• Solo • Letting Go

[Kasoria]

It had been going on for a while. Relentlessly. Sometimes there'd be a lull. Few trills. Few bits. Long enough for them to think maybe his ire had been spent and his strength with it. Then it began again. Louder. Harder. Echoes through the air becoming vibrations that seemed to shake their ears and make them flinch. It wasn't just the sound, though. Bone and flesh on wood is hardly a terrifying thing. Not until you know the rest of the story.

Most of those at the Knight's Rest did not, and were simply perturbed by this incessant, irritating disturbance.

Most of the Etzori delegation did not, but they knew the source, and knew it spoke of rage from one many of them had grown up fearing.

The Band and Fagan Manclin knew the story. They were not afraid, or annoyed. They were simply nervous, and in their own way, grieving.

"How long's it been?"

"Few bits more'n when yeh last fuckin' asked." Raand raised his falchion and squinted down the edge. Not bad. Could be better. "He'll stop when he stops."

Belial grumbled but didn't press the issue, or the tone used. Usually if Raand got that snippy with him, a few choice insults or the usual squaring-off would be needed. Until Mikiros separated them, anyway (never Vaul; foul little git just enjoyed the show). But the big man was absent, and even Vaul didn't seem much amused by anything. He just sat at the table, playing endless slow games of chess with Manclin. Both men moved like automatons, staring at the board, the pieces, each other, with long faces. Branded butchered and scrubbed nobleman. Both alike in misery.

Raand cleaned his gear. Belial stayed on lookout. Mikiros was in the hallway, watching the stairs, because someone needed to be. But Belly couldn't stay on that roof forever, and the noise was even worse than-

Another shattering series of impacts. Loud and fast enough to make everyone start. Ferocity screaming from each one that they could imagine the damage every blow could do to flesh. Raand's smooth slide of the whetstone slipped, and he cursed, starting over. Manclin winced and refilled his wine glass. Everyone just... kept on. Like nothing was wrong!

"Are you all mad?? Belial hissed, and everyone looked at him. He didn't shrink under his glare. He didn't shirk when those bastards took his fucking foot, he wouldn't quake now. "It's been three trials. He can't just lock himself away. We have a job, the mission-"

"Y'think he dun' know that?"

"Oh, and since when were youse so clued into his mind?" Vaul returned his snarl with a hooded look of his own. Damnit, even that little bastard wouldn't rise to the bait. "C'mon, we know what happened was hard but-"

"No, yeh don't," Raand set down his sword and shook his head. "Wunt just losin' someone he worked wiv', Bel. Y'know that."

Belial glowered for a few moments and Raand could see all the impatient, impetuous, dumbshit arguments lining up behind his tongue. How they needed to get over it. Start making moves again. Do what they came to do. He was the leader, he was the commander, their best fighter and now only mage and as such he couldn't just lock himself up and rage at the Fates. That someone needed to step up instead, if he wouldn't.

The bald man stood up with a single, jerking motion. Fast enough to make Belial take a step back and brush a hand over the bow across his back. Raand chose to ignore that, and make the broader point. He walked over to the door to their suite, and opened it. Beyond it was the door to their garden, and beyond that-

CRACK

That one had to have broken bone. It just had to. But instead, a moment later, it was repeated, and it was solid wood breaking instead. Raand gestured to the door and smiled without any humor at all.

"Then you tell him all dat."

Belial looked for a moment like he would. Even shuffled his feet forward... until he stopped. Raand shook his head, and closed the door. Voice softer now, he spoke again.

"Man jus' lost his daughter, Belly. If dis is what he needs t'move on, so fuckin' be it."

[Kasoria]

It wasn't going away. It wasn't getting better. He wasn't moving past it. Three times the sun had risen and fallen and the wound was not closing. He breathed and ate and shit and occasionally talked and mimicked the actions of being alive. But he was still living the last moment he saw her. Still frozen in that handful of heartbeats where he could have used every dram of his strength, every breath of his Sparks, with all the ferocity he'd been nurturing since he was a child-

He did all these things, and blinked, and he was back there. Watching her go. Forcing himself not to interfere. Knowing he'd never see her again.

CRACK

The pain and the anger wouldn't leave him. So be it. He would embrace it. Better to find balance with agony and live with it, rather than be beaten to the ground.

CRACK-CRACK

Knuckles and knees and elbows like granite hammered into polished oak and Kasoria barely felt the impacts. It took a lot for him to notice pain; he'd endured so much of it over the decades that he truly thought parts of him were just... dead to feeling. Conditioned or numbed or atrophied, it all meant the same thing. Stripped down to his waist and bare feet, he performed endless katas in the empty storage room, lit by sparse candles, and every time his blows connected-

liver kidney ribs throat jaw temple eyes

-he waited for something in him to break. Something that could stop him, slow him down, make him forget for a single moment what he'd done. What he'd agreed to. The arcs he would miss and the history he'd thrown away. But his knuckles were worn to blood bone and that was it. His knees were scraped raw and nothing else. His elbows ached and twinged but they did not break. He was cursed by his own legend, and no matter what-

ankle knee pelvis

CRACK

breastbone

CRACK

neck nose

SNAP

Everything broke but him. Including the dummy. The last high kick smashed the wooden head clear off its shoulders and sent it spinning across the room. Kasoria stood there in stunned, panting silence for a few trills. Heart hammering, sweat dripping, hair lank and clinging to his face. But the exhaustion wasn't fazing him. It wasn't enough to expend his energy and send him to fitful sleep. Just like his relentless training wasn't punishing him enough. And now...

