[attr="class","Navypog3-title"]
MORE HUMAN[break]THAN HUMAN

[attr="class","Navypog3-tagged"]
howard slayte

[attr="class","Navypog3-subtitle"]
ROUSE THYSELF, RIDER.

[attr="class","Navypog3-pkmn"]

[attr="class","Navypog3-post"]





“Ah.” Her eyes danced with delight. “The Hero never told his Squire about his dark deeds.”[break][break]
Zaria rushed up behind them, out of breath from her run. Fresh blood stained the feather blade she used. Looking between Navy and Elisabeth, she deduced what was going on, trying to interpose herself between Hero and Witch.[break][break]
“None of that now.” She said, totally at ease. Vines grew thicker around Crystal’s neck. “It’s something you should know too, Warrior.”[break][break]
Elisabeth looked to Navy. She said nothing to him directly, but she didn’t have to say anything. He knew what she wanted him to say.[break][break]
“I killed my parents.” He admitted in a soft voice. “I didn’t mean for her to die.” Elisabeth’s shadow frowned. “Dad was a real piece of work. Nobody would do anything. If I didn’t do that, he was going to start hurting Gabe.”[break][break]
“Aha, so you admit your crime.” She reveled in that, as if the act of admission settled some cosmic balance. “Yet you can’t really rouse the will to kill me, can you? Trust me when I say this, Navidson, I am a much viler woman than your mother could imagine being.”[break][break]
“I’m sure you weren’t so bad.” He said through gritted teeth. “Not ‘til this thing got you.” His eyes looked at Wo-Chien with accusation.[break][break]
“This tired argument again.” She sounded annoyed. “Navidson, allow me to be blunt: you are a bad father. You should be rushing me right now. You should be searching for some way to free her, but instead, you talk. If I killed her, you’d find it in the goodness of your heart to spare me again somehow.”[break][break]
“So,” said the Witch, “you might be a good man, for a murderer, but you’re no good for the people around you.” She snapped her fingers at Wo-Chien, as if she had any power over him. “Come, Wo-Chien. Show him. Show him the grudges his mercy has afforded me time to carve.”

[attr="class","Navypog3-bot-1"]

notes about this post

[attr="class","iconimg"]

Navy [break][break]

NOTES

- March forward, squire.

MADE BY GUNSMILE

[attr="class","Navypog3-title"]
MORE HUMAN[break]THAN HUMAN

[attr="class","Navypog3-tagged"]
howard slayte

[attr="class","Navypog3-subtitle"]
ROUSE THYSELF, RIDER.

[attr="class","Navypog3-pkmn"]

[attr="class","Navypog3-post"]





Navy opened his mouth to speak. He opened it to argue with the Witch. He did not realize words would not avail him, and that there was no understanding he could reach with her. Roland interrupted his liege lord’s words with action.[break][break]
Roland was quick. He was always quick, right up until his last breath. When he was reborn as a ghost in a machine, he was quicker still. A few short skips across the stone planted him in front of Wo-Chien. His blade danced with light as it carved into the wooden tablets. A passing blow was turned decisive by the blade’s edge. The Black Knight’s metal made all the difference, and the tablets shattered.[break][break]
A storm passed over the room. Wo-Chien screamed. A god’s death throes were terrible to behold, and there was no Hattori here to instantly destroy the creature. Books flew. Plants few, they died, they grew again. Navy, only now spurred to action, rushed to Crystal. She looked up at him, for just a moment, like a child who needed their parent.[break][break]
“I’ve got you.” Said the Rider as he pulled her up, holding onto her protectively. Pulling her behind him, he pointed his gun at the dying god. It caught fire, somewhere along the way. Wo-Chien turned all its terrible ruinous intent upon its murderer. Ruination came for Roland, as it would come to Hoenn one day. The machine knight corroded from the inside out. He did not scream, nor even make a sound. Roland took to a knee, and began to shut down.[break][break]
“Congratulations, Navidson.” Elisabeth said with scorn. “I thought all the ore left by the Black Knight had been used.”[break][break]
“Not quite.” He turned his gun on her, as if he had the willpower to pull the trigger. “You’re under arrest.”[break][break]
She patronized him with a smile, like she beheld a creature that lost the thread of his own plot. Knights did not arrest witches. They slew witches.[break][break]
“Even to the last, y-” She was not afforded the dignity of final words.[break][break]
A ghost possessed Roland, giving him just enough momentum to take one step. His blade pierced her heart, and the Witch of Motostoke died. Only then did he fall, his blade shattering against the floor.[break][break]
All of them stood there, taking in what had just happened. A beam of sunlight shone through the window, the first Ballonlea had seen in a long, long time. Human voices sounded from the world below. Life was moving on, even as the heroes struggled to take their next step.[break][break]
“Hey, father.” Crystal said, a strange bashfulness in her voice. “I don’t know how Grandmother died, but…I doubt it was your fault.” She squeezed her father’s hand.[break][break]
“It was.” Navy said in a whisper, but his mind was still on the fallen woman.[break][break]
“We need to have a long talk about this.” Zaria said, her helmet falling to the ground. She wiped sweat from her brow, playing a role she hated just as much as the Rider – that of an adult, making decisions. “But not before we get these ones buried too, and make sure the town is alright.”

