No Longer Alone in the Dark

Off in the desert of the Holy Empire Westelande, a duo of Adventurers is standing in front of the ruins of who knows what long-lost structure.

"So, here we are," comments Uta, arms crossed, in a poofy knee-length black dress, with a generous serving of lace and frills. Without forgetting those ever-so-important ribbons. Rigorously black with white accents. "It seems like we have reached our destination." She turns to look at the stones, levigated to a perfect 'historical' look by sand and wind.

Uta's gaze encompasses the scene, of dunes and a collapsed stone edifice. "Goodness me, this looks like Ozymandias's summer resort..." She turns to Haru, with the kind of intense look that betrays a tightly constrained undercurrent of concern whirlpooling underneath. "So, you want to do this?"

The desert. It is a vast wasteland of sand and heat. Things try to live there. They struggle. Yet it is its own harsh ecosystem under the judgement of an ever oppressive sun. A scorpion clatters its pincers at Haru as his thick black military boots crush the sand next to it. Sting sting. Yet the poison doesn't get past the thick inky exterior. The insect gets the gaze from on high down to it. There is the intensity of condemnation that gods hold for arrogant mortals. It eminates from Haru as the sun scorches his fair skin. It creates a void of response where acknowledgement is beyond the event horizon. The scorp clacks its pincers and steps back, uncertain on how to handle the situation. Clack. Clack. Too alien for it. Why hasnt it attacked me, it thinks. Why hasn't my poison worked, it thinks again. The thought is binary in its simple brain. This outcome is neither 1 or 0. It is 2. It is 2 and it gives it a new sense altogether. Fear. Fear from something it does not understand. Something it attacked. It comes to a crossroad on how to deal with something alien, a base stressor response. Fight or Flight. It flees, burrowing under the sand.

Haru is not dressed in his normal navy jacket nor his adventuring hoodie. His normal clean outfit is replaced with something far more grunge. A tight black t-shirt fits over his slim torso with cuts along the short sleeves and the torso itself. Black gloves with a manicle on his left wrist. Barbed wire tattoos coil like a noose around his biceps all the way to his shoulder. His pants are similarly dark toned black cargo pants. They hand loose with a chain belt slung along one side. Its a dirty look that makes his silver-white hair appear like a tuft of cigarette ash was left there as a reminder of the ash beneath. The silver rimmed monocle remains like a small shred of decency trying to hold onto the costume aesthetic before.

"So this is the place," he asks Uta in response to her declaration in all the grace of a gruff merc. He could cosplay as Cloud with how much angsty stoicism he coats his voice with. "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert," he begins to recite the poem. You can't be emo with out SOME poetry, "Near them, on the sand, half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed." A hand stretches out to accent the recitation. It stretches as if it could touch the structure from a distance and pluck it from the sands. His blue eye, as clear as the desert sky above, looks to Victorian Spriggan. No words needed to answer her question. He wants to do this. To let that wolf loose once more. Let it feed. Let it grow. Let it be accepted in all its destruction and all its peace.

The wind howls across the dunes as the Earth master channels his mana, his will, into four small orbs that pop off of the chain that serves as his belt. They rush along the sand like bullets, rippling the earthen dust like the surface of water. They swirl, shifting the current of sand around the siblings as the wind draws to a howl. "My name is Haru Nox, King of Kings. Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!" he says with a grin that can only be described as wild and manic. Untethered. It reflects in his magic as the sand moves in a raw, graceless state to either side. Up. High like walls of a tidal wave of sand threatening to crash down on them both. A parted sea of sand. The tension grows as the sand is pulled up to its apex. Haru closes his hand and a ripping inferno of heat courses through either side of the sandwalls, turning the sand molten before it hardens in a quick gust of ice. The result?

An entrance fit for a palace. Glass like jagged ice giving them a path down to the ruins. It was excessive. Extravagant. One can even see the scorpion from before encased for eternity in the glass.

The ground below undoubtedly shakes as the result of so much raw material being moved about. Disoriented by the rumble, Uta looks around in barely concealed panic and then, transfixed, stares at the increasingly growing shadow that threatens to precede the collapse of that column of sand on both Adventurers. Foreshadowing indeed.

But that column does not crush, not them, it creates a see-through personal boulevard of sort.