You left her. You did nothing.

"She wanted this," he hissed to the headless dummy, fingers bunching so tight his knuckles crackled. "It was her fucking idea."

Oh, that make you feel better, does it? Then explain all this, old man. Three trials of punishing yourself. Three trials of failing to do your job. Of putting off what you want do do so badly.

His lips curled back from his teeth and a low growl rippled into the half-lit room. All trial the voice had been getting louder. Not just echoes of thought and proto-sentience like his Sparks, but the same one he always carried. Who never let him forget when he failed. Who reminded him, arc after arc, how much he'd lost because of his weakness, his pride, his misplaced anger. But this time, he'd done it all properly, correct? No frantic fuck up like Yaralon. He'd controlled himself, had been controlling himself, ever since they left that fucking city. Everything had gone off properly; the Etzori delegation was now in tight with the ruling powers of Scalvoris; all hail to the bright future ahead!

Damned if you do, fucked if you don't, old man. Where does that leave you?

"Survivin'. Like always."

Ah. That what this is, old man? He could almost see the grinning phantom Him gesture at the decapitated dummy, his ruined knuckles, the layer of sweat and sprayed blood around him. Three arcs worth of masochistic rage. What, another trial or two and you'll be spent? Over it? Ready to go on? What's that look like now, old man? Just blood and shadows until you're too slow one trial and they get you instead.

"Shut up," Kasoria growled, feeling a trio of thrumming entities wake in his bones and hear his anger. "Fucking useless."

Aye. But I'm not wrong, am I?

Kasoria closed his eyes and blotted it all out. Bad idea. He could see her clearer there. As she was, with no glamor. Just Maxine, not "Ophelia". In shackles and being led away. Keeping eye contact with him until her head was physically wrenched around. Silently telling him to not fuck this up, to let her do this, let her be in control of her life. He felt the hands of Miki and Raand on him, holding him back and being braver than the probably knew. Willing to restrain him even though they knew damn well he could end them both with a single spiteful moment.

He opened his eyes, and white light glared from them, instead of midnight black. Power thrummed in green and black pulses up his arms. Trans and Sov were dancing through his muscles, Abro grumbling in his blood, angered about the damage its host had done to itself. But the others were coming out to play, called by him without even realizing. For three trials he'd ignored them, battened them, muted them, letting his own flesh and muscle and training be all he would deploy-

His snarl became a grimace, and he changed his mind.

Two floors below, the owners of the Knight's Rest looked up, as the chandelier started to tremble.

[Kasoria]

They couldn't speak, of course. They weren't intelligent, barely even feeling. They were more ghosts of a thing not yet dead: their host. They took aspects of him, his personality, and built their own around it. There was a sense to it, for as much as that word could apply to magic. Abrogation? Protective, insular, mistrusting. Transmutation? Curious, questing, hungry for knowledge. Sovereign? Soaring, defiant, untamable. Whenever he used them, his Sparks seemed to echo with those feelings. But they did not speak. They could not use language, and likely had no idea how to.

But emotion? Well... to be a human was to live as a bundle of such things. So his Sparks knew them. And when he called them now, whispered into the space between his blood and bone, that sightless lightning was not mute nor cold.

It was anger. It was grief. It was hate.

And they were all there for him now.

Kasoria breathed deep and focused on channeling that power. Moved it into his fists as he raised them in a guard before the headless dummy. Set his mind not on guilt-ridden whispers but the cold, practical task. How to destroy completely. What he knew of his Sparks, he filtered through that outline. He could blast it across the room with Sovereign... but that would not destroy it. Ah, but he could corrode with Transmutation... but no, that was not immediate-

No. It could be. When paired with something else. All he needed was contact, and the strength to marry the three commands and two Sparks together.

Eyes still closed, Kasoria called both of them at once. He'd done that before, raised Abrogation shields while unleashing gusts with Sovereign, or turning the ground to spikes with Transmutation, but not so intimately, so immediately as-

His hand, knuckles no longer glowing but crackling with power, lashed out-

-slamming into the dummy dead center, blast of Sovereign energy bursting into the hard wood, but not alone-

-as a ripple of Transmutation pulsed into it the same instant his knuckles collided, Corrosion and Galvanize deployed at once-

He sees her face as she turns away and then the door closes and she's-

BOOM

The dummy is hurled back and keeps its form for maybe a second. Long enough for the Corrosion to spread through every inch of it, sped along by the addition of Galvanize. What would take nature decades and Kasoria's Transmutation alone bits, it accomplished in the time it takes for a man to blink slowly. The dummy rockets away from him whole... and spatters onto the opposite wall as a cloud of rotten wooden pieces. Kasoria's eyes burn white as he sees the last fragments fall onto the ground, wet splotch on the stone from where the rapidly-disintegrating mass hit hard enough to leave a trace.

