A Little Something New For The Fanfixforums!
Zig
...I am Captain Planet! Join Date: 2002-10-23 Member: 1576Members
...I am Captain Planet! Join Date: 2002-10-23 Member: 1576Members
awright errybody!
keep an open mind here. if you don't like ragnarok online, that's okay. this isn't about RO. this is my fanfiction. ^_^
i wrote a good amt of fix while playing ragnarok online. all the characters mentioned are friends of mine that i know really well.
this is the story of Sigfod, a battle-blacksmith, my favorite character in any RPG i ever played.
just looking for some commentary.
if you need anything explained, say so. the audience i was aiming at was one who'd played RO for a while, and knew most of the characters personally as friends. if you were there, things would connect perfectly. but if anything needs explaining, just say so.
******************
TSA marine: OMG C0RNMANd0R TEHRS LORKS ON TEH CL0rF!!!
[faints]
[dreams]
************
_______________
<span style='font-size:11pt;line-height:100%'>Weary, I trudge down the stone walk, boots slapping, muddy. Light, mirthful voices come scattered from across the clearing. Warriors and wanderers are gathered at the mouth of the Payon Caves. I pause at the door to the tool shop, in brief contemplation, and then sit at the side of the doorway.
Back against the damp, cool stone, I close my eyes. I think. Tired legs lie slack in front of me, exhausted arms fall limp to my sides. Gloves stained with the filthy work of the day seem to relax in the dew-speckled grass. A personification of myself, I suppose. The bustle of Prontera, my home, bothers me not... But the sharp, sweet air of the East wafts its way to my soul, and I am calm.
Shifting my sword, now in its scabbard, I stand. Gripping a smooth wooden handle, I drag my cart into the shop. Tonight, the shop owner pays me a substantial forty-thousand zeny for the pelts in my cart. It'll sustain me for the better part of a week, but as my gaze shifts to the weathered gloves, to the beaten sheath, and to the mud - and blood - caked boots, I am dissatisfied. My view shifts upward again, and now I see the other occupants of the shop: a knight at the bench, armor glinting dimly, sipping at an ale. A hunter, counting coins at a table, with some wench admirer. I cannot help but feel jealousy. Grunting, I turn to leave.
A merchant. Shifting restlessly, she takes to her feet, but sits again. A look in her eyes I have seen elsewhere. They are my own. Tired. She labors as I do. I think to approach her - she is beautiful. It is only as I step nearer that I begin to identify an intensity, a flame in her eyes. Purpose.
Once again, my gaze falls to my own person. Plain. Weathered.
I find myself staring, then, back to her. She <i>is</i> beautiful.. absentmindedly brushing violet locks from her face, her brown eyes watching.. knowingly.
"What?"
I am taken aback. She speaks to <i>me</i>. "It's nothing.. I thought I saw something."
"You look tired."
"I am... I spent most of the day hunting," I sputter. My tired mind isn't fit for chatter at the moment.
"Your eyes.. you're lost."
I am perfectly aware of where I am. She obviously speaks of something other than my whereabouts. "What are you saying?"
Looking away, she rises, and leans against the wall. "I've been hunting, it seems, all my life. I know the hardship you face every day. But look at what you've earned. You're fed. You've a place to sleep, I imagine."
"And you?" I can think of nothing else to say.
"I have a home. That's not the point." The knight's stein clatters onto a table, and he strides out the door, letting it shut behind him. "You don't appreciate what you're given. You reap what you sow."
I open my mouth to disagree, to say anything. I am betrayed. There was no such hunting. It was a mindless, solitary killing. My eyes fall to the axe at her side. I know at once that she is one of the true adventurers. I feel genuine admiration for this girl. I look down, and shift my feet, thinking of something, anything to say.
I look up.
She is gone.
****
<i>Emperium</i>...
The word glides off the tongue like the glint of the metal itself... lustrous, inspiring.
<i>Empowering</i>.
It is harder, these days, to find the angst I felt months before, like a weight in my mind. The weight is gone, and I float, free to laugh with pride at my own fruitful labor and good fortune.
An archer friend of mine called Avalon, hunting the undead in the caves around Geffen, recounts being set upon by a party of zombie Orks. Notched <i>five</i> arrows, he tells me, and put one through each of their skulls from the same drawn string.
The very thought.. that shameless, greedy fool of a rogue. <i>"The biggest ov' 'em dropped this here stone.. lucky find, eh?"</i>
I'm willing to bet he stole it. He was always drawn to the thieves' guild but speculated against it, figured that even the burglars had to contribute a tax to the guild's treasury.
Even so... not my business whose Emperium it was. Prontera square cares not from whence it came. Only for how much. But the thought of pawning has no room to fit in our excited minds, to shine in our anxious eyes.
"D'yeh think there're any rules teh 'stablishin' a guild?" the archer asks as we cross the castle's moat.
"I couldn't say, myself... but ask me if I <i>care</i>, Av. Just ask me."