[attr="class","Navypog3-bot-1"]

notes about this post

[attr="class","iconimg"]

Navy [break][break]

NOTES

- March forward, squire.

MADE BY GUNSMILE

[attr="class","Navypog3-title"]
MORE HUMAN[break]THAN HUMAN

[attr="class","Navypog3-tagged"]
howard slayte

[attr="class","Navypog3-subtitle"]
ROUSE THYSELF, RIDER.

[attr="class","Navypog3-pkmn"]

[attr="class","Navypog3-post"]





“Yeah.” He said as the people looked up at the tower. A cheer went out across a crowd. A little magic had left the world, but that was alright. Another victory for them, another step closer to their return.[break][break]
It was a lie. Before her death, Elisabeth had torn open an old wound on his heart. Zaria regarded him with sudden weariness. Both of them knew this would have to wait. There was more to being a hero than simply slaying the wicked.[break][break]
By the time the magnificent five descended from the tower, there were whole tales being spun about what happened up there. In one, he swung from the roof with his chain gun. In another, the Witch turned all of her terrible fury upon them. Always, there were clashes. Always, there was excitement and derring-do. None of the townsfolk dared to imagine that it was a brutal affair, decided in three hits.[break][break]
People cheered for Navy, Howard, and the rest. Navy wore a smile for them, which best suited a hero. When he excused himself to bury Elisabeth and Roland, no one stopped him. Zaria accompanied Howard, leaving the business of burying them to Navy and Crystal.[break][break]
“And your mother just?” He asked as the bodies were laid into the earth.[break][break]
“Vanished with the rest of you.” Which meant, at least here, there would be no reconciliation or forgiveness from Melody. “I…wish that she hadn’t.”[break][break]
“Me too.”[break][break]
They found two more tera crystals on the bodies. Elisabeth’s was a world overrun by green. It was a world daring to be tamed, a world where flowers always grew. There were hardly any flowers at all in Roland’s world. There was only strife, perpetual conflict, always structured and always deadly.[break][break]
Two more crystals, infinite questions about how they got her. Father and daughter rode in comfortable silence. There would be a long talk when they got back to town. Valkyrie, as she always did, carried him where he needed to go as if he rode on the northern wind.[break][break]
There was one thing he loved about being a hero: he never paid for his own drinks, or anything else either. Navy thanked Arceus for that, because he didn’t have the heart to tell anyone that he ran out of money back in Wedgehurst. He sipped ale on some well-wishing townsfolk’s dime. His remaining four all looked to him for answers.[break][break]
His eyes went to Vortigern for comfort, but the black dragon offered him none. Vortigern alone, through their synced souls, knew the precise truth of Elisabeth’s words. Golden eyes offered no succor, simply bidding the Rider to go on.[break][break]
“I’ll have the truth of it out of you.” Zaria insisted. “The whole truth. You murdered your mother?”[break][break]
“I meant to kill my father.” He said plainly. “But that bastard, he took her with him.”[break][break]
“I do not understand.”[break][break]
“Nor do I think you will when I explain it, but I’ll try my best.” He emptied his ale. Navy, like most men, did not enjoy dragging skeletons out of his closet. He found no comfort in the empty smiles of the dead, nor closure for things long done.[break][break]
“My dad was a piece of work. Hurt me. Hurt all of us. That’s what alcohol did to him. Mom didn’t have the heart to leave him, I don’t think. So, she endured. Made me endure it. Wasn’t going to be long before Gabe, that’s my brother, was going to have to endure it too.” He remembered being pushed to the brink. Young, scared, failing school, his father drunkenly talking about going on a fishing trip…[break][break]
“He was going out to sea. I just stopped thinking. Cut the brakes on his truck. The city did the rest.” And she left with him. Joshua liked to take his wife out on trips sometimes. They were excuses to heap more abuse upon her, away from the children’s prying eyes.[break][break]
“He dragged mom along with him. Didn’t know what to do. I just knew he was a monster, and he needed to die. She didn’t. She just got caught up in it all.”[break][break]
“An accident, to protect your brother?” Her voice softened at the explanation, though not by much. “There were other ways.”[break][break]
“I am in my fifties, Zaria.” He said bluntly, wearily. “I know. I know I could’ve called someone. Could’ve done anything, but…I wasn’t thinking. I was scared. You don’t get what it’s like, living like that, unless you do.”[break][break]
“And you never told anyone?”[break][break]
“No.” Navy said without pretense. “If I told anyone, they’d throw me in jail. If that happened, Gabe’d end up in an orphanage. It’s a hard world for a kid with nothin’. My dad named me Michael. Michael’s a jerk’s name. Murderer’s name. Gabe called me Navy. He thought I was some swaggering hero out of an action flick. Never even considered I’d just be a low down murderer.”[break][break]
“I wanna be Navy. And by being Navy, I can make it right.”[break][break]
“You can’t just change your name and expect that to make everything alright.”[break][break]
“No.” Navy agreed. “But what I do with the name should.”[break][break]
Zaria’s exhale told a story all its own. She wanted to shout at Navy, but through great effort, did not. Instead, she steadied her breathing, as the Fairy King taught, drank some ale, and looked to him again.[break][break]
“By not killing. Navy…there are times when you need to swing your sword, or to kill. Your hesitation there cost Roland is life. That should have been you, who struck Wo-Chien.”[break][break]
“I know.” The question of whether or not he would have died goes unspoken, and unanswered. “But I – it’s hard.”[break][break]
“Because the ‘party’s over’ when they die. Do I have it right?”[break][break]
“Yeah.”[break][break]
“I do not know Elisabeth Fiorelli.” Zaria conceded. “But I met plenty of folk who were just like her, in my travels. People give her chance after chance. That woman makes no secret of what she is, here or in your Hoenn. She will be that way until the day she dies. When you are given a sword, you are charged to act. You must act decisively, lest you invite ruination.” She seemed less a young knight on her quest by the moment. Zaria spoke like an old master at arms, instructing teenage pupils.[break][break]
“Do I make myself clear?”[break][break]
“Yes.”[break][break]
“Then think on what I’ve said. I have thinking to do, too. The kingdom of Hoenn will be one step closer to collapse if you confess your crime to them. You seek atonement, and I have- I know you’re trying. We’ll speak on this again, one day, before all is said and done.” She stood up, and turned to walk upstairs to her room.[break][break]
“We should all sleep soon. It would not do well to linger in Ballonlea, not when the Void lurks in the dark corners of the world, and the Cursed reaps in Circhester.”[break][break]
Crystal and Vortigern soon left as well. It was just Navy and Howard there.[break][break]
“Rough day.”