His Sparks hiss and snarl within him. In their own, mindless way, as pleased as he is for this breakthrough. But these two and are the youngest and most ambitious of his Sparks, and they demand another demonstration. Ghosts of himself, as always. So it's mostly him but also a little of them that turns to another dummy as he spins and slams a barefooted kick into the stomach of it-

-unleashing the same trinity of spells as before, but faster this time, already getting easier with practice-

BOOM

The dummy fares no better than its destroyed sibling. Exploding into unnaturally aged fragments even as the brute force and Sovereign blast hurls it away. If it had been a man, whatever armor or even clothing he'd worn would have been obliterated... and he'd still have been thrown against the wall hard enough to break bone. For the first time in trials, Kasoria's lips curl into something close to a smile. The air around him vibrates with power, the thrill of it, the control that he has over all in this tiny domain, the opposite of its utter lacking he's felt since-

Since.

It comes back, but slowly. Digging rather than piercing through this heady accomplishment he feels. She is still gone. He still did not aid her. Now his Sparks wear on him, harsher than normal, the cost of wielding them harsher now he'd been barely eating and drinking for three trials of self-destruction. The smile slips away. The glow fades from his eyes, his hands, his feet... but there is new purpose there now. A reassurance, perhaps, that even in this... pointless destruction, there is something still to learn.

Even if all it does is distract you. Nothing has changed. Nothing is fixed.

Hey?

He opens his eyes, and for a moment, she is there. The ghost of her. The image of her. Just as she was. Being led away from them, almost dragged. A prisoner off to punishment... but he'd forgotten how she looked. How set her jaw was and how steady her gaze. She chose this. She wanted it. She was taking control of her life in the only way that mattered: deciding her future. She could have kept hiding, skulking behind "Ophelia", and wandering around her city like a wraith trapped in another's flesh. But she'd decided to take what was coming to her.

Maxine had to batter away at Kasoria all night for that lesson to stick. Almost all her hard work sloughed away when those old instincts rose up as he saw her being taken away-

She shook her head. The ghost now, the girl then.

I want this. I need this. Let me do this.

Let me go.

Raand was about to fucking lamp the bearded old Knight outside the doorway when it suddenly lurched open. Old boy was pissed about the noise, the shaking, the dust flaking down all across his bar, and wanted that "black-eyed little sod" out of there and somewhere... less structurally crucial. Raand was doing what he could but an ex-Knight wasn't exactly one to let down easy.

Him being a prick wasn't helping, and his hand was edging dangerously close to his blade when-

Both men gawped at the sight of him, the blood on his knuckles and knees and the sweat making him gleam, Raand's eyes widening as he saw the absolute destruction he'd wreaked on his targets. Not just battered or beaten or broken but... gone. He was halfways back across the hallway when he stopped. The other man's jaw clicked open, revealing a disbelieving hole in that matted beard. Kasoria looked from one to the other, sniffed, and kept walking. Raand was about to ask something when he stopped, turned-

"m'hungry."

Raand swallowed. The Raggedy Man's eyes were red. Either he'd been rubbing them, or...

"There's food."

Kasoria nodded, and went to eat.

[Kasoria]

Rewards Requested

Notes/Warnings: This started off as just a little tale dealing with Kasoria' angst, then the thought hit me to come up with something new. Something I've been pondering for a while. A new trick for an old dog, as it were. Hope you like it!

Thread: Letting Go
City/Area: Scalvoris Town

Skill Knowledge:
Meditation (Master): The Clarity of Mind to Wield Multiple Sparks Simultaneously
Sovereign (Master): Combining Transmutation with Propel to Obliterate AND Send Flying a Target
Strength (Master): Kicking the Head Clean off a Wooden Training Dummy
Transmutation (Master): Combining Corrode with Galvanize to Near-Instantly Rot a Target to Debris

!	Message from: Winston
	Done!

[Winston]

Review & Rewards

Feedback

You PC's name comes with a Blue language warning built in :-p

I really love how well you build your narrative with your NPCs. They form integral and contributing aspects of the story and are not just one-line stand-ins.

The image of "Then you tell him all dat." set aside the horrid sounds and breaking made me giggle.

The way you play out the motivations of your sparks is really good and adds so much to things without being a noisy collection of voices in his head to try and track as a reader.

All round a really good read, thanks for the great thread.

My only request... Please consider using the knowledge tags These make the review process much smoother for Reviewers

I hope you enjoy your rewards and also get some resolution on his loss, if such a thing is even possible.

Rewards

• Renown: 5
• XP: 10

Knowledges

• Meditation: The Clarity of Mind to Wield Multiple Sparks Simultaneously
• Sovereign: Combining Transmutation with Propel to Obliterate AND Send Flying a Target
• Strength: Kicking the Head Clean off a Wooden Training Dummy
• Transmutation: Combining Corrode with Galvanize to Near-Instantly Rot a Target to Debris

Winston's Catch of the Day is YOU!