Solo Artful Apocalypse

[Aislyn Leavold]

It was a long night.

Fueled on approximately four bells of sleep, plus however long she had been fitfully unconscious in her tent during the afternoon, Aislyn joined the final battle of Alvadas. Within her notebook were drawings of every front, every leader, and every monster they had faced. Within her mind were the images of every death that had occurred to bring them to that point in time. Within her body was a determination to continue on, despite all that. She was powered by sheer spite towards the amalgamated horrors that had tried to execute her. Petch you for attacking me, I’ll live just because you had the audacity to try to kill me.

It was a philosophy that kept her going.

The retreat didn’t last all that long. The living gained ground, yes, but after a while the undead realized there weren’t a whole lot of places to run to, resulting in a cornered battle that ended right up on the edge of Alvadas. Aislyn, being the absolute best shot, tried her best to assist those who pushed back the remains of the creatures. There were other archers, certainly, but with the strength and danger of the monsters on the Eastern Advance, she could do little more than simply weaken a target before some duo of swordsmen finished them off. The east was obviously a front for teamwork, and Aislyn was not good at working with others.

Nonetheless, the battle waged on, into the night. Soon, many were fighting blind, slashing as wildly as the undead they condemned for doing the same. In the breaths between her shots, when Aislyn hooked her foot in the stirrup of her bow to force another arrow, another bolt, another shot, she found herself reflecting. Soon, it was a tradition. Concentrate only on the fight when it came time to shoot, but when she leaned over, looked down, reloaded in the robotic motion she had done a thousand times before, slow as ever, she recuperated. It took her a chime to reload, so she spent a chime at peace. She made sure her illusions were in line. She rolled out her ever-tense shoulders. More than anything, she thought.
Two days ago, she had told Phobius that, on the other side of the door, they’d find what they were looking for. They’d be the heroes Alvadas needed. That everything would be fine. The missing people that had disappeared would return to them.

Now, looking back on it, she knew those all to be lies.

Lining up another shot, Aislyn took aim at a screeching corpse that was actively throwing itself at a shielded swordsman. A banshee, it was. She aimed at the head; if she managed to actually hit it in the mouth, how ironic would that be?
Pulling the release, the arrow flew. Just barely, it grazed the banshee’s shoulder. The thing let out another screech, shattering the usual serenity she had when she reloaded. Hands on her weapon, eyes on her adversary. Pull back the string, then the bolt. There was no use in being caught off guard.

The swordsman, seizing the opportunity, swung at the banshee, landing a fair blow before the beast recovered from the distraction Aislyn had provided. Crossbows were wonderful at short range, but the further away a target was, the more her shot became a guess. That meant she had to move in, protected only by the hope that her opponent would be dead before it reached her, if it saw her at all.

Another shot. The thing went down, this time, from a combination of a bolt to the throat and a sword to the chest. Teamwork. Kind of.

Moving back, Aislyn found herself in a growing group of fighters who seemed to be having the same thoughts she was. There weren’t many more of them. This is it. This is it, the end.
The last few monsters in sight were quickly finished off, leaving a silence that felt… Empty. Dead.
It was done. Some way or another, it was done.

[Aislyn Leavold]

84th of Winter, 515 AV
Very Early Morning

As the night drew on, Aislyn forgot to sleep.
Or perhaps forgot was not the right word. Simply put, there were better things to do than sleep. Her body complained, but her mind ignored it. Just one more bell. One more job. One more. One more...

The Eastern Front had been the first to reach the other side of Alvadas. One by one, they had stepped into what had been monster-infested land just bells earlier. The outer walls of Alvadas looked just like they did on the living side, aside from the holes in the brick. Through the peepholes, it appeared the monsters had come from. From… Somewhere. ‘Somewhere’ seemed to describe… Nowhere. Aislyn had looked through the hole herself- there wasn’t anything there. Just nothing. An empty blackness that projected a feeling of uneasiness right into her soul.

In any other situation, she would have stepped through. After all, it had been a doorway that had brought her into that world, and what if the holes were the doorway out? But at the last moment, something had seized her. What if. If she went through, who would tell Phobius? What if the other side was just another war? What if this was a never ending cycle, that she would just be perpetuating by stepping through yet again?
At the last moment, she decided against it. Let someone else go first.