[attr="class","Navypog3-bot-1"]

notes about this post

[attr="class","iconimg"]

Navy [break][break]

NOTES

- March forward, squire.

MADE BY GUNSMILE

[attr="class","Navypog3-title"]
MORE HUMAN[break]THAN HUMAN

[attr="class","Navypog3-tagged"]
howard slayte

[attr="class","Navypog3-subtitle"]
ROUSE THYSELF, RIDER.

[attr="class","Navypog3-pkmn"]

[attr="class","Navypog3-post"]










“Not Circhester. Not yet.” He nodded down the road. Galar’s roads were marvelous, especially after the heroes rebuilt them all. Passages that once proved perilous were rendered pleasant. A father might share a leisurely horse ride with his daughter, or comrades might run the roads. Valkyrie set off with the expectation that others would follow. She was, after all, a king’s steed. Though Navy might borrow her for his quest, she served only one master. [break][break]

“It’s an easy road back to Hammerlocke. There’s something there I wanna check on. Something I think we both need to see.” There wasn’t much more to the conversation than that. Ultimately, as the one blessed with Calyrex’s steed, Navy decided where their band went next. There was a certain efficiency to Howard’s suggestion. Navy himself had made that trip during times of crisis, when medicine from Ballonlea needed to be delivered to frosty Circhester. It wasn’t an easy trip, and their numbers would work against them. [break][break]

“There’ll be supplies. It’s rough going, and we won’t be able to feed everyone and the horses. Just better that way.” Practical matters kept his mind occupied. That had been the trick during the first go-around, too. Find a task. Focus. Survive. Wait and hope. Dwelling on Hattori and Roland’s deaths, or what the fallen ruinous avatars said, would only chain him down. Dewford needed him. Dewford was waiting. [break][break]

“Besides, I know you’ll want a look at the tapestries.”

[attr="class","Navypog3-bot-1"]

notes about this post

[attr="class","iconimg"]

Navy [break][break]

NOTES

- March forward, squire.

MADE BY GUNSMILE

[attr="class","Navypog3-title"]
MORE HUMAN[break]THAN HUMAN

[attr="class","Navypog3-tagged"]
howard slayte

[attr="class","Navypog3-subtitle"]
ROUSE THYSELF, RIDER.

