A Delightful Chat

A Delightful Chat
Date of Scene:	23 November 2012
Location:	Golomore Jungle
Synopsis:	Garland is intrigued by his apprentice's friend Avira and tracks down the woman in order to have a nice...chat.
Cast of Characters:	Avira, Garland

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Avira has posed:
The Golomore Jungle is a forest so thick with vegitation that sunlight scarcely touches the ground. Darkness is rampant here, the many creatures of the forest having adapted to the circumstances with specially evolved eyes or, in fact, no eyes at all. Not that the mobile creatures that arose from plant life not having eyes is that unusual.

Metal and wood forms the pathways through the wood for those that must travel through the area. Sometimes it is even safe, but more often than not, those not well versed in the way of adventuring usually need some form of protection. Of course, there were plenty of mercenaries for hire that would gladly provide.

Today, the woods, save for the viera hidden deep within, is mostly devoid of such mercenaries. Save for one. Avira, member of Clan Dagda and Mistress of VALKYRI, remained in these woods, though not on account of any job.

She sought experience, as per the advice of Skoll, with the many beasts of nature. Avira does not hunt or stalk, she merely interacts and waits. With her heart, she tries to connect with the animals of the forest, seeking to understand them. She had been successful at this for the first time a few weeks ago with the wolves of Bramble Woods. As was the case with any skill, it had to be trained.

The scarred woman has left the beaten path and remains with her back against a tree. She stands there, waiting and listening to a nearby pack of couerl. An attempt had not yet been made to approach the creatures as they were quite aggressive to humes. Also she had hunted a few in the past. What if they remembered?

Garland has posed:
In everything, there is a goal. In every action, a purpose must be designed; a reason to expend those resources. An action without purpose is an action wasted, is effort wasted, is effort expended; effort wasted and expended is a loss that can only be made up with the expenditure of more effort. Efficiency, meticulousness; these are the virtues that the nightmare incarnate called Garland knows and worships above all others. That is his way; that is the path he has walked for ten thousand years, ever since his first failure in the grand scheme of immortality in his own world. The years have taught him much indeed.

And they have taught him that experience is the greatest teacher of all. No master can truly inflict the blows of a foe upon his student; no swordsman can teach his apprentice how the strike of a man trying to kill you feels, no thug can train a new pledge in the adrenaline of running from guards or striking a man down. Only by experiencing those actions repeatedly can a person truly adjust to them, truly internalize and master them; only through fire can the blade be forged. Cliche, perhaps, but a truth Garland well knows.

So it is that he follows the girl from Dagda into the jungle. So it is that the beasts of prey give him a wide berth; they can smell blood upon him, the blood of millions of lives. They can sense the predator's instinct, the brutal darkness that no longer lives within Garland but sustains Garland, that has subsumed and become Garland, that has made 'Garland' merely a name and face to wear because it suits him. They flee before him, and so he is uninterrupted, silent and meticulous in his hunt. The jungle floor does not give way to his location; he floats just above it, gliding through the jungle like a specter. When she stops, so too does he, taking note of the location and the surroundings. The couerls are given a brief note in the back of his mind - he had fought and killed his share of them, and if some genetic memory, some familiar recognition that ran through the minds of their species, recalled Avira...well.

They are hardly his concern. Garland reaches outwards, a massive segmented blade as long as Garland is tall and as wide as his shoulders suddenly forming out of the darkness. He raises it above his head, grasping it with bot hands, and then lands on the jungle floor, allowing the twigs to snap.

"Defend yourself, girl!" Garland's echoing black voice roars as he swings his blade around hard enough to simply remove a segment of the tree she stands below. It would surely come crashing down moments later - though it may not be her main concern, of course!

Avira has posed:
Something is disturbing the beasts of the wood. Avira, after spending some time in observation, attuning herself to the rhythm around her, begins to notice. By the sounds she hears and locations of the creatures she does see, she is able to make the determination that it isn't her doing. There was something else in these woods-something that she could not yet see or hear.

It seems to have come in the same direction she did, which automatically puts her on edge. Had she been followed? Such a thing was not unheard of as there were a handful of those out there Avira could consider enemies.

A faint growl steals her attention, emitted by the catlike creatures she was observing. Peering around the tree, she notes that they are agitated now. Pacing and lifting their heads to the air, tentacle-like "whiskers" twitching and waiving. More growls follow and the animals scatter. The worst kind of sign.

The crunch of twigs results in Avira's head suddenly swinging in the direction of the noise, giving her seconds to spy the tall embodiment of chaos before he bellows at her. Her eyes immediately fall on the raised sword and Avira dives for the ground, moving not away from Garland but more towards him at a diagonal angle. Not directly, of course, as she rolls herself up to his flank.