But, low and behold, no one else went either. Apparently, they too were seized by the last moment hesitation, forced back by an unseen anxiety that prevented anyone from actually getting through. Let someone else go first, everyone thought. So no one went first.
So no one went through.

Instead, Aislyn had chosen a different path. Returning to the seclusion of the alleyways, she finished her portrait of the Serpent and the twin Cravens, the final charcoal marks of the Speaker’s flowery beard marking the end. Why the beard, she wondered. Of all the things to illusion. The Sea, at least, changed her appearance in a more liberal way. She was Aislyn’s favourite, the Seamstress being a close second. With no opinion on the Mockingbird or Tailor, her only malice towards the Speakers was held against the Serpent.
After all, he was the one who had taken Wanda away.
And there was just something about him. The way he was adored for his manner of speaking. Something she just didn’t trust.

The Speakers were people, too, weren’t they? Or they had been, at one point or another. Alvads just like all the rest. How, then, had they become part of Alvadas’ watch? Aislyn could feel the power of the Serpent’s mark, but it was no greater than her own. Other Speakers lacked the mark entirely. What signaled them out; earned them the title of Keepers of the Peace?

When she had finished, the steely stare of the Serpent glared back at her from the page.

From there, she returned to the Southern Bastion, resigning herself to a rooftop that overlooked the chaos. Just like old times. Sort of.

On the final pages of her notebook, the scene before her took shape. Large strokes for the buildings, the outline of the city. Small strokes for the tents, a thinner piece of charcoal for the people. Tiny figurines of the Alvads below her. Miniature recreations of a person, someone with a story, a tale that was entirely unique. Each and every tiny, smudged collection of lines- that was a being unlike any other. Unlike anything anyone had ever seen. A bundle of mysteries, packed into one tiny thing of flesh and blood. A thing that could so easily be killed, so easily ended.
In a moment, a story could be erased. Never to be shared again.

How many tales would never again be told, after what had happened?

[Aislyn Leavold]

When the picture of the Bastion was done, the artist was left with two more pages in her notebook. On the last page, Aislyn traced her hand. A simple motion, she moved a thin piece of charcoal around her palm until she had a five-fingered replica on the page before her. From there, she sketched a triangle onto the palm, idly tracing the inverted symbol onto the parchment. It appeared Alvadas would thrive again, or at very least survive. Everything would go back to normalcy.
Or about as normal as Alvadas got.

There was a distinction in Aislyn’s definition of normal. She knew that. The woman had never been outside of Alvadas; only faintly heard of cities like ‘Riverfall’ and ‘Wind Reach’ and ‘Ekytol’. They were different from her city of illusions, she knew. Ionu’s reach didn’t bless their lands quite as strongly as it did Alvadas. Of course, the deity had influence everywhere, in alcohol spirits and mind-altering substances that dotted the land, but from what she had heard, other cities didn’t have illusions. They didn’t have ‘normal’. They had ‘mundane’.
Alvadas’ normal did not lack danger, of course, but the whimsical feel of the city was what made it the city she loved, and Aislyn had definitely felt that lack in the days prior.

What remnants would the apocalypse leave?

Would people just forget, praise the warriors that saved the day, and move on? Say, ‘nevermind all that’, and pretend there hadn’t been bodies lying in the streets? Would they once again accept the normalcy that was Alvadas? What would have happened if they hadn’t fought the dead? If they had lost?
Was this how cities died? In the Valterrian, how they were overrun? She knew the basic history, of Kova and Ivak. It was a war of the gods, where the few mortals directly involved, those that had any actual idea what was going on, were killed almost immediately. Was this another war of the gods, or of a smaller magnitude, a mere squabble?
Were mortal lives really so easily thrown away?

Had Ionu taken issue with another god, and their city been forfeit? Aislyn trusted the deity with her life, surprisingly even more so after the events that had unfolded before her. But she had no control, no insight into what was truly going on. She had always wanted some sort of control, some sort of power, but this was not an answer to that particular wish. Power came at a price, always. There was no escape from that.
She loathed being helpless. Loathed it. But with fragile bones and tremulous hands, she had to look elsewhere for power. Her mind and body were confines she couldn’t escape, but that left her with the only choice of something more out of her hands.