"Yeh ****.. yer only in this for the glory, yeh are."
"Damned if I'm not, Av. Damned if I'm not. And I'll love you always for it."
"Hah... and I, you, friend."
"No, no hugging required, Av-"
"Yeh filthy ****, I was doin nothin' of the sort-" On the drawbridge we wrestle each other to the hardwood plank, laughing, tumbling.
"I'm willing to - *rgh* - <i>bet</i>, Av, that there're Crocodiles in that water.."
"Aye, you'll - *huff* - be the first to <i>meet</i> em, Sig..."
"That'll be the DAY, Av.. whoa, WHOahoahoa!!" I fall backwards from the side of the drawbridge laughing, sun in my eyes.
"<i>ENOUGH, sirs.</i>" Something thumps into my back with a sturdy pressure, tilting me until I'm vertical on the edge of the bridge. A Royal Guard.. I figured there should be guards around the castle.
"Hah, yes... we'll just be goin' right on in, then..." Avalon pulls me by the arm, stifling laughter. I glance back toward the guard as my feet find wood, then stone, then marble. He watches still as we saunter giddily through the lavish hall.
******
The days fly by now with the happy flit of the girls tossing their hair... light, fun, and pleasing.
Blacksmith for a month, a Vassal of Tyche alongside Avalon for half a year, Sigfod's fame is catching up with me. The women are everywhere.. I don't know how it became so many. My thoughts drift back to the few weeks I spent giving a single violet to each belle I came across... and then to the celebration of that all-woman, all-voluptuous guild - bi-curious, I learned to my impossible satisfaction.
I hardly have time to fight anymore... the knight girls are on leave, the femme assassins stalking a fling, hunters tracking me... the priestesses -
<i>So</i> many priestesses.
Some days it feels like I've gone too far. The memories float back with the light on my eyelids, warm in my head. This is the Prontera Knightly Arms hotel. I'm here under the alias of Dofgis. I suppose I could have chosen a bit wiser than that. I was attacked in the bath. I wake now, dreamily, to the sound of the Market and the leftover fragrances of girlfriends I'd be hard-pressed to name. It's late morning. Undergarments stolen and loins aching, I stride again to the bath, tossing aside the myriad assortment of lingerie. I suppose they figured it'd be a fair exchange.
I could fill carts with these things, I'll tell you. Maybe after I scrub off all this damned lipstick...
"Well for the LOVE of Frey..."
On my back, in vivid red: <span style='color:red'>Love, forever</span>
Not if this doesn't come out, Quissy...
********
"Rrrgh... I hate this place." I growl out the sentiment that's been grinding in my thoughts.
"Gods.. you're so irritable, Sig. Honestly, I don't know what they see in you." Joan doesn't acknowledge me with her eyes, instead keeping vigilant, watchful for possible customers. "So.. what is it that's bothering you?"
Of all the people, Joan is the last I'd tell. The <i>told you so</i> expression I can do without. Even so, I have to say something. "It's fake. They're all fake."
"Isn't it obvious?" She finally glances sideways at me while I seat myself by her shop. I can't help but laugh lightly at my sister blacksmith. "Finally weary, then.. of the horde?" Smiling, she returns to the view of the market.
"Yes, Joan. I'm weary of the horde." I can tell her, I realize. She only <i>told me so</i> because she <i>knew so</i>. "The game is over, it seems." She nods briefly, knowingly. Always knowingly. Birdsong dances happily behind the dull clamour of the square, and I think about life, and its joys. When I open my eyes, I find that i've been leaning a little close. Joan is staring, bemused, at my pursed lips. I right myself, and sit again, a ways away. "I wasn't -"
"You <i>were</i>, you flirting idiot!" I hang my head wearily, I mumble something about it being an accident, and then my view is lit with her shifting, standing; legs bronzed and bewildering. They glide towards me. I find myself waiting, although I don't know what I'm waiting for.
*WHAP*
I wasnt expecting a smack in the head, at any rate.
"Go! You're destroying my business!" She laughs as she shoves me roughly away.
Prontera, arguably, is not <i>that</i> bad.
*******
"Sig!"
"Hah... 'Tyr!" I throw a heavy punch at his shoulder. He parries evenly. "Ready to go?"
"<i>Yes</i>, sir!" His voice is slick with youthful sarcasm, and I can't help but laugh. I catch his own fist a good distance from my face, pull it, and shove him towards the doorway of his house. He's been calling me "sir" in jest, since the day he graduated as my apprentice more than a year ago.
"Goodbye, Mary!" I take off at a good sprint down the tired dirt path, turning to run backwards for only that second to wave goodbye to his mother. He's all of sixteen, but still loves her. More than ever. I look back again to see him running towards me. I turn my head again to concentrate as I bound towards the village. We're still laughing. The spires of the mage guild rise spindly over the hill ahead of us, looking like the spikes on a flying petite. I run faster.