The crisp sound of metal sliding against metal joins the noises of the wood as Avira withdraws her weapon, the Spine. It could pass as a sword, if a sword had a blade with a triangular cross-section instead of flat. It looks exactly like a human spine, dipped in metal, with the pelvis and tailbone forming the hilt.

To her credit, she doesn't demand why this is happening. She simply acts, swinging the spine upwards, a wave of sharp, slightly silver-colored force peeling off the blade with the motion.

Garland has posed:
Garland is pleased by this. If she had not noticed - if she had not reacted, if she had simply been broken like a doll tossed aside, he would've been most disapproving of his Apprentice's choice in alies. Her blade comes up, the oddly-shaped thing noted in Garland's mind's eye as the massive greatsword twists at an angle most unnatural to block it, getting between her and its master despite her brave and impressive charge inside what she assumed was his blind spot; the spine scrapes across the massive thing, metal against metal, sparks flying out across the jungle. Not enough to start a fire, but enough to make the point clear that her strength is not so meager as to be broken by a simple swing.

Good. Good.

The tree with its now-missing segment begins to fall. Garland's palm comes around to the underside of his huge blade; he pushes against her force with that monstrous strength, moving to throw her backwards with the sheer power of the countermove. He is an old, old man - and he has had many, many, many years to hone these sword techniques, many, many years to practice and develop styles and tricks that have long since died on most worlds.

"Good." Garland observes as he swings his blade back around, "I would have been most disappointed in my apprentice if you had died so easily." His free hand does not move to grip the blade; rather, his sword points down and away, held in one hand as though that huge segmented slab of steel were as light as a rapier. His other hand gestures idly at her to come to him, to charge him, to strike at him immediately.

"Your awareness for your surroundings is impressive. Most impressive."

Avira has posed:
Each ridge of the vertebrae in the Spine is a small, slightly curved, sharpened blade. When their weapons clash, the resulting contact creates a rhythmic knocking sound alongside the sparks, like a metallic-sounding staccato of a hammering woodpecker. A cringe graces her scarred face for a few seconds as she realizes that he can block even from this normally disadvantageous angle.

For a split second her eyes unfocus to the tree beyond him-that very one that Avira had been leaning against, as it starts to slide and fall. Avira knows very well that falling trees are dangerous things.

Then Garland pushes back and it is little surprise to Avira that he is much, much stronger than she is. Instinctively, she resists for a couple seconds and is pushed off balance for her misguided efforts. She stumbles backwards, trying to regain her footing and manages to do just that after a handful of ungraceful steps.

Avira keeps the Spine pointed in front of her, adjusting the grip to hold it two-handed. There is a small shield on her back, but she's clearly not making use of it right now. "He's told you?" She asks warily in response to his comment, assuming he knows of the combat training she had received from Angantyr. Well, why not? Near as she could tell, they knew each other far before Avira met Angantyr for the first time.

That one handed grip? On a weapon that huge? Amazing. "Thank you. I've been practicing." There is a moment of hesitation at the gesture.

But she does obey, charging in swiftly, relying on her small size and speed to give her an advantage. Again, it isn't a straight-on charge and this time, she veers to his left, as if testing to see if he had a less dominant side.

Garland has posed:
"I know much about you, VALKYRI girl." Garland's deep, echoing, darkness-tainted voice rumbles through the clearing as he holds his sword gently, with all the grace of a master dancer. "You cannot expect to enter the stage of history without gaining an audience - especially with an organization behind you."

She comes in, veering to the left - the opposite side the sword is on. A careful test, and one Garland is, again, reminded of; it's very nostalgic. He recalls training his young Apprentice in much the same fashion, and recalls exactly the same sort of attempt - the probing, testing cautiousness, the uncertainty. On one hand, Garland always appreciated meticulousness; as mentioned earlier, it was his favored virtue, and he made certain to be meticulous and efficient in every single action he took.

On the other hand, this was combat. It was not time to test; it was time to strike and force the hand of the enemy, to break defenses and disrupt their rhythm and destroy their flow, to guide battle rather than guiding. Caution was important, yes - but so too was decisiveness, immediation reaction, reading the flow for one's own and knowing when to strike.

Garland does not swing his sword around. He does not spin it around to crash into her. Instead, he simply passes it, one hand over the other, to his left side; his left hand twists around, bringing the blade firmly into her path. Garland plunges headlong into her attack, using his blade as both defensive shield and offensive wall, plowing into her attack as he risks both life and limb in what would be a foolhardy measure for most.