She inches towars the transparent bastions, and, hesitant, reaches out one hand towards the jagged surface, which returns fractured, aetheral reflections. She hovers there, and finally dare touch its cold, smooth surface, her mouth having narrowed down from the previous gaping of terror now to a subsided 'oh' of wonder.

"...this sense of wonder is not being very goth, is it?", Uta asks all of a sudden, retracting her hand. She looks left and right. "Uhm... I'll have to admit I'm completely new to this kind of thing. I suppose I should try harder."

She clears her throat, stiffens her back, tugs at her dress, and puts on the best uncaring look she manages. She extends her hand without hesitation, this time, and runs it on the section where the scorpion is visible. "You wanted to play Death," Uta deadpans. "But Death has played you. The Wheel of Fortune churns forward, uncaring: O Fortuna, velut Luna, statu variabilis."

She turns towards Haru, with an unconcernedly melancholic expression, as if for underlining how she does not care about anything in the world anymore, kind of like how cats seem to always find a way to pass by where you can see them and they can show you they are utterly unconcerned with you.

Also, under all those complex layers of deep concern about not caring, for seeking validation that she's doing this goth thing right.

Haru has held an aloof aura before. It is the picture of a man that is lost in thought. Barely tethered by what is in front of him. The aura now contrasts to Uta's. It is not awe turning to apathy. It is apathy turning to mania. It is as if there was a dragon left sleeping inside of the soul. A monster, chained and unable to perish. Left to starve until emaciated down to its bones. Finally given a meal, hungry, as Haru's heavy breaths begins to still.

A young human who is lost in the current within his soul. Barely tethered by what is front of him. He sees Uta there and that unconcerned expression. The words of Death and Fortune. The searching.

And then there he is again, back in the present. His grin turns to a tamed expression of a smile. The gloved hands run across the freshly formed glass. "This is how," he says as he brings the sentiment to words, "it feels. The glass. To be impartial to the light. It passes on through. The feeling of the sand behind it, dry and gritty. The heat. You touch the glass as if those things are lended to the glass itself, but it is not." A drifting whirlpool of poetry from the Artificer in grunge. "It is a void trying to be something," he turns his head to face Uta. Giving her the answer. "And then finally accepting it isn't. It never was. It was glass," as the hand finds a jagged part of the glass, running his hand across it as a red damage line crosses over his palm. He doesn't flinch. Partly because the red line protection dulls the pain but something about the way Haru is acting shows that it might not have mattered.

Madness. The young man punches the glass wall, the barrier that keeps them between a sandy grave as it rings out like a bell that tolls only for the two of them out here in the desert. Not a single crack forms in the glass. "Earth has many forms, you know," he says as the white haired man's body leans back against the constructed barrier. "It can be thought of rock. Metal. Plant. Soil. Brown. Green," as he walks through his elemental affinity. Perhaps that is why the Earth is so strong. The cage that holds the demon in must be strong as Titanium. The mask that keeps people distracted, polished marble. Baubles and mirrors in a maze. Fire and passion that pull him into fits of dramatic need to express who he is. And at the core there is something else. Something Dark.

"In so that your Darkness could be akin to a black rose," he says as he looks to his sister, "petals like soft velvet made dark. A stem of obsidian that shines glossy. Growing there in the rough, but not in some desolate place. In a busy place. Full of chaos and storm. Not immune to the whipping winds but bending to and around. Its interest quirking at once, taking in the chaos. Letting it flow through like the heat of the sand through the glass. Stealing the form of it through."

Another insane thump against the glass from Haru's noodly arms. The avatar has a nice showing of lithe strength, but it is not impressive. Uta would probably shatter it, but Haru cannot. "I feel mine like it was something I've forgotten. Something I have repressed all these year like a nightmare I didnt want to accept. It has become a blanket of ink as thick as tar. Drowning out the sound and the sight." He extends a hand up to the sky where that sun once stood. But now? Now they are surrounded by tall walls of sand and glass. They exist in the shade. Sheltered. "A starless sky, waiting to be feared. No," he shakes his head, "rejected." Nothing so glorious as fear. "Neglected." Nothing impressive at all. "Forgotten." Nothing at all. "And now we seek out what isn't. Something we had all along." He pushes off of he glass wall and begins to walk towards the ruins, "Something we lost by obtaining something else. Inherited again by being broken toys in a god's war. Until there is the gentle peace of silence. The Dark is solace. It is shelter in a mad world." And all worlds are, in the end, mad.

