Yelena
Guardian: LVL 5 EXP: 500/1000 Skill Points (SP) Available: 2 Training points (TP) Available: 1 Item Acquired: [Ashen Buckler]
She inspected her reflection in the small silver shield, ignoring Marius’ shouts of fancy as he swam in the oddly warm pool they’d found further in this place – this ‘Sanctum’ – where the Red-Woman assured them they had to be.
“Be not dawdling, Ch’alokk!” she seethed, pointing an accusatory finger at Marius like he was her petulant son in need of a scolding. “We must reach the Dominion Lord!”
“Ah, what’s the rush, Princess,” Marius quipped. “After all, someone seems to agree with me for once!”
He was speaking of the bulbous beetle, Edna, who was currently splashing around with him, overjoyed, basking in the otherworldly sapphire glow that emanated from the pool’s depths.
"She is being relieved that her part in this journey is almost at an end," the Red-Woman replied. "She shall not be made to enter the chamber of the Dominion Lord. Ty'Kalla. One of her own."
"Pity!" Marius shouted, splashing away. "She's gonna miss all the fun!"
Yelena felt herself smile unconsciously at the sight of the three of them. Like a family – a dysfunctional, yet species-diverse, family.
And such musing brought her back to the shield, and her own face shining on its surface.
She had begun her Delve in earnest, now, and had unknowingly put together a team that she could work with to see herself through the long night ahead. How far she had to go, still, she did not know. Did the destiny Azran warned of wait for her in the third layer or the eighth? Despite all the trials she had overcome thus far, she was still directionless. Following breadcrumbs, only.
So right now, she focused on the one thing she could control: her skills. Her abilities. She had the points to hone them. She had people, now, to defend. Perhaps that purpose – the desire to protect, not destroy – was the reason the Voidspawn within her had not truly stirred since first she set foot in this benighted realm?
She turned the buckler in her hands, examining it for any indication of special traits, feeling its heft in her hands. In truth, she had little practice in shield combat. Her want was always to strike at the enemy first, exploit their openings, and end any bout quickly as Di had taught her. But such fighting was not the way of the Everloft. The Wave Trial had shown her that. Here, sometimes, battles would rage on and on and the Delver would be forced to bear the brunt of all damage.
Lord Jael had said as much in his Ruminations, it was true, but he had never spoken of these ‘Wave Trials’ once, and Yelena once more was forced to question her Lord as she never had done before: why had he omitted so much? Why had he neglected to inform the Argents of the tumultuous state of even the First Layer?
If this was how he left it, as the Red-Woman and the vile Blackbird said, there had to be a reason why.
But such questioning was for another time. For now, she focused her eyes and finally made her appraisal:
Ashen Buckler
Shield (small)
Effects: Missile Attacks DMG: ½
Useful in and of itself, she had to admit. But when coupled with the power two points in the [SHEILD] skill would confer:
Proficiency: SHEILDS LVL I: PHYS DMG reduction [-5] when using the [BLOCK] action LVL II: [SHEILD BASH] Skill unlocked. LVL I Shield Bash paralyses a target for 3 seconds. Does not apply to Dominion Lord-level foes
Now, that certainly made things more interesting. The bonuses to her defenses would complement her damage output. She could still employ her searing strike one-handed, and now the [SENTINEL] synergy would be even further enhanced. The additional paralysis from her bash attack could open up her enemies and leave them exposed for her blade. She would become a veritable steel-turtle, using her reinforced shell to repel her enemies and then following up with a swift slash of her azure fang.
She smiled again, knowing that her mind was running away with itself, becoming adrift in a sea of possibilities.
She focused, breathed, and applied her points:
SKILL POINTS SPENT (x2)
Martial Proficiency [SHEILDS] unlocked
LVL I unlocked
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
LVL II unlocked
New skill added to class proficiencies: [SHEILD BASH]
Already the buckler felt different in her left arm. As soon as she slung her arm through its strap and gripped it tight she felt her muscles contract and bulge, as though the shield were becoming an extension of her own body. A new shell of skin that made her turtle comparison all the more apt. Up on Averix, blood, sweat and tears were needed to even block one attack made with malice. Here, Yelena felt she could do it without blinking.
But that was the illusory lure of this place. The Everloft giveth, and the Everloft taketh, she reminded herself. This power wasn’t a luxury, but a necessity if she and her companions had any hope of surviving what was to come.
“Hey, Yelena!” Marius yelled. “Come on in! The water’s fine!”
She spared him a look of jovial distrust.
“Is this just an excuse to see my naked behind, Marius?”
He feigned being stabbed through the heart as he flew into a backstroke. “Oh, Yelena! My dear Yelena. Your words pierce me so. This thief has nothing but the noblest intentions. Besides, I’m a booby-boy through and through!”
She made to rise and toss the shield at his grinning face when she saw that the Red-Woman had already struck: her black nails slashed across Marius’ face with such speed that Yelena was herself struck once more by the realization that this woman was not human at all.
Marius fell under the pool’s crystalline surface with an exaggerated “AIIIIIIEEEEE!” and the Red-Woman resumed her place at the mouth of the pond.
“My thanks,” Yelena said with a chuckle.
“It is being nothing,” she replied, nonchalant. “I am happy to be disciplining men like him, now.”
