Recent content by Soleil Verdane

With that blow of Zinnia's hammer, the final bearer of the Verdane name was expunged from Arethil, and a justice, uncommon to the lands of Vel Anir, at last delivered.

There was no escape. Nothing in Soleil's arsenal could have saved her from the suddenness, proximity, and power of the elemental water. The moment Soleil's lapse allowed Zinnia to land her grip, her fate was sealed. Pain poured over the whole of Soleil's body as the blast of water completely...

A cruel grin crossed Soleil's visage as she felt the small backlash come through her Pendant's necklace as it made contact against her foe. Her grin spread further as Zinnia went stumbling back, fissures peeling open momentarily at either corner of her mouth to give this spread an unnatural and...

Something of a vicious circle had come to consume the usually steady, usually calculating mind of Soleil Verdane: her ego telling her that Zinnia was nothing, that Zinnia could be killed easily, that—at a disadvantage or not—she could wipe away Zinnia before making good on her flight from Vel...

"Move! MOVE!" said the sergeant from earlier, again taking command and backing up Zinnia's warning for the Guardsmen to evacuate the area. "What about them??" said a Guardsman to the sergeant's side, speaking of their fellows trapped in the pit. With a hardened visage, pained by the collective...

In a mind where fear stood as alien, there was one exception. A flaw, Soleil herself would say should ever she have faced it and considered it. And it was this flaw, this one source of fear, which inextricably brought to Soleil what otherwise she did not truly know: the experience of a normal...

Taking hostages? "Yes," Soleil said, even with a little dash of cheer. The provocation which followed had upon her no effect, for she placed no value on the ideas of bravery and honor—could not even truly understand them. To Soleil there was only advantage and disadvantage, and this gave her...

Soleil weathered the accusations effortlessly, but Zinnia's call for Captain Murrick gave her some pause. Hm. Mistake. Should have killed. Then only Zinnia's word against hers. For long term? Not good. But there was no long term. Her time in Vel Anir, in the Republic, in the Academy, was done...

Soleil fell. And her body, upon impact with the ground, burst into sand like a fragile ornament shattering into innumerable pieces, and the grains of sand each and all filtered down beneath the dirt of the training ground and thus were the whole lot of them disappeared. The Guardsmen who saw it...

Soleil's Sandform was as surreal as it was horrific. Zinnia's hammer collided with nothing that felt like bone; with all the ease of a shovel plunging into the loose sand sitting atop a desert dune did her weapon so cleave straight through Soleil. Her imitation body parted in two beneath the...

Though he knew in a vague sense that Zinnia would be nearby, even Murrick did not expect her to come crashing down from the very ceiling above his head. Added to this was the near complete envelopment his anger had cast about him, as though he were a hapless fish caught in its net, and so swept...

Captain Murrick didn't follow through with the usual military formalities. He just continued to sit there, looking up at her, his hand clutching the empty glass as it sat on his desk. Soleil could almost smell the pungent fear radiating off of him. It excited her. Since Murrick did not complete...

VERDANE ARRIVES Captain Murrick sat in his office. He wore his best uniform, his mind as a means of escape consumed over those past few days ensuring that it looked pristine. On his desk rested a bottle of whiskey and a small glass. With a trembling hand he poured some of the spirits into the...

ACADEMY DORMITORIES LATER A secretive conversation near the northeast corner of the dormitories: "...easy. Us? Just need cover story," said Soleil Verdane. Carter, her interlocutor, sounded unsure and doubtful. "But our mission...how will it get done?" Soleil just let out one her lilting...

Patience and persistence proved rewarding. In a guardhouse in Vel Anir city, this conversation between two Guardsmen was available to be overheard: "...trying to join them?" "Yeah." "I told you you were a lifer." "Alright, fine, you were right, I was wrong. Gimme a good punch in shoulder...