Take me home.

[02:25] The white-feathered, put on the spot, glances from between the two of them. A breath is taken as she stands up, walks over to Clara... And opts to gently, softly stroke her hair.

Her gaze is on Siegfried.

"My brother wanted to take her from me. I-I couldn't take that. She was the only thing I had that I could use to try to get my daughter back.

He understands little aside from killing and fighting. He wouldn't be able to help her."

A soft admission, but, as usual, she's honest. Her words have grains of truth to them, as always. Clara would notice that her demeanor - for right now, seems to be of the softer variety. Odd.
(Magdalen Elisheva)
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[02:29] The Ultovex didn't know what to say. She didn't know why Magdalen had taken her all the way here, in all honesty. As Siegfried asked that she opened her mouth briefly before shutting her mouth. The hand that stroked her hand caused Clara to flinch - almost involuntarily - and she pulled away from the hand.

"I want to go home," She reiterated, once more. "I want to stop feeling.... Like this..." She added. She wiped at her face, gritting her teeth.
(Clara Ultovex)
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[02:38] The floor underneath his feet cracks.

"...You..."

Seeing Clara in a state of crying, broken down, genuinely looking like a disheveled mess triggers something in him. Something usually repressed - the very same thing that'd caused him to hurtle himself at Zeno Morvan to defend Illona, the same thing that he'd ranted in a fury about to Taiga.

Siegfried's strength is miniscule by comparison to almost all of those who bore the name Elisheva. He is aware of that - he knows that what he is about to do is foolish. But...

The pressure from the expulsion of his magic is nothing that would give pause to an above-average mage, but it is still enough that a dome of energy coalesces around him in shimmering azure motes that condense into a raging aura. And then, within a second, he kicks off from the ground, aiming to strike Magdalen dead in the face.

"I don't care what Sors did to you, this was wrong..."

He could never actually harm a woman, much less a woman that he actually respected and liked, such as Magdalen - but he knew she was a mage, and a powerful one at that. This blow would not rattle her body, coming from the meager magi. At best, it would turn her head.

"You're not like this. I...I don't know you, but you wouldn't do something like this. How are you any better than him..?"

His body just moves. She has to fight him.

"And I won't let you get away with it!!"
(Siegfried)
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[02:48] The white-feathered can't help but frown - not so much at the floor cracking, but rather, because of Clara's shying away. It's expected. Magdalen truly treated her horribly.

The Angel-blooded feels different. Part of her wants to punish Clara further, to continue to attack her father through her, in some little way...

And it kind of disgusts her, now. Even as Siegfried readies himself, as she can say is a saddened.

"I... I can't believe myself."

In an instant, a torrent of feathers sprouts from her back, interposing itself between his punch and her face. It's as if he's struck a solid wall. His plan might be really ill-advised.

She warns him softly;

"I'm taking Clara back to Levengard now. That's why I came here. She can't go home, but she can be with the other children.

Please, don't fight me. My emotions will get lose and... I'll do something I'll regret to you."

She hasn't even drawn her gunblade from her back, but the mana that flows through her does swell instinctively as that protective urge within her aims to defend herself from what she views, distantly, as a threat.

The subtle runes of gold inlayed into her clothing illuminate softly.
(Magdalen Elisheva)
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[02:51] Oh.

This was an entire thing, now, wasn't it? As Siegfried moved to attack Magdalen, Clara bolted to the other side of the table. She couldn't conjured magic to protect herself... And even if she did? That rune on her back may just go off. She's silent, watching with wide eyes. Why would he actually attack her? Was it because of her?
(Clara Ultovex)
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[02:56] He seems...undeterred, from this path. Regardless of the words she speaks, how she warns him that if he is to fight her, something regretful may indeed happen, he does not relent in that assault. Even if he is hopefully outmatched, what burns inside of him is not the need to win.

It is the need to set balance to what he believes is a wrong. To show Clara that he was sorry, for keeping her in Levengard and leading to this...this mess. Broken and sobbing in the locked house of what may very well be a madwoman.

"It's too late," he says quietly, drawing himself back up as his meager aura attempts to shield him best as it can from her on titanic one. "You hurt my friend, Magdalen. And you can't make that right just by doing now what you shoulda' did before."

There's a flourish of his blade as he edges that slightest bit closer. The boy has no possible way to comprehend that which he was about to combat - he has no thought in his mind except to claw his own stake in a world that was unfair.

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
Nothing is going to get better, it's not.

"Maybe no one would ever know I kept Clara in Levengard and you did this to her...but I would. And I can't just do nothing about it."

Their eyes would meet, unless Magdalen cannot bare to look at him. What she would see in their eyes is burning resolve that shined without regret.

"...'cause that'd make me just as guilty as you are."

Without another thought, he surges forth, like the wind, ready to roll with the consequences of his actions, whatever they may be.
(Siegfried)
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[03:04] Weapon drawn, her own body responds automatically. What was once one wing, grown to a size that's larger and wider then she is, interposed between the two, is now two, balefully sitting to her sides. She looks actually saddened by this whole situation, looking over at Clara for a moment, her gaze softened.

For once, Clara seems something other then just pain in her eyes when she looks deep enough - now there's regret and guilt, too.

Regardless, Magdalen's eyes close for a moment as the other speaks, holy mana - curative, numbing, gentle flowing from her form, her gunblade in her hand in an instant. A satisfying clink deploying it, its chamber glowing.