"He has been far too soft on you."

Avira has posed:
Thus far it had actually been difficult to assess the spread of information about her organization. Avira had certainly advertized and openly associated VALKYRI with her own name. That Garland has taken notice worries her. "And I know distressingly little about you. Angantyr had not mentioned you before." Her words are as cautious as her strikes.

She intended to heed Angantyr's warning about Garland. She did not want to get on his bad side.

Weak side, maybe, but definitely not bad side. Doesn't seem he has a week side to exploit-or if he does, Avira has not discerned it yet. Maybe she cannot stop her momentum or maybe she's just throwning caution to the wind, but the plunging blade does not deter her. She smashes into it with her own weapon and is simply knocked backwards from striking a larger and heavier object.

She doesn't spend as much time stumbling backwards as earlier, forcing herself forward once more. A blue glow envelopes her weapon as her ice magic is called forth, coating the Spine. Her two-handed grip is reasserted, the weapon pulled back into a low hold. Now she's going for the straight-ahead lunge, hoping her previous strikes had lured him into believing that she always attempts flanking manuvers.

For a brief few moments, she thinks back to those sessons with him, spent training to exhaustion. Training until her injuries had made her unable to keep attacking Angantyr. Her face reddens a little. "Why do you say that, Garland?"

She thinks back to their earlier conversation with mounting dread. 'Garland believes you should live or die by your own merit. I think that people sometimes need a chance to learn.'

Garland has posed:
"Because it is the truth." Once again, Garland is thoroughly pleased by her actions. She is so much like Angantyr; perhaps she lacks the same cutting, brutal strength buried within her, the connection to the nightmare that is the Darkness beyond shadow, the abyss of nothingness and the absence of all that is good and just, but she had the same potential. That was good. Potential could be molded, could be sculpted. Even if she was resistant to his sculpting, that too served his purposes.

For now, however, his mind was firmly planted in the now. As she comes in for the straight ahead lunge, so too does he; he sacrifices all defense, dragging his massive sword along the jungle floor. The sheer weight of it crushes through the ground, drawing a trail behind it; it is simply too heavy, too large, to cut in its current form. It is a crushing force, and even using the flat of the blade would hurt a great deal. But that was, after all, Garland's greatest pleasure - hurting people. Hurting people was what he most enjoyed - regardless of the side, regardless of the allegiance, all suffering fed back into Chaos one way or another.

Garland swings his fist around for her stomach. He does not bother blocking her sword; the lunge cuts across him, the massive, heavy armor scraping and freezing in place. His entire right side begins to frost over, but he ignores it in favor of making absolutely certain that punch lands - the same kind of crushing force with which he uses that monstrous sword.

Garland slooowly moves his right side backwards, hampered (partially intentionally, a calculated decision to land the punch, and partially accidentally, to see exactly how powerful the girl actually was) by the ice spreading across his arm. He could shut it down himself, of course, but he had something altogether different in mind.

"I know my apprentice. He is still a soft-hearted boy, who believes that teaching can be done through repetition and practice. But I am not my apprentice. There is no teacher surer than experience, child; no method of learning more effective. That, I promise you."

His right gauntlet tightens around his sword as the ice begins to grow across it, and he continues moving backwards, just enough. "You have strength. You have potential. You need only be taught the instinct that comes of surviving the endless cycle of battle, the ever-churning chaos that is war." The ice covers his hand completely, crawling up his blade; as it does so, there's a moment of absolute silence, as mana is suddenly poured into that arm, and the ice crawling up the blade covers it in a heartbeat. Garland moves his arm gently, the cold ignored; the ice moves with him like a second skin, the sword levelling directly at her.

"Your magic lacks form. Your sword is rough. But you have a talent in your eyes. Tell me."

"For what reason do you fight?"

Avira has posed:
For someone so intensely attuned to the darkness, he'll easily see that Avira doesn't seem to have the potential for it as Angantyr does. Her heart is far from pure, but what darkness was within it was too small to be shaped into the impressive power of a dark knight.

She is, in fact, fearful of such power. That fear would only grow when certain events come to pass.

This man was unpredictable. It does not go unnoticed by Avira that he seems to defend or counter in different ways each time. Such versitility could only be the product of massive amounts of experience. Years, perhaps decades (though in actuality, far longer) beyond what Avira could fathom. There are a few moments of terror when she comprehends that he too is lunging at her. Given the superior reach of his sword, he would have her impaled before the very tip of hers could scratch his armor. Fortunately, he does not strike with his sword.