Uta can recognize a monster driven by insatiable appetite when she sees one. That is basically what Slimes are. Uta observes for now. Something stirs on her expression, something indefinable, but she keeps her composture, especially after the almost perfectly sinusoidal chime soothes her attunement to Song.

"Glass. Just lets anything around pass through it, and it will blindly pass it along." The uncaring expression of earlier is dropped, now Uta's usual pensive quiet is back. "It reflects images, but it doesn't reflect on them. A mockery of- no, not a mockery. A mockery would require individual contribution. It just parrots."

She lets her hand linger on the glass, once again, then looks down at her poofy black gothic dress.

And sighs.

"I am not doing this right," she admits, disarmed. "Conformism. Gwen and Morri say I should look like this. And I just follow along. I'm so afraid of making mistakes I let people take control of this training for me. I am not reflecting on, just reflecting, passing along. Like glass."

Flick one finger. Navigate through her menu. "This is the first step towards embracing the Chaos. Don't let others tell you what your Dark Core is. Seek within yourself. Face the Bogeyman under your the bed of your soul, the shadowy creature of nightmares that makes you jerk you head away with tachycardia when you barely think about it."

She inhales. "But one cannot do this all in one go, no. It has to be gradual." She turns to Haru. "My personal storm is a multi-layered deal. One must start small, portion one's epiphany in increasing degrees of dread. Gotta mithridatize frirst," she comments while she scrolls through her inventory.

There is a burst of laughter. "Whatever my Darkness is like, I am almost certain it is not a rose. What it actually is, I will not know until I get there."

Uta's finger hovers on an item. "First step... find the aspect of your Darkness closest to your humdrum existence. Step into it. The Edge of Shadow."

Jab the menu. The outfit shimmers, and is replaced by a different one. This one is a tight-fitting black leather getup, more fit for a thief or assassin than a nurse. Gloves, boots. Even a little sheathed dagger. "My Avatar's kin. Loathed. Reviled." Silence. Inhale. Pause.

"If Chargen cast me as a Spriggan, there must be a reason. Time to stop running away from what I am in this world. Time to embrace the race."

She casually rests her hand on the pommel of her dagger. "No matter what the Landers say or do."

If Haru's beast was encased in Titanium, Uta's approach to her own Darkness is distinctly more Evasion than Shield. Stay as far away from it as possible. Do not touch it with a ten parsec pole.

She inhales. "Time to venture into our nightmares," she states as she turns briefly to Haru, stiffens, and begins to march onward through the wall of glass. Her steps are silent; deadly, some who believe the stereotype surrounding the Spriggans might say.

Haru's response comes in line a sine wave. Intense and poetic. Then it descends into a quiet valley. It makes for a good flow of conversation. There isn't ever a question of when he passes the baton from speaking to listening and vice versa. It has a song-like quality. The rests between the measures.

"You are doing this right," the Artificer says as he marches alongside the black leather Spriggan. It is the laughter. Thats how he knows. "By doing it wrong you are doing it right. You tell me you confirm but you reject the notion of being a rose." There is a grin on his face there, like a punk that is dealing with a cop and rejecting the rejection of the societal situation. "That may be your Darkness, your gift to the untapped power of arcanum," he says and stops. "Change."

The silver haired young man leans back, chains rattling as he lets go a laugh that echoes against the glass walls around them. An acknowledgement to Uta's jovial chime. "Which makes any observation a real moot fucking point," he observes crudely. "But it would fit. It would explain well your power to Heal, having rebuilt yourself again and again in the process." A leathered hand grips, squeezing tightly as he goes onward. "Chargen can burn," he notes with less passion than his other fantastic statements. "The Spriggans had their reasons in history for thier actions. As did Helba. The Alv. Even the Palace Landers. Chargen was chaos finding reason it could understand, not reason finding chaos." His steps are heavy for a frame so light. "We are more than our birthright, as drenched in sin as it is for both of us. It is not the circumstances of our creation that define us. It is what we do with it."