[attr="class","Navypog3-pkmn"]

[attr="class","Navypog3-post"]







“It was one of the four kingdoms that remained standing. It had…three kings and one queen.” His voice strained as he pulled at the words, like he was pulling something heavy out of a closet thick with cobwebs. “King Remiel Calcifet, King Biscotti Kingsley, and King Ashley Shepard. Never really asked if any married Queen Selena Desmarais.” It didn’t matter, he supposed. They kept the kingdom safe. They kept the flag flying. Hammerlocke was the bastion holding the three northern kingdoms together.[break][break]
“Huh. I forgot Prince got the big promotion to King here in the dream.” The thought that he could forget something so important weaved a thread of despair into his mind. “Anyway. They welcomed me here, like they did everywhere else. I’d bring them news, inventions, and letters. I’ve never told you how people got separated, did I?”[break][break]
“The High King told us four cities were left. He opened four portals. They closed behind us, and we were trapped in the city we chose. Some folk got separated from each other for a long, long time.” He remembered the first trek he made, after Calyrex appeared at the gates. When he saw the little rabbit, alone and poisoned, braving the wastes to check on their cities, he swore there and then he would shoulder that legacy.[break][break]
“Everyone thought I was stupid, the first time I told them I was going to make the journey. There was no guarantee I’d make it, but I wouldn’t back down. Not when we didn’t even know if the other settlements were okay. Someone had to do it. So I told my king and queen a man’s got to be a little stupid.”[break][break]
For the first time on the road from Ballonlea, Zaria laughed.[break][break]
“A small correction, o Rider.” She said with mirth. “A hero has to be a little stupid.”[break][break]
“I’m no-”[break][break]
“None of that. My brother and I said the same thing, a long time ago, when those who doubted us said we were riding to our deaths.”[break][break]
“You rode out, too?”[break][break]
“A question for a day that will soon come.” She said as high castle walls grew larger. People were talking to one another. Whole crowds of them had gathered on the battlements. At the sight of the spectral steed, a mad cheer went out.[break][break]
“I think you have a job to do, Squire.” She smiled.

[attr="class","Navypog3-bot-1"]

notes about this post

[attr="class","iconimg"]

Navy [break][break]

NOTES

- March forward, squire.

MADE BY GUNSMILE

[attr="class","Navypog3-title"]
MORE HUMAN[break]THAN HUMAN

[attr="class","Navypog3-tagged"]
howard slayte

[attr="class","Navypog3-subtitle"]
ROUSE THYSELF, RIDER.

[attr="class","Navypog3-pkmn"]

[attr="class","Navypog3-post"]







“That’s for history to decide.” He whispered before he was announced. Heroes, he thought, rarely knew they were heroes. Others declared them at such. Often, the difference between hero and villain lay along a blade’s edge. Victory ended one truth, and propped up another. That kernel of truth grew into an ideal that would long outlive the heroes.[break][break]
The roar of the crowd drowned out his thoughts. These people adored him. They were blessed with a clear sky thanks to him. Peace was returning to their land, piece by piece. Hardened warriors raised their swords. Ladies clapped for him.[break][break]
It felt right – the peaceful expressions they wore. Being their hero roused warmth to his cheeks, reminding him of a younger man’s dream. That man dreamed of being the champion, of usurping his best friend’s seat, of bathing in the adoration of Hoenn. He thought he saw the faces of those he knew from Hoenn – citizens he had helped along the way.[break][break]
The gates opened, and he was received with a hero’s welcome. Roses rained on him. Zaria seemed most at ease. Crystal, by sharp contrast, seemed to long for nothing more than to hide away. Most of them simply ignored Vortigern, who seemed out of place in a hero’s company.[break][break]
“Arceus.” He said later, when they dined in the hall where the high king once sat. “This feels like the first real meal we’ve had in a damn long time.” Roasted Torchic were served up amidst green and berries. Whole Emboars were roasted over a fire, their meat served up warm. Oil shot down his beard with each bite, so ravenous was the Rider’s appetite.[break][break]
None at so much as Zaria, who piled plate after plate before her.[break][break]
“More.” She ordered. “More meat.” The order was given with the severity of a battlefield command. She matched Vortigern pound for pound.[break][break]
“That sure wasn’t here when I was here last.” Navy nodded at the empty throne, which seemed more a black obsidian monolith that sprung from the ground and stretched to the roof like a great tree. Small stairs were carved into it, leading up to a place for a man to sit. It looked like an uncomfortable throne, as any throne should be. Another crystal sat affixed to its center, shining with yellow light like a bolt of lightning.[break][break]
“The empty seat of High King Remiel.” Would that Remiel Calcifet and his Zekrom were here, that his people could have a proper ruler for a little while. “This place remembers him, too.”

[attr="class","Navypog3-bot-1"]

notes about this post