That fist is perhaps not much better. Her tiny body folds around the clenched hand, almost comically, her own momentum used against her with uncompromising brutality. Her mouth pops open involuntarily and an undignified dry-heaving sort of noise gurgles from her throat.

Avira backs off, shaking and teetering, struck with a strong sense of deja vu. When she had battled Kaze in this forest, he too had buried his fist so far into her stomach that she nearly vomited. He wasn't wearing a gauntlet though.

Her whole body is shaking and it's sure to look downright pathetic before the massive Garland. "I understand." She manages to say. "It's why I-" she starts, then shudders in pain.

Lifting her head, she sees her magic still moving, though as she watches it, she starts to wonder if it's even her magic anymore. She did not shape the mist to cover his weapon like that so it clearly must be Garland's doing.

Her teeth grit at the honestly very accurate assessment of her skills. It isn't all bad, though, she reasons. If he found her weak, then that meant he wouldn't believe her to be a threat, and if he didn't believe she was a threat, that was great! No need to worry about having to fight Angantyr to the death!

Forcing herself to stand, Avira moves to a defensive position, responding to the ice-covered sword pointed at her. Could there be more than one reason? Will he shank her for giving her a bad one? Should she be brutally honest about this?

"I fight so I can make something of myself." Avira admits bluntly,

Garland has posed:
Garland lowers the ice-covered blade. His fist opens, the ice shattering off of it; fire licks his hand, growing up the ice and melting it away as he looks upon her. It casts a surreal, dancing shadow across the jungle on both sides; his own, the menacing, horned demon, and hers, the girl across from it. The flickering light of the flame he bathes himself in without pause comes to pass, and then he crushes his hand shut, and the magic dies. Melding physical force and elemental - not a Magic Knight. Something entirely different. It's like he's brute-forcing the magic, physically demanding it to do what he requires; the truth is far different, but he certainly evokes that imagery. A savage, brutal efficiency. And yet, all that darkness...all the shadow that danced inside him, that even the smallest child could see...

The sword plants itself in the ground with its sheer weight as Garland crosses his arms, looming over her. His iron-clad face is inscrutable; that helmet makes him look as much like a monster from another world as his shadow, and the rippling cape does little to dissuade that effect. The massive iron hand reaches downwards, much as though he were going for her throat...

And instead, his iron claw goes to close around her hand and hoist her to her feet as though she were a ragdoll. Garland is not gentle, he is not kind - but nor does he have any interest in killing the girl.

He releases her as soon as she's on her feet, whether through his power or hers, and then turns away, moving a few steps away from her. His sword remains where it is.

Then his head inclines slightly.

"What do you wish to make of yourself? A hero? A monster? Or do you simply wish to go as far as your body can take you, to see how far mastery can be spread?"

Avira has posed:
The extent of Avira's experience with this sort of magic manipulation and this magnitude of darkness was virtually nonexistant. Staring upon Garland as she tries to discern what has happened to her magic threatens her very sanity. When she tries, she sees that gaping, terrifying force that is Garland, dominating the mist with ease.

Is this the kind of thing she would be up against if she continues down this path? How could she even face this sort of power, even with years of experience? Garland's methods would be the answer-only through repeated trial by fire.

He reaches for her and for a few seconds she really does think he's going for her throat. Instead, he roughly yanks her to her feet, which is only slightly better. Biting her tongue, she manages to hold back the urge to whimper and musters her courage. Though he does seem to be talking right now, she doesn't put her weapon away. She doesn't let her guard down. Not even if he doesn't have his hands upon his sword, just as was the case right now.

"I see myself more as a hero than a monster." she says, watching the tall man warily, "But the problem that is...one person's hero could easily be another person's monster. However...I do wonder how how high I could climb and how far I could go."

Garland has posed:
Garland slowly nods. The horned helmet dips down thoughtfully, remaining inclined for several moments as Garland turns her words over in his mind curiously. He begins pacing - that same slow, silent pace around the jungle floor that he had practiced in Traverse Town, that unnerving silence that came with ages upon ages upon ages of practice and practically living within his armor. Yes. Mastery was an enticing concept; it was something many pursued, something many sought, but only a very few truly comprehended was a path without end. There was no true 'mastery' of a concept - one could continue pushing as long as one had the will and the lifespan, pressing against the boundaries indefinitely.

"Mastery is a word for those who are satisfied." Garland observes aloud, keeping his helmet turned squarely to face her as he walks his shark-circle walk. "It is a word people use to pretend that they have reached some form of zenith, some sort of truth in their strength. It is a foul word of contentment, spoken only by those who are afraid to go further."

