soup but it tastes bad

[bloodyashes]

The forest is quiet, and almost trackless - who needs a trail, after all, when the only person who ever passes this way is a single flesh eater, coming and going from the tower in the distance?

(But this story does not begin with Kratos Aurion was a blade.)

It begins, instead, with two blades in a remote forest, the same way another one ended, in the distant past. A blade of justice, and a flesh eater driver, seeking audience with the Aegis who is rumored to reside in the tower. And the story starts, just as the other ended, before they ever reach the tower.

Ether flows through the air - light-aspected, with hints of water and wind - and converges on a point. The crystalline structure doesn't look so different from the trees and underbrush that surround it, save for the fact that it glows white with a brilliance that's visible even in the direct light of the sun.

(The last story began, Van Grants was a blade.)

(It was not a happy story.)

Near the 'roots' of the tree, there is another core crystal to be found. Although it seems broken, it pulses with a dull red glow, indicative of the blade inside being ready (perhaps more than ready) to manifest again. Equally clearly, it has not been disturbed in a very long time - only the glow separates it visually from the natural stones around it, moss and dirt breaking up the too-square outline.

To those who can sense ether, however, it is practically a beacon. And to those who can see the threads of fate...

(This isn't the story of the Aegis. But there's a thread tied here, nonetheless, that hasn't disappeared.)

Comments

[bloodyashes]

"I was able to control who his next driver would be, at least," Asch says. "And I left him a letter."

It's... probably not enough, but at least it's something. More than most blades get, when they wake up.

He stretches against the window and then pulls his gloves off, revealing the unnatural ether lines underneath, as he begins to straighten his hair with his fingers. Few blades even have ether lines on more than their hands or wrists, but here he is with a set of lines too jagged to be called delicate across the backs of his hands, before they shift suddenly into almost-runic rings around the base of his fingers. The lines climbing back from his wrist, however, have all the elegant flourishes of a fire or water blade. And on the palms of his hands, a shape like a tuning fork, connected to the rest by a wide, shimmering line of red running straight down his inner forearms.

[crimsonsnow]

Whether or not Jade was intending to pursue that line of thought any further frankly doesn't matter. Asch takes off his gloves, revealing his ether lines, and all other thought simply grinds to a halt in Jade's mind. He his both fascinated and unsettled all at once. He's not close enough to make out the finer details, but even at this distance the sight of them makes something in his core scream of horror. Seven blades sacrificed to create one, indeed.

"Ah, so you don't layer as much as you do because of the weather, I see," Jade comments.