A searing jolt, like no skeleton's arrow or driving dagger, but instead like fire, pierces first into the center of my chest. My eyes close. I can't say... I can't know whether or not I'm running. I think of Veratyr. The fire cracks into lightning through my body for the second time in my life, extending in its horrible fury to the tips of my fingers. I can see its flashing in my eyelids...
And so I open my eyes. The grassy knoll is rushing up at me. I'm not running <i>that</i> fast. I remember the pain, and the feeling returns in memory. I close my eyes again before I hit the ground.
***
"...YOU ARE <i>WORTHLESS</i>! <i>Miserable</i> child... we <i>raise</i> you the best we can, we <i>feed</i> you and keep a <i>home</i> for you, and you do <i>NOTHING</i>!" The words ring duller in my mind than the fist across my breast.
"Lodur! <i>LODUR!</i> You've done enough!" I have not a care in my heart for my own beaten body. I can only shout that she should just leave him to me. I am hoisted bodily and thrown aside. I move to my hands and knees and stare at the stone. I cannot move. I cannot ever move.
"Nobody asked your <i>opinion</i>, woman..." The air is thick with the bitter odor of his cheap grog. I dread the sound, hoping that just this once it never comes. But it comes. He slaps her with the weight of his arm and shoulder. It booms in my mind like a thunderclap, expanding with the anger of the storm. Her back reaches the wall and she slumps, weeping softly. The thunder no longer cracks in my mind. The lightning <i>blasts</i>, again and again through my head, bolt by bolt, steady with the rythm of the tempest. The storm is stronger, louder, longer, more painful than it ever has been. My mother is no longer screaming. The room is blurry... and then hot-white.
I move.. and I scream for her.
I wake up... <i>No. I've been awake. I'm standing upright. My father is on the ground in the far corner of the room. The walls are bright with his spattered gore.
Where is my mother... She is in the kitchen. She is not moving. She lies curled up in a pool of her own blood.</i>
I'm having trouble interpreting this <i>scene</i>... it overflows my vision like the tears that overflow my eyes. I stand, quaking, shivering, for what seems like hours.
The realization is as sudden as the clarity that comes with it. My grandfather's chain is in my hand. The leather grip is ensanguined but holds steady still.
I stride with leaden legs into the kitchen. As I move closer to her, the fear grows. The thunder barks again. I am terrified.
I fasten the chain in my belt. I am more scared have ever been in my life. I am alone. There is no love left for me in this world.
I kick through the front door and run. I can no more feel my feet pounding the street than I can feel my mother's warm embrace, in memory. I feel the tears stream back now from the corners of my eyes, to bleed back over my ears.
And then... I can feel again. I feel the rain coming hard against my face, I feel my feet pleading for me to slow, to stop. They are bleeding. I stop. And then I run.
The feeling leaves my body again, and the only warmth I know seeps from the enchantment upon my grandfather's chain. There is no love in its heat, only a mirror of the white-hot fury.
And suddenly there is a spark in my eyes, as if the lightning itself has stricken me where I stand. It breaks through my chest and grips my core, sending its burning rage to the ends of every nerve...
***
The light dances upon my eyes again, and my nose is full with the scent of wildflowers. "Sigfod?"
"...Veratyr?" I hear a giddy laugh, and then an uncomfortable.. and then strangely comfortable weight across my chest. There is a woman sitting on my chest. "Rosey.. you're Rosey!"
"Did you for<i>get</i>??" I open my eyes to the sight of a beautiful acolyte, and her expression of mock anger.
"No.. I didn't." I glance to my sides and find Veratyr prone in the high grass, atop a swordsman. Surely Ameli... only another great troublemaker for my troublemaker. I'll not bother them... I reach up to pull this girl to me, and we kiss.
We kiss.
We kiss.
********
<i>The love is dead and gone.. it was never there. I think now, hard, about the choices I've made. I know them, and what they've made me into. I used them. All of them. They didn't fill the void. It's there still, once a small, solid ache... now a gaping chasm. Rosey wasn't the one. Deluding myself... it's my only expertise outside blacksmithery and debauchery.
How can I explain this? I'm not poor... I'm comfortable with my millions. I eat well. I live well.
But I have no home. I've slept every night of this life on the cold ground... on unyielding stone, unsanitary dirt, and unfriendly fields.</i>
Veratyr is gone. He's eloped with Ameli.. his parents loved them both, but Ameli's own hated the thought of a man sharing his love with.. another man. I laugh to myself, remembering an old line.
"It's all love, babe.."
The laugh is empty.
<i>I need to see someone... I need to do something. I need to hold...someone. I look back now, on everything... the seduction and the lying,
the laughing,
the drinking,
the f***ing.
I have not...
since my mother...
loved woman. In any way.</i>
But that is a lie. There is one... surely not the purest among them, but the best friend that one had ever been. I see her now... and the feeling, as always, is different. I don't think about her with the imagination on my hands and the longing in my loins. I've been done with that for ten years.
