more, almost identical figures. When one was killed, the artist simply moved to the next reference. Her job was easy. Short, clipped strokes with a small charcoal piece. Outline of the head, then the shoulders, then the arms. Torso, waist, legs. An empty figure, awaiting details. Then came the finer points. Face, chest, neck. Texture on the skin, expression in the eyes. Dead...ness.

That was a fun detail to add.

Around the original figure, several others gained form, sketchier and less thorough than the first. Strength in numbers, after all. Soon, she had a tiny little horde assembled on the paper, surrounding by small notes.

Seem to be instinctual.
Easily defeated as one, challenging as many.

At one point, Aislyn had momentarily paused from her drawing to witness what seemed to be a warrior who believed himself a genius, attaching a flaming rag to an arrow and setting a group of nearby dead aflame. Proud of himself and somehow convincing himself that would kill the figures, he turned away.
That was the last mistake he made.
The group of now-firey humanoids vaulted the barrier, and, before either Craven could intervene, tackled the man. Shaking her head, Aislyn tried to ignore the fact that she felt so numb to the death of another and added a footnote to her page.

Do not like fire.

After the melted monsters had been successfully spirit-shredded, Aislyn decided she had seen enough. She had her notes, and her drawings, and it was time to move on. There were at least three fronts that were active battlefields, from what she had seen, and if she were to be any use at all, the artist needed to document all of them. Preferably by the time Syna dipped in the sky.
Packing up her things, Aislyn reattached her bag and quiver to her back, keeping her crossbow on hand. After her run-in with the beetle, she was in no way in a mood to be caught off guard. Or caught in general.

Down the stairs again, and out the door, Aislyn quickly slipped away back the way she came. If this was the Northern Front, that meant a right turn there, left turn here, and she would be....
Somewhere.

I have an excellent sense of direction, she would tell herself, as she turned away from yet another dead end. Time passed slower than the shambling behemoths of the Western Guard, the sun dragging across the sky in a sad forward march. Small flies followed Aislyn as she walked, turning her annoyance from the drone of battle to the drone of buzzing.

As she moved onwards, the woman swore the flies got bigger. House flies, to horse flies, to what was absolutely another monsterous thing, until one settled down on her arm and hissed at her.
Hissed.

Gods, she hated insects.

Swatting at the thing, it took flight again, joining a growing crowd that appeared fascinated by her right arm in particular. For a moment, she was curious, until the blackness of the flies connected to the black stain that had been left on her forearm from her unfortunate altercation with a slime amalgamate’s slime two days prior. It had faded to a dull grey, but everywhere the insect touched, it blackened once again. Soon enough, Aislyn was walking in a hunch, cradling the appendage. There hadn’t been any particular side effects to the discolouration, other than the inconvenience of looking like she was constantly covered in dust. Which she was, of course, but that was besides the point.

Taking shelter from the outside, Aislyn found herself in what appeared to be a tower of sorts. Made of somewhat sturdy looking stone, it could have been a shop, in a different life. A counter that the woman eagerly jumped was the only thing barring entry to a stairway leading up to a higher level. The store’s shelves were empty, seeming to have been abandoned at least a season or more prior. The stairs were in roughly the same shape, though luckily, no locked doors or beetle-spiders stood in the way this time.

Above the shop, atop the stairs laid a room, presumably a bedroom, that was full of a whole lot of nothing. A singular, cracked window was about the extent of the decorations, allowing warm light to seep in and illuminate the dust particles that dances around the room. Preparing for a repeat of her previous situation, she set up her supplies, assuming the position of an overwatching shadow above the Western Guard. Below her, a fair distance away, a war was fought, much more violent than she remembered. She had fought on the same lines forty-eight bells before, but that paled in comparison to the ferocity of the fighting she saw before her.

If the situation before had been desperate, this was desolate.
Pointless.
Nonsensical.
Insane.
But then again, this was Alvadas.

