Who was this sniveling, pathetic creature that pretended to be freya morningstar?[break][break]

Elisabeth had been promised a gleaming warrior, a mighty Morningstar that had sworn to defend the people of Sootopolis behind her aegis. Who was this weeping figure tossed by the waves? What a laughable excuse for an accomplice.[break][break]

(But this was a woman that she recognized, too: a blonde damsel who sobbed alone in her bedroom, begging for a release that would never come, pleading for a mercy that nature never gave freely.)

[break]

What a hateful, miserable, idiotic little fool that broken girl had been.[break][break]

Dragons danced around a mistress who threatened to bow and break at the slightest touch of pink smoke, crumbling as it sought to breach her SAFEGUARD only to falter and dissipate on impact.[break][break]

The underboss's mouth twitched in silent disgust.[break][break]

"You speak of fire, but all we see is smoke and ash."

[break]

To think she had thought, for even a second, of offering to join hands with this woman. To think she'd have given her a chance to bask in the victory and unadulterated joy of defeating one's tormenter -- but no, Freya had not proven herself deserving of such a thing, had she?[break][break]

Had anyone ever offered Elisabeth her own salvation so openly? How generous she'd almost been, for such thankless reward.[break][break]

Her hand curled once more into a fist, denying that small kindness to the white-haired woman as she turned her back to her.[break][break]

"When the full moon next rises, we will do what you cannot. We will destroy the object of your fear, your hatred, and your resentment."

[break]

The fog thickened, condensed into a wall that separated them both from one another. Elisabeth breathed out a GRUDGE that swept over the sparkling, rose-hued blanket of foam. Red eyes glimmered within the MISTY TERRAIN, twin rubies cutting through the rosy expanse.[break][break]

"Your hands may remain clean even as we bloody our own. But when FERNANDO SILPH falls, know that we did not do it for you, but for ourselves."

[attr="class","ooc"] freya morningstar FERNANDO SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

her dragonairs strain. shimmering ribbons fluctuate against the billowing mist, struggling to keep the infection away as freya slackens. as her hands fall through lerye's kelplike mane. she is adrift on the water, in her thoughts, tasting and breathing a past she's tried to stamp out behind her.

wading through a bath in a body not her own. curling a frail, naked self against fernando silph like a newborn babe. the world around her full of disorienting colors and sights and sounds because none of it mattered - nothing mattered but keeping him safe.

“but having your mobility, your autonomy, stripped from you, changes a person.”

the safeguard threads around her continue to fray. mist slips in through the patchwork holes, wriggling through her pores, and she cannot find her will to dive into the sea. to continue to outrun this past that has, she realizes now, has always been inevitable.

"how do you feel?"

shattered. empty promises in the shape of a needle, slipping under armored scales in one decisive, sudden movement. the end of it all. the end of her.

"being put together."

her dragalge bucks, tangled in the weeds now. a ghost emerges from the red tide. seeing it makes her jaw slacken. aeris finally loses her grip and the light screen splinters. chromatic shards dissipate into the air and she is naked again, pale skin swathed in tapu fini's mist.

"was this power yours to give?"

“does it matter?”

"i ask because i will not give it back so easily."

and a new voice, clangorous and ephemeral, is a chorus that drowns her own. that finally, blissfully, drowns fernando's. once a friend to them both and even after the end, a kinder friend to him still. 

YOU ARE NOT LOST, MY CHILD.

her gaze settles on that unaffected, stoic face. and then down, slowly over scaled black curves to three needlepoint fingers, outstretched in an offering. understanding rattles through her, stroking that jealous, ever-hungry part of her. 

tantalizing the forsaken woman who'd fled through a portal into another world. promising a vengeance. a retribution. a deliverance. she has already been baptized. now she is meant to follow the holy order.

cait's voice is a soft timbre, assuring her that this time will be different. that she - they know her. they know she is not lost. but it doesn't make sense, and there are voices in her head, dappling through this haze - king's rough laughter, eva's furtive smiles, alexander's composed mirth - reminding her, gently, who she has become.

her gaze flits back over that expectant face, down the other arm, where its iron grip holds elisabeth by the wrist.

anger sputters back to the surface, blooming into a wildfire that spurs her to action. fingers knot in lerye's mane. eyes narrow. but before her breath can get away from her, before it can consume her, she grits her teeth and exhales - slowly, out through the mouth, steadying herself like king taught her. 

"he does not control me any longer," she says to elisabeth. her eyes are molten gold as they snap back to tapu fini.

"and neither do you."

Elisabeth Fiorelli  FERNANDO SILPH

baptism thread, where the quotes are pulled from

☉

The sting of Tapu Fini's maternal chastisement burned its Avatar with unwanted memory, a webbed hand preventing Elisabeth from daring to depart the Guardian's company. The two women stood transfixed as old voices echoed loudly in Freya's mind, pulled from the dredges of the past and the resentments of the present.[break][break]

The fragility that had seemed so inherent to Freya mere seconds ago washed away with this bastardized baptism, pink mist seeking once more to establish its mantle on a new chosen. Tapu Fini's hands reached towards the very vessel that Elisabeth had loudly dismissed as beneath her, only for the deity's blue eyes to shine with welcome invitation.[break][break]

Of course. Of course a god's greed wouldn't be sated so easily, and yet the pang of not being enough for Tapu Fini spurred a petty jealousy that caused the red tide rippling around her to tremble with barely contained rage.[break][break]

'You would mock me, by choosing her?' flashed the petulant glare in her eyes, though she didn't dare speak such blasphemy aloud.[break][break]

For in that brief hesitation, a thing she didn't understand happened -- a thing that being powerless and unloved, once, had fully erased as a possibility from her mind:[break][break]

Freya rejected Tapu Fini.