Yelena laughed. “He’s a joker,” she explained. “Not quite as bad as what you’re used to, I’m sure.”
“You are not knowing,” came the Red-Woman’s terse reply. “I do not know how you are abiding men in your world.”
Yelena sighed. “You get the worst of them, down here,” she explained. “But there’s good men and bad men. You’ve just got to separate the wheat from the chaff.”
She surprised even herself with the candid nature of her words, yet she saw that she had the Red-Woman’s attention, now.
Damnit, Di, she thought. What would you say in this situation? You always sounded so sure, so confident, so knowledgeable. People looked up to you. How did you do it?
She gave a gruff cough, again smiling at Marius’ playful nuzzling against Edna, wailing for a woman to love him, even if she did have eight legs.
“Some of the greatest teachers and leaders I’ve known and respected have been men,” she said, speaking from instinct. Like Di usually said, ‘from the gut’. “Men of all races,” she added. “Canis, Jilae, Tigran, human – everyone. That is what we Argents are – what we are supposed to be. A place where everyone can live together, fighting for a common cause.”
The Red-Woman listened but turned away again. Not in anger, Yelena saw, but with deep rooted sadness.
“Your ‘common cause’ being us.”
Yelena’s breath caught in her throat.
“The Silver One,” the Red-Woman continued quietly, staring out at the surface of the waters. “He is saying these things to us, too, when he comes long ago. We are believing him, and he is betraying us. He is taking us away from our families to fight your ‘great fight’. Now, those of us who remain are having nothing but our memories.”
She fixed Yelena with her cold gaze, forcing the warrior to look into her crimson iris and see the sorrow that was bubbling there.
“Are you thinking these things I say are lies?”
Yelena gulped, clenched her fists, and answered with her heart.
“I think you believe these things,” she said. “But I do not believe you.”
Rather than show her displeasure, the Red-Woman simply gave a little, minute laugh, and dipped her toes in the water below.
“You are not being like him,” she said with a sad smile. “You are telling the truth. You are not telling me what I am wanting to hear, but telling me how you feel, without anger, without shame. I am wishing more of your kind were like this.”
Yelena found that there was little she could say in response. She looked towards the Red-Woman’s painted toes as they played harmlessly across the surface of the pool, and for once was actually glad to feel Marius bump against her.
“Heya,” he said, dripping wet, shaking his face like a wet dog. “Nice disc.”
Yelena brandished the shield before him, letting him see just how much of a mess he was right now.
“By Yevua’s bouncing teats,” he whistled. “I really do look like shit, eh?”
“No more than usual.”
He shrugged and laid back against the cavern wall, strangely relaxed.
“We can’t all have the devilish good looks of a Firvak.”
He’d chosen his words carefully, as always.
“Devilish is right,” Yelena replied, joining him against the far wall. “People always saw this skin first. Anything else was secondary.”
“You can’t really blame ‘em,” Marius said.
She laughed aloud now, cracking up in the face of his nonchalance.
“Can’t I?”
To her surprise, he didn’t laugh back.
“Not really,” he said with quiet certainty. “Mortals like us? We’re dumb, one-dimensional and hell bent on killing or fucking each other, sometimes at the same time. And when we see difference, our fingers itch towards our knives”
So busy was he engaged in picking away at his scraggly beard that he didn’t even see the horror-filled gaze Yelena shot his way.
“How can someone live believing that?” she asked.
He twiddled a stray, sand-caked hair round his thumb and forefinger.
‘You didn’t get out much, did you?” he asked. “Honestly, the stuff I’ve seen down here ain’t half as bad as what waits up there in the alleys and slums of Averix’s Soutern towns. Is it really such a surprise that they hate us down here?”
Yelena followed his gaze as it passed over the Red-Woman and her beetle by the poolside.
“You saw what it was like in that place, didn’t you?” Yelena asked. “Tell me honestly: what things did they say of Lord Jael up there?”
He hid his gaze from her now, still twiddling on tufts of stray hair.
“You already know what they say. According to the minions of the ol’ Don, your Lord Jael’s the reason this place is up shit creek.”
She winced to hear her suspicions confirmed. She said nothing.
“They aren’t human,” she said.
And the way she said it shocked her. It was more like a statement that allowed her to deny the truth that was being forced on her than an attempt to unveil a secret to Marius.
“Hm,” he murmured. “How’d you figure?”
“The woman,” she said, dropping her voice to a whisper. “She knows of the Magisters – the first Glancers to be imprisoned down here. She knows of the Chainbreaker, and says she has been here since…the start.”
Marius looked at her now, and she saw that in his head the same pieces of a slowly forming puzzle were being put in place.
Before he could say anything more, a piercing scream reached their ears from behind the flowing waterfall.
The scream of something beyond human.
The Red-Woman jerked up, looked to her companions, and began drying her feet. At the same time she said a stuttered goodbye to Edna.
“The battle is begun!” she screeched. “We must go to the Lightbringer’s aid!”
“Guess that’s our cue, eh?” Marius laughed, offering her his hand. “Let’s take a raincheck on that convo. For now, show me what you can do with that fancy disk.”
Yelena smiled back at him, readied her weapon, and took his hand.
“I hope this Lightbringer has a brighter outlook on life than you.”