[Aislyn Leavold]

Menna-
Definitely magic. Spiritism -probably.
Controls ghosts…? How does that work?
Is Spiritism a gnosis? Does Dira give gnosi?
How many others have this magic? Where do they learn?
How does it work?

When Aislyn was younger, she had always been told stories of magic. Of the evil wizard and his evil ways that took over the world with evil evilness, courtesy mainly of her mentor. But that was the same mentor that had warned her of the dangers of her gnosis, and Ionu had never failed her before. Then, if this magic was within the people she had seen, how many others held it beneath the surface? There’s no magic in Alvadas, she had always been told, but this was proving quite the contrary.
What other forms of power was she missing out on?

Ape-
Apparently sentient. Race is Jamaha Jarorua Jamorua Jamoura.
Also apparently the mount of Okana.

Okana-
Fortune teller turned strategist. Not magical? Probably magical. Not shielding, or spiritism, though. What else is there?
White hair, white skin, perfect fortunes. And now rallying Alvads in battle.

Engaging herself in a drawing of the fortune teller, Aislyn posed the woman atop her simian companion, her face blank in the fact that the artist couldn’t trust herself to truly capture the expression of pure expressionlessness that played across her features. It was rather ironic. She appeared to hold no emotion on the battlefield, and her caricature had no face at all. The rest of her was detailed besides that, however. An impassive but impressive leader that no one would have guessed was capable of such high quality leadership.
Tuning out the world, Aislyn pulled the notebook closer to her face in order to detail the fur on the ape-man’s back. She had never been all that great at drawing fur, but practice made… Better drawings. Far from perfect. Tiny details, fur, and water. The three things the artist absolutely despised drawing. And the smudges!
She had been drawing for years, but still wasn't good enough to avoid smudging the petching charcoal every time she adjusted her grip.

Stroke, stroke, readjust. The pattern of an artist. Stroke, stroke, readjust. Stroke, stroke, readjust. Stroke, stroke, buzz.

Buzz?

One of the flies had worked its way into the building, once again resting on her arm, only to be immediately crushed by the swift movement of a hand and a thick piece of charcoal. Disgusting. Returning to her work, the artist tried to recreate her pattern. Stroke, stroke, readjust. Stroke, buzz, readjust. Stroke, readjust, buzz, buzz. Buzz, buzz, buzz.

Swatting at the fly again, Aislyn realized that, once again, they were growing in number. Thankfully, they didn’t appear to be growing in size anymore. But begged the question; where were the things coming from? There had to be a hive somewhere, or… A mother.

Oh dear.

Looking up from her work, Aislyn found nothing but a fairly cracked inch of glass in between her and a very large, very angry, very slimey mother bug. Of which the woman had just murdered two of its young. In the face of danger, her concentration lapsed, and 'Maya' momentarily fell away, flickering back to the darker shadow of what was below.
That only seemed to make the insect angrier.

Oh dear.

[Aislyn Leavold]

In the next few moments, there was a lot of noise.
Aislyn had pushed her luck. She’d ventured too close to the battlefield without pausing to move if the front lines changed position. The Western Guard had lost ground. Thus, the monsters on the street had grown closer. And since the woman had not changed building, or even repositioned herself out of sight of the window, she was practically inviting the undead to come spear her on a kabob.
Or an antennae.

The dull buzz became an angry roar, the crashing of glass the most prominent of the noises Aislyn heard. The second most prominent was the smack of flesh on stone as the artist forced herself up, off the ground, away from the ground, away from the bugs, and away from the window. The next sound was the crash of brick, the blood rushing in her ears, and the scream of a thousand voices in her head telling her to go up, go up.
So up the stairs she went. Further into the tower, the unknown, and with somewhat of a head start.
But, unfortunately, the thousand tiny voices in her head had overlooked one small detail.
Insects had wings.
Insects could fly.