There are flickers against the reflection of the glass as he walks with Uta onward. It is not unlike a circus mirror act. A tall haru that is stretched out. A squat, dwarven one. One that isn't moving, watching, with malicious intent. Then it is gone. "But if we speak of races, take the Human." He motions to the form before him. "No wings. No fangs or claws. No gills. No natural advantages. It was made so obvious they are the land's dying lineage in favor of future evolution when Weres were created." A scoff at the notion, "I'd pick none other, though. This is who I am, in this world and the last. I couldn't shed my mask there. And here?" This is where the bravado falls. The sine wave descends. It crests like a drop of dew going down into a bowl to settle there. "I don't know," is the singular truth. All that puffing and know-it-all attitude. A shield of logic for insecurity. A reason not to find out the answer by thinking you have it without looking for it. "In my time here I traded forty years a slave to a family business to a year as an artisan. I traded arranged marraiges and mistresses for a woman who didn't care for who I was. I traded a position of crushing lives for a position of crushing lives." A short laugh at that, looking to the glossy sheen of the mirror. "Despite all of my best efforts, I am still me." he says, an Undertale for the ages. Then to Uta, "I tire of the weeping sentimentality of my ego. We are no victims, we are warriors of the darkness. Handlers of our Inner Monsters. So lets go crush some nightmares. I'm in the mood to remind them that it is not I who fear them. It is them who should fear me. Fear us." Now he is feeling a little spicy about the idea, that good ole Fire aspect saying hello again.

There is a shiver, a startle when Haru mentions Healing, change and rebuilding. But nothing is said about that. Not from Uta.

But then, the scrape at the sensitive edges of her soul keep mounting, and at the end, Uta cannot keep still anymore.

"But what does that have to do with -me-! I wasn't there when the Spriggans were carrying out their defining actions, whatever they reasons may have been!" she snaps, her arms spread as she spins towards the Jeweller, in a delayed reaction to the passage about the Spriggans and their motivations; months, no, by now it's years of pent up racial discrimination from the Landers, flooding out all at once. "I was not there when the Spriggans carried out their defining actions, whatever their reasons were!" As she rants on, a crowd of shifty-looking, leather-clad Spriggans bustle around in the towering reflective walls, aetheral effigies crafted out of distorted sunlight, short, tall, long, lanky and squat, in all shapes and forms, some twisted beyond what biology allows. As Uta walks in circle and vents, they too bustle around, chaotic.

"Possibly millions of lives, ruined! And I am to share responsibility for these actions? Simply because of birthright?" After she jabbed at herself with both hands, during her later outburst, her shoulders slump, and her voice deflates, weary, with pained resignation: "After all this time? With no end in sight?"

The minor breakdown ends with Uta's arms falling limp at her side. "Why? -Why-? What did I do to deserve it? What use is it?" Another sigh and with both her head and her voice lowered a notch, she asks, "Do you have any idea of what it's like to-"

Stiffen. Realization. It lingers, and even if no audible sound can be heard, a Spriggan soul is intimately infused of the Dark element. People attuned to it can feel the sinusoidal chime of enlightenment resonate in the Dark spectrum, because Light and Dark are aspects of the same phenomenon, lack and presence, positive and negative space.

"Brother," she states, barely above a whisper as her features adjust to express a silent, contrite apology. "Birthright."

The tone of her voice raises to quiet yet clearly audible, level, deliberate, constrained yet intense, as if she was reciting an affirmation. Which she proably is: "I was not there when the Spriggans carried out their defining action, whatever their reasons were." The crowd of Spriggans now is not a writhing mob, but more like a religious assembly, partaking in a ceremony, acting in unison. "Posisbly millions of lives, ruined." A touch of pain cracks her voice for a passing second, there. "And I -am- to share responsibility for these actions. Simply because of birthright. Because that is the whole point of a family."

A shiver runs down her spine, as can be seen by the involuntary fluttering of her wings.

This was clearly not about the Spriggans. But it definitely was about family.

"I told this to Rylen in the past, and I will repeat it now. Never in a million years I'd have picked this Avatar." She looks down at herself. She looks at Haru. "Yet the amount of creepy sense it makes compounds more and more each passing day."

Her final turn of the head is to face their reflections, side to side, in the vertical surface in front of them. "Chargen. No matter who was seeking whom. Chaos and Reason have found each other."