I see her, running. And then... fighting. Sitting, standing. Laughing, crying. Killing...
<i>Kissing. </i>Whom did she kiss? It was.. myself. But it wasn't a kiss.. laced with that heady wine of lust. No. And it wasn't a kiss to last a single night, or a night only when I wanted it. We kissed when I didn't want it, when I wouldn't have it. But I always needed it. I remember her lips... and then breaking away, her knowing face.
Always knowing.
I realize... we never made love. We didn't love that way. There were hard times, hearts broken... there was consolation, contemplation. But never did we yield to what I felt in me... warm in my heart as it was in her eyes, a beautiful sin.
There was too much love for that.
I must go to her.
***********
She's in Prontera... She has to be. She's always been. Joan used to tell me -
Joan...
She used to tell me how she favored other towns over the raucous bustle of the capital city, but I knew that, in her heart, she was there to spread love to the people. I instilled that in her, I think. Violets... I gave violets. She gives them even now, but I never told her why I chose them. Her hair. I would see it everywhere. It was hard not to. So, thus, I chose. I knew I loved that hair, even if, so I thought, I did not love the girl to which it belonged.
So I gave, and I gave. And I took. I took more than I ever should have taken, or been allowed. I can tell myself now, free of the delusion, that not every woman I was with was a happy soul. On top of that, if it was there for the taking, I took virginity... and I took chastity... and I took advantage of all of them. For my own physical and egotistical pleasure. And I would lie. Oh, did I lie.
"I love you."
I'd never meant it. I don't think I ever had to say it to my mother. The love was always there. In the air. In each breath as I hugged her close.
So I would take back the I love you's when I saw Joan, and replace them with real love.. the love that I know I can have, or would rather die, at this point, without.
"SIG!"
"Sigfod, hey!" Veratyr and then Ameli greet me as I step off the boat, at Izlude. Veratyr runs to me, hugs me tight. I clap my arms around his back, and sigh. He was always a brother to me. I can feel it in his grip that he's stronger than I am, now. I haven't fought in years.
"Gods, it's good to see you guys again." 'Tyr steps back, to eye me. Ameli takes my hand, leans forward, and kisses me, hard. Before I can react, he takes a step back. He's died his hair black, from green before. Things are changing. I feel old at 28. 'Tyr should be... at least 21 now.
"Mmm... you taste as good as I thought you would, but you're not as good a kisser as I always assumed you would be, carting around all those women!"
I start to mumble something about not being ready for it... I guess I couldn't be. Ameli <i>is</i> a man. "NO excuses, no excuses," 'Tyr jokes. "C'mon, we've got to get going!"
The sad, narrow bridge moans under our feet as we stride across. The sound is equally melancholy.. and I miss her now, more than ever, though I'm closer than ever.
**********
My heart pounds out against my chest as it did when I first met her. The guards accept us through the arch, and here we are again, in this city of cities.
The towers still reach as high as they did, the homes puff out as much comfortable smoke as ever, and the merchants... were always loud. I can laugh at this. This time, it's a secure laugh. I let the two boys reserve rooms in the hotel. It took a few seconds for me to extrapolate <i>why</i> they'd want a separate room. It's still funny. I'm still laughing.
And now I sigh. The breath leaving me hasn't been so happy for years upon years. Every new breath I take feels fuller than any since my days in Payon village.
I continue on past the shops, round a corner, and press on towards the square. I stop feeling each footstep now, as my boots find the worn stones of the street. I feel like I'm getting closer. The anxiety is completely outweighed by the sheer ecstasy of the thought, only the thought, of seeing her again.
And then... a white-hot pain. At the bottom of the square, I fall to my knees. I don't feel them strike the cobblestones, and I don't hear it, either. All I hear is the rain, and the storm. The azure chain lightning washes over my body, and I fall backwards now. People are staring. I clutch my breast. I think I see Veratyr. He's running towards me. No, he's next to me. He's holding me. The storm is raging.
I see his face in the whiteness, shouting. Screaming. I think he's crying. He knows this feeling?
And then... the skies are calm. The skies have never calmed. Both times before, the lightning struck me down as if the smiting hand of God-Poing herself. The rain is still falling in my mind, but the storm is over. Perhaps there is a rainbow. The colors shine and then fade - red... orange... yellow... green... blue... indigo...
Violet.
A girl... there's a girl. The girl.. is Joan. She doesn't see me, I think. The pain is fading. Ameli is there.. he points to where I sit. She looks at me. The whiteness is everywhere... but for her violet. I want to say something, but I can't.
The violet fades.
But then.. I know I don't have to say it.
<i>I love you.</i>
**********************************
marine: GAH... what.. where??
[he looks about him, blinding white light fades into discernable shapes and.. objects and people]
doctor: You're fine now. You just got skulked. Hmmm.. who is Joan?
marine: I don't... I don't know. My wife is.. My wife is named Melissa... Wait, why? Did I dream?
doctor: Hmm...