As she scrambled up the stairs, the queen bee- or fly- or whatever it was- followed along, crashing clumsily into every wall available but following none the less. Its body left slimey smudges on the bricks, a translucent trail following the translucent body. A glance over her shoulder confirmed the fact that the bug appeared to be more slime than body, though she wasn’t exactly going to stick around to investigate.
Notebook still clutched tightly in hand, Aislyn eventually made it to the rooftop, where she and the thousand-voices in her head quickly came to agreement that her earlier decision had been a very, very bad idea.

There was nowhere to run on a rooftop. That crossed off flight as an option. Now she had only one: fight.

Her crossbow was loaded- that much was her only advantage. It would take her a chime to load again no matter the circumstances, and no matter how endangered her life may have been. She had one shot. One arrow, and the bug was coming up fast.
As soon as the insect emerged onto the roof, Aislyn pulled the trigger.

One could say she hit the target.
One would not be wrong, per say.
However, if one were to say she disabled the target, that would be a fallacious statement.
A body made of slime left a being without much in the way of a brain, but certainly quite a bit of versatility. Especially when it came to being riddled with arrows.

The image of the archer Aislyn had witnessed dissolved in a similar slime being when he had misjudged the effectiveness of his arrows came to mind.

My Ionu,
If you can hear me now, as I pray you do, I ask you, revered, for just one thing.
Please allow me to survive.

Desperate, now, Aislyn considered the jump. The nearest rooftop wasn’t that far away; if she got a running start, she could make it. She just needed speed, agility, and Ionu’s blessing.
She had maybe one of those things. If she were lucky.

Tossing her possessions across the chasm first in an attempt to lighten her load, the woman drew her knife. If she could delay her death by a few moments, she could distract the thing- or at least disable it for long enough to gain space to run up to the jump. Just slash it, and run. Easy. Easy peasy slimey squeesy.

Waving her knife point-forward at the smaller insects, the artist managed to take out a few of the less deadly annoyances before the main problem came forward. Letting out an inhuman scream that absolutely should not have come out of a bug’s mouth, the blob-like creature came forward, large wings dripping a black ooze that made worryingly sizzling noises when it came in contact with the ground.

Slash, run, jump. A new pattern. This time, not of drawing, but of survival.
She slashed. She was clumsy. She was uncoordinated. There was apparently more to wielding a knife than holding and slashing. Who would have guessed?
A large piece of goop narrowly missed her slashing arm, and she attempted to duck underneath it. Gods save her, this was why she chose the bow over sword. Being so close to the action was truthfully not all that enjoyable at all. Too much near-death and suffering for all parties involved.

Slash, run, jump.

The ringing in her ears settled a bit in the moment Aislyn had to breathe after passing her adversary. A moment of silence, like the eye of the storm. The next step was running. Running, which was also not her forte. She was naturally agile, yes, but an untrained natural ability was almost as bad as no ability at all.

Petch, why couldn’t she just be good at things?

Focusing on the other rooftop, Aislyn tried to imagine it as any other circumstance. She had jumped rooftops before. Easy. This was exactly the same. She even had first crack at escape, as the fly-slime-thing was still reeling from losing a small part of its left side. It had obviously not expected a fight.
It was hard to expect things when you didn’t have a brain.

Slash, run, jump.

Ionu preserve her soul. So close, so close. She had done it. A few more steps. A few more ticks. Despite her inability to do anything right, she had done it.
She was free.
Or, she had been.
Until something grabbed her hair.

[Aislyn Leavold]

Insects did not have hands.
This was a well known fact.
Insects did, however, have jaws. Jaws that grabbed onto things and did not let go. Jaws that, in a pinch when one was in danger of letting its lunch run free, were very good at grabbing onto hair. Jaws that, when they were also oozing something that had burned a hole in the ground, you did not want to stay attached to said hair for very long. Unfortunately for Aislyn, her hair was in a wonderfully convenient plait that was very easy to bite down on. Convenient for the insect, not so much for the woman.

The one thousand voices from before had returned, although this time the helpful advice had devolved into simply screaming. After all, there was something very not-nice actively chewing its way towards Aislyn’s head, and that was not something that happened everyday. Or ever.
Because something not very nice chewing on one’s head often leads to a well known condition called death.