Haru has a problem with authority. He has a problem with being told that things are a certain way. At his heart, it is that of a Hacker or perhaps a scientist. The 'down with the authority' outfit lends to this. "Have you considered the possibility it is because you are strong enough to do so," the Artificer asks as he looks to Uta's reflection and then his own. It is a shard of the self. "I'll go on record that I don't think that the 'Laws' of this world know us as well as we think they do. I think that they do, indeed, try to right the course of our fates in their own way. The Goddesses. The Alv. These Heroes from past eras." It is clear that those are people outside of his own ego that are forcing a destiny upon him. It is no different than the life he left. He rejects the notion of trading one prison for another.

"But for you, sister, I will consider the trutth that they are omniscient. That this knowledge went into Chargen for us. To what end?" he asks, opening a hand out to the reflection of the two dark trainees. "Because deep in your soul you deserve to be reviled? That what is 'right' is to cast you along those that have caused pain. That you should share in their struggle even though you did nothing to contribute to it with your actions beyond being born into it?" he rumbles academically. "That you have been judged and found guilty on some deep level that we, mere mortal minds, cannot comprehend and should accept?"

It makes Haru angry just to think about it. He has a problem with authority. It has showed up when he talks to the Kunie. It has shown up when he wears a mask of state in political affairs. Authority. Telling people who they are? How to live their lives? "Thats a load of shit," he barks, "and I am your proof of it. You did not hesistate to make my journey your own. Why, then, would an all-knowing Goddess not assume you wouldn't do the same for the Spriggans? That you would enter unto their bloodline to share in their struggle and heal their broken lineage?"

A head shakes at the notion of anything less. It may not be /the/ truth. But it is Haru's truth and the counter to it could be etched into the code of this very world. He would Deny it. He would Change it. "And as such it has forced me to think that I may have been born into my blood soaked heritage not to suffer from it, but to do the most good with it. My father, the murderer, is still yet a man that errs and needs our help. Not a god. My brother, the tormentor, is as lost as I am in our duty and needs to know of others paths he can walk down. My sister, the heroine, is still capable of being subject to the chaos within us all." There is a pause. He has no tragic backstory wherein family members are dead. He is missing one. "My mother, the dreamer, watches over us in her heart even if her mind has left us." A short laugh, "And the Darkness, the endless expanse from which all things came from and shall return to, is here to serve us on our journey. It is not here to consume us, for we are one with it in all its forms. Be it Chaos," he motions to Uta, "or Void," and himself, as he lacks the counterbalance of Light that Uta has. He is but an empty structure. A galaxy without stars. A black mirror. "As my debt is yours, as is yours mine. Keep that close to your heart as even if the Darkness would swallow us whole, you would need but whistle in the endless expanse and I would be there, running, into that unspeakable place." An echo to an earlier statement, a theme of the Darkness, "Birthright. Family."

"No, no, I am not thinking in quite those terms," Uta sort of mentions, the tone of her voice making the comment sound less like a statement, and more like an afterthought as it trails off into a pause. Reflection. "Less omniscent divinity, more like..." Tap, tap, tap those lips. "...Djinn. You enter the game. You wish for something. You get exactly what you ask for. Unclear if it is what you want. If the Djinn is benevolent, it may be what you need." A pause. "But Djinn are notoriously too inscrutable and alien. I like the angle that they aren't actively trying to harm humans; just incapable of thinking like humans. Incapable to foresee consequences and ramifications, or if capable, incapable of assessing their impact from a human perspective." A beat. "Like computers."

She looks down at herself and pinches her arm. Hard, using a particularly devastating martial arts pinch, to compensate for the pain dampening. She winces. "If this is still a simulation, as I think and hope it is, you have an example. Right here." She gestures around. "Create a world of glass, of illusion. Feed the players those tasty brainwaves. Make them believe they're powerful warriors, great heroes, daring explorers. Tickle the little child in them, the... well, yes, the Adventurer. And at a deeper level, those little wants that we carry with ourselve in the dark corner of our soul." She walks and gestures, leaning forward slightly, one hand behind her back and one raised, drawing loose, somewhat swooshing flourishes in the air as her chin is tilted up, as if for drawing pure ideas directly from Plato's Hyperuranion, and giving a running commentary of her observations to an audience. "What drives you? Socialization? Ambition? Wanderlust? Bloodthirst?" She makes vague gestures at her head. "The helmet can probably home in on those drives. Cross-reference them with its data bank. Possibly involving the brainscans of all other players. Start you off on the best foot to achive just that."