<span style='font-size:15pt;line-height:100%'><span style='color:red'>END</span></span></span>
keep an open mind here. if you don't like ragnarok online, that's okay. this isn't about RO. this is my fanfiction. ^_^
i wrote a good amt of fix while playing ragnarok online. all the characters mentioned are friends of mine that i know really well.
this is the story of Sigfod, a battle-blacksmith, my favorite character in any RPG i ever played.
just looking for some commentary.
if you need anything explained, say so. the audience i was aiming at was one who'd played RO for a while, and knew most of the characters personally as friends. if you were there, things would connect perfectly. but if anything needs explaining, just say so.
******************
TSA marine: OMG C0RNMANd0R TEHRS LORKS ON TEH CL0rF!!!
[faints]
[dreams]
************
_______________
<span style='font-size:11pt;line-height:100%'>Weary, I trudge down the stone walk, boots slapping, muddy. Light, mirthful voices come scattered from across the clearing. Warriors and wanderers are gathered at the mouth of the Payon Caves. I pause at the door to the tool shop, in brief contemplation, and then sit at the side of the doorway.
Back against the damp, cool stone, I close my eyes. I think. Tired legs lie slack in front of me, exhausted arms fall limp to my sides. Gloves stained with the filthy work of the day seem to relax in the dew-speckled grass. A personification of myself, I suppose. The bustle of Prontera, my home, bothers me not... But the sharp, sweet air of the East wafts its way to my soul, and I am calm.
Shifting my sword, now in its scabbard, I stand. Gripping a smooth wooden handle, I drag my cart into the shop. Tonight, the shop owner pays me a substantial forty-thousand zeny for the pelts in my cart. It'll sustain me for the better part of a week, but as my gaze shifts to the weathered gloves, to the beaten sheath, and to the mud - and blood - caked boots, I am dissatisfied. My view shifts upward again, and now I see the other occupants of the shop: a knight at the bench, armor glinting dimly, sipping at an ale. A hunter, counting coins at a table, with some wench admirer. I cannot help but feel jealousy. Grunting, I turn to leave.
A merchant. Shifting restlessly, she takes to her feet, but sits again. A look in her eyes I have seen elsewhere. They are my own. Tired. She labors as I do. I think to approach her - she is beautiful. It is only as I step nearer that I begin to identify an intensity, a flame in her eyes. Purpose.
Once again, my gaze falls to my own person. Plain. Weathered.
I find myself staring, then, back to her. She <i>is</i> beautiful.. absentmindedly brushing violet locks from her face, her brown eyes watching.. knowingly.
"What?"
I am taken aback. She speaks to <i>me</i>. "It's nothing.. I thought I saw something."
"You look tired."
"I am... I spent most of the day hunting," I sputter. My tired mind isn't fit for chatter at the moment.
"Your eyes.. you're lost."
I am perfectly aware of where I am. She obviously speaks of something other than my whereabouts. "What are you saying?"
Looking away, she rises, and leans against the wall. "I've been hunting, it seems, all my life. I know the hardship you face every day. But look at what you've earned. You're fed. You've a place to sleep, I imagine."
"And you?" I can think of nothing else to say.
"I have a home. That's not the point." The knight's stein clatters onto a table, and he strides out the door, letting it shut behind him. "You don't appreciate what you're given. You reap what you sow."
I open my mouth to disagree, to say anything. I am betrayed. There was no such hunting. It was a mindless, solitary killing. My eyes fall to the axe at her side. I know at once that she is one of the true adventurers. I feel genuine admiration for this girl. I look down, and shift my feet, thinking of something, anything to say.
I look up.
She is gone.
****
<i>Emperium</i>...
The word glides off the tongue like the glint of the metal itself... lustrous, inspiring.
<i>Empowering</i>.
It is harder, these days, to find the angst I felt months before, like a weight in my mind. The weight is gone, and I float, free to laugh with pride at my own fruitful labor and good fortune.
An archer friend of mine called Avalon, hunting the undead in the caves around Geffen, recounts being set upon by a party of zombie Orks. Notched <i>five</i> arrows, he tells me, and put one through each of their skulls from the same drawn string.
The very thought.. that shameless, greedy fool of a rogue. <i>"The biggest ov' 'em dropped this here stone.. lucky find, eh?"</i>
I'm willing to bet he stole it. He was always drawn to the thieves' guild but speculated against it, figured that even the burglars had to contribute a tax to the guild's treasury.
Even so... not my business whose Emperium it was. Prontera square cares not from whence it came. Only for how much. But the thought of pawning has no room to fit in our excited minds, to shine in our anxious eyes.
"D'yeh think there're any rules teh 'stablishin' a guild?" the archer asks as we cross the castle's moat.
"I couldn't say, myself... but ask me if I <i>care</i>, Av. Just ask me."
"Yeh ****.. yer only in this for the glory, yeh are."