However, Aislyn had already had her run-in with death that day, and with the mental thought process of essentially knife-hair-run, she cut her losses.

And her hair.

In a half-jump, half-fall, the artist made it to the other side. In an uncoordinated, awkward heap, she fell, remembering only at the last second to bend her knees in order to avoid shattering every bone in her legs. The fall wasn’t even that great; six feet or so at most, but with the possibility of death and a thousand voices screaming collectively in her ears, the woman felt like she was falling for ages.

Once she was on solid ground again, there wasn’t much left to do. There was nothing to mourn, no fresh wound to heal. There was just “Maya”’s ribbon, dissolving in a pile of acidic sludge on a rooftop of a building Aislyn would never lay eyes on again. And the only thought going through her mind as her hands began to shake and the adrenaline began to wear off was that she had never cut her own hair before.
It had always been her mother to do it.
As an adult, she was fully capable, of course. But she also hadn’t cut her hair since she was a teenager, leaving it to grow long past her back.
Now, it barely reached her shoulders.

Deciding that perhaps retreat was the best of her options, Aislyn made her way down from the rooftop, her legs aching with the stress of the day. War was hard. Everything hurt. People were dead and dying and Alvadas would never be the same. She was trying her best, but she was not a fighter.

Aislyn was an artist.
And goddammit, she was going to draw.

Once she was on solid ground again, Aislyn made her way back to the Southern Bastion. It wasn’t exactly hard to find, especially when one followed the endless stream of supplies and bodies being ferried back and forth. All roads led home, it appeared. Or as ‘home’ as one could go, considering she essentially was living out of a tent, beside every other misplaced Alvad in the mirrored city. All left to wonder what had become of the original Alvadas, and what would become of them.

In the Bastion, there were too many people. Far too many. But she couldn’t change that. She just had to keep moving, avoiding the eyes of any worker that needed help, or any wounded warrior that decided she looked like she could bandage a gash. Her only mission was self-preservation, as it always had been, and as it always should be.

Some things never changed.

[Aislyn Leavold]

Other things, however, changed quite a bit.

In the “privacy” of her allotted tent, Aislyn unpacked her supplies. Everything was still relatively unbroken, aside from whatever was making the crunching noise in the bottom of her bag.
The woman almost didn’t want to find out.

Emptying her possessions, the empty frame of what was once a mirror fell from the base of the rucksack, followed by a hundred tiny shards of reflective glass, a tiny Aislyn in each and every one of them. Petch. That wasn’t good. It wasn’t the end of the world, but the mirror had been nice. Valuable. Reliable.
But, apparently, not smashproof. Seven years of bad luck, then.
Picking up the shards, Aislyn tried to reassemble her lost frame. The pieces all still fit together, of course, they just lay separated from each other, segregating her image into several tiny reflections instead of a singular, completed one. And, when the thing was “fixed”, she quickly came to a conclusion.
She looked like shyke.

Allowing herself a deep breath, Aislyn tried to collect herself. ”Maya” had stayed true, aside from a few slips, but now it was time for her to relax. To melt away.
Gradually, ”Maya” faded, her blonde hair becoming dark brown, pure white skin coarsening and revealing scars. Beneath her illusion, she looked… Different. Not just different from Maya, though. Different from Aislyn. Her hair was choppy, sliced at the shoulders and uneven. Ugly and misplaced. Her cheek bore a fresh scar, claws that would stand as a reminder of how easy it was to die. Almost die. Her skin was dirty and her face was unwashed. Her clothes were in better condition than the other outfit had been, but wouldn’t be so for much longer. There was already a burnt hole where some of the slime had grazed her sleeve.

Pulling her shirt over her head, Aislyn told herself she had survived far too much for her age.
Her body was riddled with scars of the same caliber, both faded and new. A healing bite mark on her upper arm. The mark of Ionu lying between her left shoulder and her neck, pulsating with a faint azure glow. Thin, jagged scars from seasons prior decorating her left arm.