And that is when one member of the audience is addressed directly, the Spriggan's body facing the other way but head turning to eye him. "The Djinn doesn't ask if it's a healthy or toxic aspiration. The Djinn delivers." Silence. Look up and away. Tap lips. "I don't think that whatever controls chargacter generation knows everything, no. Let's face it, it's just a computer. It has a data bank. Massive, but finite." An abrupt spin of her whole body as she leans over to Haru, "But! I think that it knows enough to be dangerous." Her voice takes up a slightly warmer, slightly more personal tone. It's getting close to home. Perhaps a bit too close. "I came with a wish to be pushed out of my comfort zone. To make my life more meaningful. I wasn't expecting..." Silence. Stare at Haru. Lower voice. "The Djinn doesn't ask. The Djinn delivers."

Her pacing resumes, but this time she crosses her arms, and looks down as she walks in circles again. "I still don't know for sure why I was cast as a Reviled, but I never thought for a moment it was a punishment. Symbolism for my own self-loathing, maybe? Spur me to face and overcome it?" She twists her lips. Bites the lower one. "A two-year training, to prepare me when I'd have to share in our family's debt?" Turn towards Haru again, while tightening the crossing of her arms. "Not what I wanted. But possibly what I needed. The Djinn may be benevolent."

Abruptly, as the tone of her voice returns to her 'wandering' rather than the more recent 'slouching' intonation, "Light and Dark. Yin and Yang. My self-loathing might be my Darkness, but-"

A quick swirl of her hands, some sort of low-pitched lullaby with a few notes here and there that hit the octave above, and a little ball of darkness, the size of a watermelon, is sculpted into shape by the dance of her fingers, each melodic spike, sounding pure and crystalline as a sine wave, creates a new spot of light withi it with Light magic.

She holds the miniature starry sky aloft with one glove, and points at it with the opposite index finger. "Here it is not the Dark that is Chaos. The Light is.", she says, gesturing at the randomly scattered motes. "Since ancient times, people have been connecting the dots in the sky. Saw items and characters in them. Items and characters that -weren't- actually there, but-" She moves her fingers, and begins to trace lines, draft constellations. "We can't create order out of nothing. We need raw materials. Probably the same as Accessory forging." Probably. Uta's no accessory forger, she might have even the basics wrong.

"...What was I saying again?" Uta wonders, as Uta is wont to. "Oh, right. My self-loathing may be my Darkness, but at the same time, it is my Light. I know that my powers of retention amount to... not much. It's a good day when my brain can follow a chain of reasoning without exploding all over the Noosphere." Pause. "Today is an excellent day." Pause. "...What was I saying again? Oh, right. See, I -know- I cannot rely on my scattered brain. I cannot create the Complexity within myself." She gestures all around. "...so I look for patterns. Dots in the chaos, that look like they can be connected. For all our attempts at creating Complexity with pure Order, what have we humans achieved?" She gestures around. "Look upon our works, ye mighty, and despair."

She approaches the wall of glass, where the scorpion from earlier is still trapped. According to the system's logic, it means it's still alive, or its body would have shattered. She inhales, slowly takes her fists at her sides, and with a twist of her hips and a deafening "YAH!", in a blur, she crosses her arms in front of her and jabs the glass with a single finger, while her other hand returns at her side.

Silence, then a spherical crack extends outwards on the surface, and deep into the glass, from the point where Uta's fingertip impacted. Transversal cracks connect the radiating lines, and slowly, one after the other, shards crumble down, shattering into polygons before they even touch the ground.

The scorpion from earlier does its part by pushing away the last bits of its vitreous prison, and scuttles away in an attempt to replenish its puny HP bar. "And from Chaos, Life has arisen." She turns to Haru with a playful smirk. "Or, to put it simply, I know I'm an idiot. So, instead of trying to come up with my own ideas, which are bound to suck, I try to steal the good ideas from the Universe. I don't bow down to Authority. I just pilfer the good bits from it." She pulls out the small knife at her side, and twirls it in her hand, her smirk now growing into a full-fledged grin. "Spriggan life."