"Damned if I'm not, Av. Damned if I'm not. And I'll love you always for it."
"Hah... and I, you, friend."
"No, no hugging required, Av-"
"Yeh filthy ****, I was doin nothin' of the sort-" On the drawbridge we wrestle each other to the hardwood plank, laughing, tumbling.
"I'm willing to - *rgh* - <i>bet</i>, Av, that there're Crocodiles in that water.."
"Aye, you'll - *huff* - be the first to <i>meet</i> em, Sig..."
"That'll be the DAY, Av.. whoa, WHOahoahoa!!" I fall backwards from the side of the drawbridge laughing, sun in my eyes.
"<i>ENOUGH, sirs.</i>" Something thumps into my back with a sturdy pressure, tilting me until I'm vertical on the edge of the bridge. A Royal Guard.. I figured there should be guards around the castle.
"Hah, yes... we'll just be goin' right on in, then..." Avalon pulls me by the arm, stifling laughter. I glance back toward the guard as my feet find wood, then stone, then marble. He watches still as we saunter giddily through the lavish hall.
******
The days fly by now with the happy flit of the girls tossing their hair... light, fun, and pleasing.
Blacksmith for a month, a Vassal of Tyche alongside Avalon for half a year, Sigfod's fame is catching up with me. The women are everywhere.. I don't know how it became so many. My thoughts drift back to the few weeks I spent giving a single violet to each belle I came across... and then to the celebration of that all-woman, all-voluptuous guild - bi-curious, I learned to my impossible satisfaction.
I hardly have time to fight anymore... the knight girls are on leave, the femme assassins stalking a fling, hunters tracking me... the priestesses -
<i>So</i> many priestesses.
Some days it feels like I've gone too far. The memories float back with the light on my eyelids, warm in my head. This is the Prontera Knightly Arms hotel. I'm here under the alias of Dofgis. I suppose I could have chosen a bit wiser than that. I was attacked in the bath. I wake now, dreamily, to the sound of the Market and the leftover fragrances of girlfriends I'd be hard-pressed to name. It's late morning. Undergarments stolen and loins aching, I stride again to the bath, tossing aside the myriad assortment of lingerie. I suppose they figured it'd be a fair exchange.
I could fill carts with these things, I'll tell you. Maybe after I scrub off all this damned lipstick...
"Well for the LOVE of Frey..."
On my back, in vivid red: <span style='color:red'>Love, forever</span>
Not if this doesn't come out, Quissy...
********
"Rrrgh... I hate this place." I growl out the sentiment that's been grinding in my thoughts.
"Gods.. you're so irritable, Sig. Honestly, I don't know what they see in you." Joan doesn't acknowledge me with her eyes, instead keeping vigilant, watchful for possible customers. "So.. what is it that's bothering you?"
Of all the people, Joan is the last I'd tell. The <i>told you so</i> expression I can do without. Even so, I have to say something. "It's fake. They're all fake."
"Isn't it obvious?" She finally glances sideways at me while I seat myself by her shop. I can't help but laugh lightly at my sister blacksmith. "Finally weary, then.. of the horde?" Smiling, she returns to the view of the market.
"Yes, Joan. I'm weary of the horde." I can tell her, I realize. She only <i>told me so</i> because she <i>knew so</i>. "The game is over, it seems." She nods briefly, knowingly. Always knowingly. Birdsong dances happily behind the dull clamour of the square, and I think about life, and its joys. When I open my eyes, I find that i've been leaning a little close. Joan is staring, bemused, at my pursed lips. I right myself, and sit again, a ways away. "I wasn't -"
"You <i>were</i>, you flirting idiot!" I hang my head wearily, I mumble something about it being an accident, and then my view is lit with her shifting, standing; legs bronzed and bewildering. They glide towards me. I find myself waiting, although I don't know what I'm waiting for.
*WHAP*
I wasnt expecting a smack in the head, at any rate.
"Go! You're destroying my business!" She laughs as she shoves me roughly away.
Prontera, arguably, is not <i>that</i> bad.
*******
"Sig!"
"Hah... 'Tyr!" I throw a heavy punch at his shoulder. He parries evenly. "Ready to go?"
"<i>Yes</i>, sir!" His voice is slick with youthful sarcasm, and I can't help but laugh. I catch his own fist a good distance from my face, pull it, and shove him towards the doorway of his house. He's been calling me "sir" in jest, since the day he graduated as my apprentice more than a year ago.
"Goodbye, Mary!" I take off at a good sprint down the tired dirt path, turning to run backwards for only that second to wave goodbye to his mother. He's all of sixteen, but still loves her. More than ever. I look back again to see him running towards me. I turn my head again to concentrate as I bound towards the village. We're still laughing. The spires of the mage guild rise spindly over the hill ahead of us, looking like the spikes on a flying petite. I run faster.