He makes another motion with his clawed fingers towards the jungle. "Life cannot be mastered. It is a constant struggle only the strongest, only the fittest, can dominate. It is a violent world no matter where you go - whether this ruined world and its pieces, the civilized veneer of Manhattan that hides the knives tucked beneath handshakes, the wilds of Phantasia...there is always danger, always threat. There is always reason to be wary. To be on one's guard. To be ready for action no matter how safe one feels."

"I will give you another such reason." Garland stops, crouching down to pick up his sword and sling it over his shoulder. "No matter where you go, no matter what you do, I will be watching. And no matter where you go, I will be ready to strike at you - to press and press and press you whenever I feel that you need to be pushed. I will strike at you without mercy, without kindness."

He turns away from her again, resuming his pace. "I will strike at you when you least expect it, until there is no longer a concept of not expecting it. I will strike at you when you are wounded, when you are weak, when you are vulnerable and broken, and like the blade that passes through the flame you will either shatter against the anvil or be made greater."

Garland flexes his hand again. "You have been warned; from here on out, I will not shout to let you know of my presence, nor will I hold back with my strength. Your desire for power - your desire to grow as a person - satisfies me, and so I have taken it upon myself to answer it in supplementation of my kind-hearted Apprentice."

Garland starts walking towards the jungle. "You do not have a choice in this matter. You may refuse to defend yourself, but it will be at your peril. And my apprentice will be quite distraught if you die. I suspect you mean a great deal to him, and I have no interest in allowing my apprentice to break after all the effort I have put in honing him into a proper blade because of something as simple as a woman."

"Survive, fight, and you will grow strong. This, I promise you."

Avira has posed:
There was a reason Avira was always extra cautious around those in helmets. Though Garland turns his head, she can never truly tell where he is looking. There is nothing but the lingering feeling of him dissecting her with his eyes, assessing her in the same way he's assessed other "adventurers" that have crossed his path. While he walks, Avira turns to face him at all times, slowly spinning in place, never allowing him to pass behind her back.

He said it himself, after all. He could strike at any time.

"Are you saying..." she ventures, "...that out here there are no limits?" It was a thrilling, enticing thought. To have the fervor she once had for scholarly pursuits take her farther and farther. As she finds herself thinking about this, she stops herself. Obsessive self-improvement, where would it lead her?

Yet as she listens, she can't help but find truth in a lot of his words, especially regarding the struggle for survival. Grimly, she nods, recalling her harrowing days spent after her piece of the world was destroyed, fighting for survival until the Clan found her.

The new reason he gives terrifies her. "You'll..." she seems to lose command of her words at this point, her mind flooded with images of being attacked by this dangerous man at any moment. Without warning!

Watching him with rapt attention as he circles, she digs deep into her willpower to force her body to not tremble. It isn't entirely successful and this is due in part to the devistating punch to the gut earlier. Avira is fearful and intimidated by this and quickly realizes that neither emotion is going to stop this from happening. If anything, it sounds like it'll encourage him.

'Don't make me go avenge you either.' Angantyr had said. "I would never refuse to defend myself." Avira says firmly, at least finding it in herself to dispell that notion pre-emptively from Garland. Though it does sound like her death would wreak havoc on whatever carefully-laid plans he might have for Angantyr, she had no desire to become a martyr.

Her brown eyes remain upon the leaving god of chaos, even now remaining on her guard, taking his words to heart. She does have one more parting "shot" to take.

"Thank you." she says quietly.

Garland has posed:
He pauses as she thanks him. Such a thing has not happened in a very long time, at least from someone who knows nothing of him but his actions. Moreover, being thanked for his brutal, thankless, cold-hearted willingness to fight and fight and fight, to indulge in the cycle of endless battle and wrap others up inside it...that also had not happened in a very long time from someone who knew nothing of him. He could not recall the last time it happened.

He begins to laugh. It is a dark, echoing, horrible laugh, the kind of laugh that sends small children fleeing to their mothers' skirts and makes grown men clutch at the hilts of their blades as though they were the last lifeline they possessed against a terrifying monster coming to rip them to shreds, the kind of laugh that drives women to hide behind their husbands or clutch their own knives, and the kind that had driven countless cowards from the battlefield, never to return. That laugh had been present even when he was the staunchest and most heroic of knights; it had echoed down through ten thousand years and never changed a day.

And then he disappears into the jungle, his laughter ringing through the impromptu clearing the two of them have left, sending what few beasts had dared to return fleeing in his wake. He says nothing more; he does not need to say more.

Yes...this would be a most amusing, and potentially greatly profitable, diversion.

No effort wasted, no action without meaning.