But as her eyes reopen, flicking, consumptive flames of righteous hatred and zealous condemnation pour from then, golden hues that lick at her face. White-light becomes gold-tinged, catastrophic and dire. Now, it bleaches and crumbles, instead of heals.

"I need her. I can't do anything to get my Lailah back myself if I don't have her."

Those burning eyes are able to meet his own, burning with conviction and determination. She can justify any evil to herself in this state, this burning desire to protect her family sharpened and weaponized.

She'll strike to defend herself from his blade - at first.
(Magdalen Elisheva)
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[03:07]
{LOAD GAME}

[03:08]
{LOAD GAME}

[03:27] The song of singing steel is heard as blade meets blade. The Gilded Artificer's own blade is traced with beautifully, immaculately inlayed runes of orichalcum, traced over ever detail of her gunblade. They glow and pulse with that catastrophic light of hers.

That rage and hatred burning in her eyes. That utter refusal to give up Clara to anyone. She nearly attacked her own brother a few months ago -

This boy won't be able to quell that protective, overzealous hatred as her body moves automatically.

Quickly, the white-feathered artificer would put the child on the defensive, forcing him back with rapid strikes - enhanced as the High Artificer pulls the trigger of her custom-built design, a detonation of a mana-cartridge inside having a flare about the exhaust ports that double as a barrel in the other mode! This causes her swings to move at a blistering speed, leaving trails of runes in the wake of every arc!

And still, her free hand paints runesthat come to her quickly - those six familiar viridian runes, connected to a larger white-gold rune by virtue of runic commands.

For some reason, she's maintaining her distance, the immaculately perfect, beautiful figure flitting her gunblade to the second mode with a cli-clink, pointing the barrel at him and firing gold-tainted light motes at him repeatedly. Forcing him to stay in place, and stay on the defensive.

Neither would likely recognize this spell she's setting up with that runic construct.

And neither would anticipate the marble blade that plunges through the ceiling behind him as he's pinned down, shattering it into fragments as the edge of a sword a story and a half tall and a magi wide comes to draw across his side. Her Heaven Divider, conjured above her.

In the wake of the angled cut that draws a - thankfully shallow line across his side - as it, for whatever reason, was not a direct hit - the laceration does not close. Instead, the skin near the wound dissolves into white dust, cursed.

The fight's over after that. It feels numb, but immediately, the golden fire has left her eyes, and a bandage is pressed to the now-bleeding wound on the other. Her teeth are grit and her eyes are watered.

"I'm sorry... I didn't want to do this to you."
(Magdalen Elisheva)
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[03:30] ** Magdalen Elisheva has inflicted an injury upon Siegfried. ("Alabaster Sunder", "The High Artificer's conjured Heaven Divider sliced a shallow cut below the ribs of the swordsman. The wound isn't deep - as, for whatever reason, it wasn't a direct hit, but it still is difficult to deal with. The edges of the wound can't be sutured easily, as it flakes off, turning to white dust. And, it still bleeds openly.", "Temporary", "Duration: Medium (4 days)") **
[03:30] Clara watched the fight rage on, with widened gray eyes and a muted expression on her face. Why did it seem that Siegfried was protecting her? Why did it seem like he felt... Guilty?

Perhaps he did; she had no way of telling that.

But now, as it was clear that Magdalen was the winner, she spoke up perhaps in a way to stop Magdalen from actually harming the boy, but perhaps she was too late.

"WAIT! Don't hurt him!" She practically shouted at this point.
(Clara Ultovex)
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[03:49] Her blade is lacquered in gold, her body adorned with the blessings of the heavens, and runes stretch across her garments that she has woven. Her sword is abnormal, nothing like anything he's ever seen before, and...

Siegfried hopes to match her with the untried body of a novice magi, entirely self-taught, already wounded by his battle with Zeno, wearing rags and common wear, with an unremarkable blade. Within the close quarters they battle, he is able to press his speed advantage, and yet even still, her onslaught of ethereal blades leaves him with little to no breathing room.

You're wise enough to win the world, but fool enough to lose it.

He ducks and dives around furniture and pieces of terrain within the small house, but makes sure to never place Clara in the line of danger - he's sure Magdalen does the same. With as many things whirl through his mind in the heat of this battle, he never even had a chance at seeing hercoup de grace...

White hot fuck scrapes into his side, dissolving flesh as if smited. His eyes widen a fraction, and then he screams, a blood-curdling thing that resonates throughout the house. He's already stopped screaming when Magdalen apologizes, a chaotic mess of flailing as he lies on the ground, unable to even stand by his own power, but still too stubborn to vocalize what he feels.

They are beyond words, now. All that Magdalen would see when she looked into Siegfried's eyes is the indignance and self-righteousness that had driven him into a fight he knew that could not win, which had wound up with him on the ground, wracked with injury that would afflict him for months.

"Just...leave Clara alone."

Somehow, some way, he's able to coerce his body into a last, meager stand, rising up with knobbly knees and a hunched back. The defiance that is Siegfried, the rebellious soul that compels his every action, manifests the wind one last time, and his hand swings out at her. But so feeble is his lost control over his magic, all he accomplishes is a harmless pitter that succeeds in naught but smacking a nearby vase onto the ground, coming nowhere close to harming her.

And then he falls forward, flat on his face, out like a light.
(Siegfried)
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