Aislyn had few advantages in her life, and Ionu’s mark was one of them. A magic she controlled, of her sole being. But she had found other magics, of other beings. Magics she didn’t quite understand, but now had a reason to. Firsthand, she had seen the way people feared Ionu. Her childhood mentor had abandoned her at the sight at her first mark, after all. The same kind of fear seemed to surround the magic of Alvadas. A sort of hushed fear, we do not speak of that fear. But Ionu’s mark had never hurt her, and neither could anything else if she played her cards right.
One day, she would be fragile no more.

The eighty-fourth of winter, however, was not that day.

[Aislyn Leavold]

Armed with a completed notebook and a contemplative view of the future, Aislyn took a last look at the final page. Lost in thought, she had decorated the inner triangle with small designs, twirling in small spirals and circles. Ringing the edges of the darker marks, smaller pieces of a larger part. An intricate inverted triangle, just like the one she wore on her shoulder. That was the end, then. It had been a year and a half since she had begun the journal, as a gift to herself for her twentieth birthday. Her new journal held no such symbolism, instead being a sort of ‘new beginning’. It was nearly the new year, after all. Perhaps that would be her first entry. A documentation of the bringing in of five-hundred-sixteen years since the cataclysm that had reborn the world.

The newer journal was tucked away in her bag, a few smaller passages already dotting the first pages. Tables and charts taking inventory of the Bastion’s supplies, from the eighty-second. After that were sketches of the Tailor and the Seamstress, the first drawings of the new book. It lacked any proper introduction, not that Aislyn planned to implement any. The second book was not something for winter. She’d wait, for the moment. She needed to finish the first before she began the second.

Underneath the traced palm, Aislyn loosely drew out a few letters.

Maya

A signature, of sorts. There had been no mention of the name ‘Aislyn’ in her notebook; the name simply didn’t exist to her. There was only ‘Maya’. And, her work being done, ‘Maya’ was left to fade away, light features replaced with dark in the solitude of the rooftop. White blonde hair becoming black, smooth skin roughening. The length of her hair, normally, would visually shift as well, but now it merely changed hue. Maya became Thief, a practically unconscious motion thanks to a sort of muscle memory in Aislyn’s illusions. Then, she switched the charcoal between her fingers to her left hand. Beneath Maya’s, another signature.

Thief

Her work completed, Aislyn moved down from her perch above the city. There were people hauling the injured back and forth, but it was somewhat quieter now. ‘Quieter’, however, was not quite the best word to describe the Bastion. It was still chaotic, only a happier chaotic now. A chaotic in the sense that everyone was half-rejoicing, half-wondering...

What now?

[Kaleidoscope]

 

Aislyn

Skills

• Philosophy: +5
• Observation: +5
• Land navigation: +3
• Larceny: +2
• Crossbow, light: +3
• Investigation: +4
• Writing: +4
• Drawing: +5
• Weapon, knife: +1
• Running: +1
• Acrobatics: +2
• Endurance: +2
• Cosmetology: +1
• Subterfuge: +1

Lores

• Philosophy: What is the use of art?
• The Cravens
• Arcane: The magic of tearing people to shreds
• Arcane: Shield magic
• Drawing: Sketching moving figures
• Drawing: Filling in the frame with features
• Menna: Uses the magic Spiritism
• Okana: White haired fortune teller of Alvadas
• Okana: Has Jamoura mount (Winter 515 AV)
• Drawing: Difficulties of portraying lack of emotion
• Drawing: Fur
• Acrobatics: Bent knees for landing
• Self-preservation is one of the most important things
• Cosmetology: Cutting hair
• Alvadas Speaker: Severus, the Silver Serpent
• Illusionism: Recognising others
• Twin Cravens: One named Everard and the other unknown
• Arcane: How many magic types are there?
• Alvadas: A living city
• Drawing: Flowers
• Drawing: Tracing the hand

Comments
Aislyn is bruised, cut and tired for a good five days.
Her mirror is now shattered into several pieces!

Comments: This was a truly enjoyable read!

Aislyn's grim humour at the situations she gets into are a visceral delight to read, and you really brought across the sense of the futility of the battle.

I enjoyed how you have developed your character here, and I will be keeping an eagle eye on her to see what happens in the future!

Enjoy your grade, and please don't forget to delete/edit out your grade request, and keep your ledger up to date! If you have any questions, don't hesitate to send me a PM.