A searing jolt, like no skeleton's arrow or driving dagger, but instead like fire, pierces first into the center of my chest. My eyes close. I can't say... I can't know whether or not I'm running. I think of Veratyr. The fire cracks into lightning through my body for the second time in my life, extending in its horrible fury to the tips of my fingers. I can see its flashing in my eyelids...
And so I open my eyes. The grassy knoll is rushing up at me. I'm not running <i>that</i> fast. I remember the pain, and the feeling returns in memory. I close my eyes again before I hit the ground.
***
"...YOU ARE <i>WORTHLESS</i>! <i>Miserable</i> child... we <i>raise</i> you the best we can, we <i>feed</i> you and keep a <i>home</i> for you, and you do <i>NOTHING</i>!" The words ring duller in my mind than the fist across my breast.
"Lodur! <i>LODUR!</i> You've done enough!" I have not a care in my heart for my own beaten body. I can only shout that she should just leave him to me. I am hoisted bodily and thrown aside. I move to my hands and knees and stare at the stone. I cannot move. I cannot ever move.
"Nobody asked your <i>opinion</i>, woman..." The air is thick with the bitter odor of his cheap grog. I dread the sound, hoping that just this once it never comes. But it comes. He slaps her with the weight of his arm and shoulder. It booms in my mind like a thunderclap, expanding with the anger of the storm. Her back reaches the wall and she slumps, weeping softly. The thunder no longer cracks in my mind. The lightning <i>blasts</i>, again and again through my head, bolt by bolt, steady with the rythm of the tempest. The storm is stronger, louder, longer, more painful than it ever has been. My mother is no longer screaming. The room is blurry... and then hot-white.
I move.. and I scream for her.
I wake up... <i>No. I've been awake. I'm standing upright. My father is on the ground in the far corner of the room. The walls are bright with his spattered gore.
Where is my mother... She is in the kitchen. She is not moving. She lies curled up in a pool of her own blood.</i>
I'm having trouble interpreting this <i>scene</i>... it overflows my vision like the tears that overflow my eyes. I stand, quaking, shivering, for what seems like hours.
The realization is as sudden as the clarity that comes with it. My grandfather's chain is in my hand. The leather grip is ensanguined but holds steady still.
I stride with leaden legs into the kitchen. As I move closer to her, the fear grows. The thunder barks again. I am terrified.
I fasten the chain in my belt. I am more scared have ever been in my life. I am alone. There is no love left for me in this world.
I kick through the front door and run. I can no more feel my feet pounding the street than I can feel my mother's warm embrace, in memory. I feel the tears stream back now from the corners of my eyes, to bleed back over my ears.
And then... I can feel again. I feel the rain coming hard against my face, I feel my feet pleading for me to slow, to stop. They are bleeding. I stop. And then I run.
The feeling leaves my body again, and the only warmth I know seeps from the enchantment upon my grandfather's chain. There is no love in its heat, only a mirror of the white-hot fury.
And suddenly there is a spark in my eyes, as if the lightning itself has stricken me where I stand. It breaks through my chest and grips my core, sending its burning rage to the ends of every nerve...
***
The light dances upon my eyes again, and my nose is full with the scent of wildflowers. "Sigfod?"
"...Veratyr?" I hear a giddy laugh, and then an uncomfortable.. and then strangely comfortable weight across my chest. There is a woman sitting on my chest. "Rosey.. you're Rosey!"
"Did you for<i>get</i>??" I open my eyes to the sight of a beautiful acolyte, and her expression of mock anger.
"No.. I didn't." I glance to my sides and find Veratyr prone in the high grass, atop a swordsman. Surely Ameli... only another great troublemaker for my troublemaker. I'll not bother them... I reach up to pull this girl to me, and we kiss.
We kiss.
We kiss.
********
<i>The love is dead and gone.. it was never there. I think now, hard, about the choices I've made. I know them, and what they've made me into. I used them. All of them. They didn't fill the void. It's there still, once a small, solid ache... now a gaping chasm. Rosey wasn't the one. Deluding myself... it's my only expertise outside blacksmithery and debauchery.
How can I explain this? I'm not poor... I'm comfortable with my millions. I eat well. I live well.
But I have no home. I've slept every night of this life on the cold ground... on unyielding stone, unsanitary dirt, and unfriendly fields.</i>
Veratyr is gone. He's eloped with Ameli.. his parents loved them both, but Ameli's own hated the thought of a man sharing his love with.. another man. I laugh to myself, remembering an old line.
"It's all love, babe.."
The laugh is empty.
<i>I need to see someone... I need to do something. I need to hold...someone. I look back now, on everything... the seduction and the lying,
the laughing,
the drinking,
the f***ing.
I have not...
since my mother...
loved woman. In any way.</i>
But that is a lie. There is one... surely not the purest among them, but the best friend that one had ever been. I see her now... and the feeling, as always, is different. I don't think about her with the imagination on my hands and the longing in my loins. I've been done with that for ten years.
I see her, running. And then... fighting. Sitting, standing. Laughing, crying. Killing...