Staring down at the marks, Aislyn gradually turned her hands over, investigating the scars with an intensity she hadn’t before. The cuts on the overside of her arm were from shattered glass in the House of Broken Mirrors, now a full year before. Similar, horizontal cuts lined her wrists, much more faded with time, and from a much sharper blade. A reminder of how hopeless things could seem. Identical lines were drawn on her other wrist, and her thighs.
A reminder of how time continued on, with or without her presence in life.

Setting the mirror down on the floor in front of her, Aislyn did the best she could with the materials at hand. She had really done a number on her hair; in her panic, she hadn't even cleanly cut it. Then again, when there was a large, deadly insect feeding off the back of your head, one didn't have a whole lot of time to decide whether or not losing one's hair was worth it. Picking up the knife again, she cleaned it on a spare rag, before aligning it at her ears. She pulled a handful of deep brown hair away from her neck, trying her best to get a clean cut. The sharpness of the blade certainly helped, but the lack of a quality mirror certainly did not. A few chimes later, she had a decent evenness throughout, resulting in her hair just barely grazing her shoulders. A new look. How ironic. She had broken her mirror, lost her hair, gained several new scratches, bumps, and been bruised in places she didn’t know could be bruised. Her look was new, alright. And beat up.

Falling back onto the “cushioned” ground of her temporary home, Aislyn closed her eyes. She hurt everywhere. The day wasn’t even half over yet, but the limited bells of sleep she had achieved was wearing on her. She just wanted to sleep.

Gods, she just wanted to sleep.

[Aislyn Leavold]

83rd of Winter, 515 AV
Evening

When she opened her eyes again, the hole in the roof of her tent glowered down at her with the setting rays of Syna’s light.

What time was it?

Picking up the shattered mirror, Aislyn used one hand to hold the shards in their place and the other to run over her face, remasking herself under the guise of ”Maya”. Bright blue eyes, smooth, pale face. Long, blonde hair.

…

Short, blonde hair.

With her mirror in pieces, it took her ages to actually get her illusions right. Even then, she had no idea if ”Maya” was actually complete. The shards of glass were fine when all she had to do was sever the ends of her hair (she could feel that easy enough), now she had to perform a balancing act just to go outside. If she ever needed to change an illusion in a pinch, she'd have no chance.

Outside the tent, the woman’s suspicious were confirmed: the sun hung low in the sky, not quite reaching the change of colours yet, but certainly approaching. The business of the Bastion never wavered, a chorus of various shouts and screams and conversations that never stopped, never rested. It was a miracle she had slept through it. It was a miracle anyone could sleep through it.
Perhaps the Alvads were growing more used to war than they thought.

The Eastern Advance was the last front Aislyn had to visit. It was also the furthest away; having pushed the undead back more successfully than the other two fronts combined. Or that was what she had heard, at least. There had been no paths leading to the victorious battlefield as far as the artist had found, meaning she was relying on blind luck and the vague direction of away from the sun to bring her to her destination. Her aching legs complained, but she pushed on nonetheless. She had a long way to go.

It was strange how much could change in the span of a few, short days. Many lives had left Alvadas, many more changed forever. Aislyn’s was certainly one of them. She had grown stronger, more endurant. Her bones were still fragile; an allusion to her Zith blood. But she didn’t feel fragile anymore. She had been fighting almost nonstop; the first day on the battlefield, the second in the Bastion. She had walked ten thousand extra steps than she ever had in the days before, interacted with a thousand more people than she ever had ever. She had saved several lives, been saved countless times more. She had resurfaced her ability to shoot a crossbow, and begun to figure out how to properly wield a knife. She had personally taken the lives of at least fifty amalgamatic nightmares.

She had learned how to kill.
Really, properly, kill.

Elongating her strides, Aislyn tried to push herself towards the Advance faster. Several times, she had to stop, hiding in an alleyway for something to pass. There weren’t many others along the path, though that was a blessing in disguise. Aislyn hid from the living and dead alike; if someone called her attention, she’d be an ass to ignore it. If she wasn’t seen, there was no problem.

