Week 6 cyoa: hei, jiuqing, vin, and kashuu

[saturations]

spoiler warnings: ff14 heavensward and some light endwalker elements
content warnings: violence, death, war, terrorism (short), brief mentions/references for eyegore, brief mention/reference for decapitation, depression, suicidal ideation (nihilist flavor), suicide, dragons and monsters eating people

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[disestablishment]

[ The wisps around her grow in number, darker and more opaque, and they circle her fast like a tornado, but she's still herself. She's still Su Jiuqing even though she feels hope is lost as these children monsters chomp on her. She should blast them. if she doesn't, they will kill her. They're not too bothered by the light, but there is pause as they hiss, shutting all of these gross red eyes.

Her vision blurs when she looks ahead, barely seeing "Itsuki" eat one of the knights. It unlocks its jaw and snap, just like that. Sometimes, you learn you have an appetite for men when you join a murdergame.

May this turn the tide.

The dragon eye in her inventory glows brightly. ]

[countermeasures]

[turn the tide.

why was she here, anyway? to help? who can she help? what can she even do? isn't it just ego, to run from place to place, thinking if she involves herself, she can make it better, somehow—?

because what has she ever done for anyone here? she couldn't save itsuki. she couldn't save these people. here in the vault, the people have turned to monsters, and those who haven't are terrified. words won't save them. healing magic won't save them. why is she here? what did she really think she could do?

she can't even make herself better. she'd been given a second chance at life, but what can she really say about the person she's become? it's a doctor's job to help people, she'd repeated, so many times, but when it comes down to it... she's selfish. she learned medicine for selfish reasons, and she continues to use it for selfish reasons. maybe there's been some benefit in it for other people, when she's used her medical skills, but - it's been for herself, too.

i want to learn medicine to protect myself and people that i love. nothing more than that.

she wanted to save her mother, because she was afraid to live without her.

she wanted to save herself. her fate had been to die a miserable death, never knowing anything until it was too late, but she's defied that.

she wanted to be a good person. but she's used her knowledge of her first life, over and over, to hurt her aunt and cousin before they could hurt her. the best defense is a good offense, but that's not all -

i will slowly torture them, she'd vowed, the same way they tortured me.

yao qian and su waner were snakes, but she'd become one, too, to fight them. and she won't - can't - regret it, but sometimes she does wonder what sort of person that makes her. she hasn't outright murdered them, but only because that would be too easy.

they're snakes, and she is, too. she's just better at hiding it.

but no more.

the dragon's eye in her inventory glows. she feels herself shifting, changing. who needs legs? scales run down them, and they fuse together into a tail - half snakelike, half draconic. it's dragon scales and not markings that run up her skin, and though it's mostly her own features, they're still obscured - she's still absolutely covered in blood that has congealed into something black and tarlike, staining her hair and her skin. it's just her eyes, glowing an eerie green, that stand out from it.

she bares her teeth, and venom drips from her fangs.

this will turn the tides.

the question is - against who?]

[disestablishment]

[ This was not what Hraesvelgr meant when he said turn the tides, but her despair is too strong... It has taken her and she, too, ends in a different way. In this draconic serpentine hybrid, covered in blood thick and dark as tar, she is but a shell of all of her sins, her hurts, and her pain.

... At times, she will murmur a regret. She will cry out. But that is simply mimicry of when she was alive. She has no emotions, no thoughts, either. When you're without hope, it's better to not feel the sorrow, isn't it?

Right now, she is without aether. Like "Itsuki", "Jiuqing" is dead. She only knows one thing and that is to kill.

The smaller monsters stop biting her entirely, having no interest in their own. They only attack those with aether, thirsting for the very thing that made them alive. The remaining knights look at her, frowning deeply to see this woman who tried to help them turn into a monster. They hesitate at first, but attack. It's too late for their friend that "Itsuki" has devoured, but they must save the rest of the refugees.

Those refugees are locked away deeper in the vault. However, she doesn't have object permanence. She kills what's in her path. Out of sight, out of mind, but these knights in front of her are not. Empowered by the dragon eye, she can kill them swiftly if she wanted to. ]

[countermeasures]

[out of sight, out of mind - perhaps these knights should have turned and ran when they had the chance.

a roll of 9 means that even a mimicry of who she was before isn't enough to get her to hesitate for a moment or two. she pays no heed to their weapons, or to the way they're trying so hard to protect the people further in - she just wants to see them dead, wants to drain the aether from them as if it will replace the aether she lacks.

she lunges forward, fangs sharp, and sinks her teeth into the skin of the nearest knight. there's poison in her fangs, unfortunately, so this knight is going to have a very rough tiem of it.

it's fine. maybe kashuu and vin will walk in on her draining this poor knight of their blood. i don't know their lives.]

[disestablishment]

[ They do not... Instead, Jiuqing gets to kill all of these pitiful knights that she can see! They struggle and try to stab her with their weapons, but to no avail. She's too quick. Some escape her gaze and slip through the gates deeper into the Vault, but it's closed. There is no sound to beckon her to them, so she's left with nothing to kill.

...

This leads her to roam aimlessly in the main room a bit before she ends up outside, then. She will kill all in her path, anything that moves, then the stars align. ]