<i>Kissing. </i>Whom did she kiss? It was.. myself. But it wasn't a kiss.. laced with that heady wine of lust. No. And it wasn't a kiss to last a single night, or a night only when I wanted it. We kissed when I didn't want it, when I wouldn't have it. But I always needed it. I remember her lips... and then breaking away, her knowing face.
Always knowing.
I realize... we never made love. We didn't love that way. There were hard times, hearts broken... there was consolation, contemplation. But never did we yield to what I felt in me... warm in my heart as it was in her eyes, a beautiful sin.
There was too much love for that.
I must go to her.
***********
She's in Prontera... She has to be. She's always been. Joan used to tell me -
Joan...
She used to tell me how she favored other towns over the raucous bustle of the capital city, but I knew that, in her heart, she was there to spread love to the people. I instilled that in her, I think. Violets... I gave violets. She gives them even now, but I never told her why I chose them. Her hair. I would see it everywhere. It was hard not to. So, thus, I chose. I knew I loved that hair, even if, so I thought, I did not love the girl to which it belonged.
So I gave, and I gave. And I took. I took more than I ever should have taken, or been allowed. I can tell myself now, free of the delusion, that not every woman I was with was a happy soul. On top of that, if it was there for the taking, I took virginity... and I took chastity... and I took advantage of all of them. For my own physical and egotistical pleasure. And I would lie. Oh, did I lie.
"I love you."
I'd never meant it. I don't think I ever had to say it to my mother. The love was always there. In the air. In each breath as I hugged her close.
So I would take back the I love you's when I saw Joan, and replace them with real love.. the love that I know I can have, or would rather die, at this point, without.
"SIG!"
"Sigfod, hey!" Veratyr and then Ameli greet me as I step off the boat, at Izlude. Veratyr runs to me, hugs me tight. I clap my arms around his back, and sigh. He was always a brother to me. I can feel it in his grip that he's stronger than I am, now. I haven't fought in years.
"Gods, it's good to see you guys again." 'Tyr steps back, to eye me. Ameli takes my hand, leans forward, and kisses me, hard. Before I can react, he takes a step back. He's died his hair black, from green before. Things are changing. I feel old at 28. 'Tyr should be... at least 21 now.
"Mmm... you taste as good as I thought you would, but you're not as good a kisser as I always assumed you would be, carting around all those women!"
I start to mumble something about not being ready for it... I guess I couldn't be. Ameli <i>is</i> a man. "NO excuses, no excuses," 'Tyr jokes. "C'mon, we've got to get going!"
The sad, narrow bridge moans under our feet as we stride across. The sound is equally melancholy.. and I miss her now, more than ever, though I'm closer than ever.
**********
My heart pounds out against my chest as it did when I first met her. The guards accept us through the arch, and here we are again, in this city of cities.
The towers still reach as high as they did, the homes puff out as much comfortable smoke as ever, and the merchants... were always loud. I can laugh at this. This time, it's a secure laugh. I let the two boys reserve rooms in the hotel. It took a few seconds for me to extrapolate <i>why</i> they'd want a separate room. It's still funny. I'm still laughing.
And now I sigh. The breath leaving me hasn't been so happy for years upon years. Every new breath I take feels fuller than any since my days in Payon village.
I continue on past the shops, round a corner, and press on towards the square. I stop feeling each footstep now, as my boots find the worn stones of the street. I feel like I'm getting closer. The anxiety is completely outweighed by the sheer ecstasy of the thought, only the thought, of seeing her again.
And then... a white-hot pain. At the bottom of the square, I fall to my knees. I don't feel them strike the cobblestones, and I don't hear it, either. All I hear is the rain, and the storm. The azure chain lightning washes over my body, and I fall backwards now. People are staring. I clutch my breast. I think I see Veratyr. He's running towards me. No, he's next to me. He's holding me. The storm is raging.
I see his face in the whiteness, shouting. Screaming. I think he's crying. He knows this feeling?
And then... the skies are calm. The skies have never calmed. Both times before, the lightning struck me down as if the smiting hand of God-Poing herself. The rain is still falling in my mind, but the storm is over. Perhaps there is a rainbow. The colors shine and then fade - red... orange... yellow... green... blue... indigo...
Violet.
A girl... there's a girl. The girl.. is Joan. She doesn't see me, I think. The pain is fading. Ameli is there.. he points to where I sit. She looks at me. The whiteness is everywhere... but for her violet. I want to say something, but I can't.
The violet fades.
But then.. I know I don't have to say it.
<i>I love you.</i>
**********************************
marine: GAH... what.. where??
[he looks about him, blinding white light fades into discernable shapes and.. objects and people]
doctor: You're fine now. You just got skulked. Hmmm.. who is Joan?
marine: I don't... I don't know. My wife is.. My wife is named Melissa... Wait, why? Did I dream?
doctor: Hmm...
<span style='font-size:15pt;line-height:100%'><span style='color:red'>END</span></span></span>
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