[break]

The deity's fury at this rejection howled through a rise of dark waves that thrashed with her departure, lashing out with punishing spite. Circling overhead, serpentine creatures seethed with their own berserk cries, lost to the bloodlust of a goddess scorned.[break][break]

Left dumbfounded, arms limply falling by her sides, Elisabeth did nothing but stare at freya morningstar. For all the similarities she'd believed they'd shared, Elisabeth found she couldn't recognize this version of Freya at all.[break][break]

"...All things cycle, but not all cycles speak to the natural balance. Some cycles must be broken."

[break]

Strange, that this unheeded wisdom from a dead god drifted back to her, now, of all times.[break][break]

The last of the Morningstars raised herself up, shimmering and defiant as she proclaimed a truth that shook with her whole being: "He does not control me any longer, and neither do you."[break][break]

Like a vise-grip around her heart, the same crazed fury that tormented the Dragonairs above suddenly choked Elisabeth from within as Freya named the curse that Elisabeth had so willingly taken upon herself.[break][break]

Control. Was that what Elisabeth had relinquished, when she made her deal with the devil?[break][break]

Do I even know how to live a life that is my own?

Or have I caged myself again, because that's all I know?

[break]

A tremor shivered through her, fingers restless as a wordless scream threatened to suffocate her in its thick panic. Shaky hands snarled themselves in her thick black curls, and the kelp that surrounded her began to dance in a frenzy, threatening to unsteady Elisabeth in her own silent hysteria.[break][break]

Is being powerless all I understand?

[break]

It was all suddenly too much, too much, and without a word Elisabeth plunged herself into the fog, fleeing Freya into the gloom. A flash of her Butterfree's TELEPORT separated herself from this hateful white-haired creature and her self-righteous pride, taking Elisabeth far, far away from the choppy surf to familiar Kalosian architecture.[break][break]

Ragged breathing rattled her lungs, and she glanced around herself, realization eventually dawning. Mauville, her mind pieced together much, much too slowly. You must have asked to go to Mauville.[break][break]

Where he was.[break][break]

A shameful desire for comfort and understanding gripped her with unrelenting need, and she stumbled towards the only source of it she had left, aching with a self-imposed misery she couldn't explain.[break][break]

Not to BARNABY FINCH or anyone else.

[attr="class","ooc"] freya morningstar FERNANDO SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

JUST CONFUSED, AND HURT

there is a mark on her neck. two silver studs, ringed with rough red scar tissue. here, in this moment before the tipping point, freya raises a hand to grace these scars. warm and alive; a warped, twisted visage of herself gazes upon her in the fog. black horns curl atop her head and she knows she is imagining this so that she might finally thank the self that saved her - the self that showed her she was worth saving. 

those indigo eyes give way to carmine. the world catches up to her and tapu fini invokes its wrath. the tide seethes and the ocean roils; freya is still staring at that helpless, frightened woman. but their gazes sever as lerye tosses her head. poison barbs fluctuate and freya is forced to slip from her back and into the thrashing sea.

white froth tumbles over her head, greedily dragging her under. she bobs, clawing for a foothold on the floating red tide, but whatever had bound the plants together has lost its grip. when she comes up, gasping and sputtering, it's only for a second as the knotted weeds come away like loose strands.

salt in her eyes, elisabeth's shape darting into the fog, and freya's choked cry cuts off as another wave rolls over her. pain flares on her leg and she thrashes in the water, kicking at whatever has its hold on her. dragged deeper and deeper, out of the algae, she glimpses her assailant. 

bubbles burst from her mouth. sypha's needle-like teeth have sunk into her ankle. aeris, some short distance away, turns her head toward them. freya reaches out a hand as her companion nears, searching for purchase on familiar scales. her lungs scream for air. the ocean deep presses closer. shapes loom in the darkness, answering the call for aid from their own kind.

fangs sink into her waiting palm.

so tapu fini means to end her. her refusal reveals its true nature. a wrathful god scorned will not go quietly into the night. it will become a harbinger of doom, a catalyst for destruction. vindictive spite has swallowed elisabeth whole, but this corruption will not fell freya. not after she's had to claw tooth and nail from the pit of her own making. 



the boat never makes it to the spire. the sudden storm, she'll learn later, made it turn back. it's why she's alone, at the tower's shore, one hand on her salamence's cheek. her eyes are red from the salt, the rest of her sore and itchy from the poisonous flora. her wounds still bleed, but she does not care.

lyune's forked tongue darts anxiously from behind his teeth. his weathered mind has battled fury and reckless rage and yet she'd known, upon clutching her choker, that tapu fini's thrall would not ravage him like the others.

but there is a mournful thrumming in his chest; the waters have turned red with the blood of her dragons. his grief is her own and she sheds the tears he cannot.

hurt? indubitably. confused? no - elisabeth's admission had been a warning. fernando's day of reckoning will come. 

and freya knows what must be done.

Elisabeth Fiorelli

while sypha and aeris are saved because freya keeps their pokeballs on her, some of the dragons called to aid her have died.

☉