No point in being assigned a job when she already had one to do.

[Aislyn Leavold]

Half a bell later, the sky burned a fiery orange and Aislyn had arrived.

Severus-
The Silver Serpant.
Doesn’t appear to be a fan of fighting.
Everyone listens to him (of course).

One gnosis mark of Illusionism.

She had noticed the feeling about the Speaker when the illusionist had first met him; back when the Speakers had come for Wanda. A certain feeling of familiarity she couldn’t push away. It was only when she had sensed the same feeling from Menna had Aislyn realized- it was Ionu’s mark. She had never noticed it before. The sudden recognition of a stranger on the street, even if they had never met before. Some more powerful than others.
Those were marks.
It happened so rarely, the illusionist had dismissed it as deja vu. But now, she knew better. Her mark, through Ionu’s power, allowed her to sense the marks of others. Or, at least, those marked by Ionu.

That was a peculiar power.

It had also opened her eyes to just how many others shared her power. Young orphans to old beggars, bearing the same mark she had earned. It was disheartening, and at the same time, warming. Alvadas had always been a locational embodiment of nothing is as it seems, but this took it to a new level. In a way, they were all connected.
That was unfortunate.

Twin Cravens-
Angry twin: Everard.
Tactical twin: Elijah Winar E---
Wield the same magic as other Cravens.
Angry twin utilizes angry weapons. Other twin uses shields.
Shielding?
Magic sword creation; made of the same thing as shields? Different magic?
Same magic as female Craven, less powerful.

How many magics are there?

Neither twin gave off the same familiarity that the Serpant had. None of the Cravens had. The magic, though, that puzzled her. She needed a way to defend herself outside of the confines of her physical strength, perhaps magic was the answer. Her illusionism had never been used offensively; if she combined one magic with another, what could be done?
After all, gnosi were just another kind of magic, right?
The problem with Alvadas was the intense secrecy that surrounded the act. After all, Aislyn had heard nothing of magic- or at least, not of the offensive kind- before now. All she had been told was of how dangerous and impure it was. Yet there before her was the perfect example of how magic could be wielded for good.
What else could be done?

Eastern Advance
Living side- teamwork. Twin combat.
Dead side- extremely dangerous creatures. Intelligent?
Creatures don’t wield weapons, but appear to have weapons built into themselves.
Easily overpower the lone fighter.

City appears to favour the living.

The city favoured those fighting for it, almost as if it still lived and breathing as it had before. But the breathing was labored and the life limited, now. Ionu had been absent in the eyes of the Alvads.
Not in Aislyn’s eyes.
Now that she thought about it, though, Ionu’s presence was rather… Muddled. The usual, ever present feeling of the deity’s company that seemed to eminate from her marked shoulder wasn’t quite missing, but… Confused.

Where had her god gone?

Almost as if in response to her thought, a shiver seemed to go through the city. A sudden change.
A shift.

Something happened.

The undead began to retreat.
That was not something Aislyn had seen before. The dead at the Eastern Advance had seemed more intelligent than the others, yes, but they had never seemed smart enough to actually form ranks or an army. They just blindly fought, killing anything that moved or got in their way. But now, they were moving as one. Away from the fighting, and away from the living.

As Syna’s light left the land, the tide of the battle began to change.

From her position in the alley, Aislyn had to move forward several times in order to keep up with the frontlines, sticking to the shadows along the side of the street. Notebook in hand, she tried to find some reason behind the movement. As suddenly as the war had increased in intensity, it suddenly decreased. A flatline. Soon, the living were slashing through the dead, forcing them back, back to wherever they had come from. Gleeful battle cries rung through the air as the half-Zith’s eyes adjusted to the darkness of the night.

”We’re gaining ground, continue, continue on! Fight for all you have fought for, let the war be won for all those that have fallen,"

Above the chaotic shouts of war, the voice of the Serpent overruled all other sounds,

"Fight for the Alvadas that will rise again!”