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Scion; [DNR] Short Story: Legacy
Topic Started: Thu Jun 13, 2013 4:47 pm (217 Views)
Eliza
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One would never guess that the girl walking down the Debonese road was the heir to one of the most prominent noble houses in Striberg. Although her clothes were well-fitting, they were plain in cut and fabric. A pair of black leather gloves peeked out from her sleeves and hid her fingers from sight, and an expansive cowl had been pulled over her head to hide her facial features. A long strap of leather was wrapped around her belt and attached to the collar of a four-winged, feathery aurora drake that buzzed alongside the girl. She was eating an apple, and from time to time would toss a small morsel from the fruit to her new pet.

Eliza Bibligia was a runaway. She had fled from her family’s manse in the City of Magic to get away from her overbearing, genius father. It had not been a clean getaway, and she had been forced to fight against guardsmen that had been employed by her family for years to escape. She was sure that her father had hired mercenaries and bounty hunters to look for her, but none of them had been successful thus far. Eliza’s first purchase had been her cowl. The garment had a web of enchantments laid upon the fabric that made it impossible to discern her facial features, allowing her to travel in relative obscurity across Imythess.

It was late afternoon, but the summer heat meant that the roads were all but deserted. She had only encountered one small caravan around dawn and a pair of traveling bards that had shared their meal with her around lunchtime. She was starting to worry that she would be forced to camp on the side of the road when she saw a blurry figure approaching. The girl raised her voice and raised one hand above her head, waving in greeting. ”Hello there! Can you tell me how far it is to the next inn?”

The stranger waved back, although he did not respond until he had drawn closer. It was a lone man who looked rather scruffy, with unkempt hair and several days’ worth of stubble. He was wearing a set of worn leather armor and with a sword sheathed across his back. He took a deep drink from a waterskin before replying, and his voice was scratchy and rough as if he had not spoken for days. “Miller’s Ford is ‘bout two hours back. No inn, but they rent out stables.” He was chewing noisily as he spoke, and spat a wad of blue phlegm out of the side of his mouth at the end of the sentence.

”Ah, that’s too bad.” Eliza eyed the roughshod man nervously, trusting the ensorcelled hood to hide her suspicious expression. ”Thank you.” She started to walk past him, but noticed a flash of motion in her peripheral vision. The girl jerked away, but not quite fast enough to avoid his fingers wrapping around her left wrist. A knife flashed in his other hand as he slashed at the back of her hand, the movement a blur of sharp steel.

The change that came over the girl was immediate. While she was still gasping in surprise her right hand shot forward, fingers held straight. Her hand chopped at the man’s forearm, striking with enough force to make him yelp and release her. Eliza jumped back, both hands raising in front of her. The grimy-looking man stood there watching her, his mouth split open in a smile that revealed his teeth were all stained blue. He cackles as he rubbed at the spot on his arm she had struck, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Ah, not many girls with skin like that, girlie That cowl might hide your face, but you still got that posh Striberg accent.”

The noblegirl hissed between her teeth, eyes narrowing. His dagger had cut open the Gloomwood leather gloves, revealing her flesh underneath. However, it was not normal skin and muscle but rather interlocking plates of polished steel. The knife had left a thin line across the metallic surface but had clearly done no real damage to her. Eliza had been exposed to an experimental symbiotic organism as a child, the Highly Adaptive Transmogrifying Organometallic Nanovirus, or H.A.T.O.N. It had slowly been transforming her body from flesh and blood to organic steel and intricate mechanisms, using her own mana to fuel the process.

The organism had originally been developed by her father for military use: a symbiote that bound with a host and transformed them into an adaptable, nearly indestructible monstrosity with armored skin and deployable weapons. Eliza had been the only test subject to survive exposure to the symbiote, which meant that she was pivotal to his ongoing research. She knew that her father wanted her back mainly so he could continue studying H.A.T.O.N.; he had made it clear in the years since it began transforming her body that he barely viewed her as his daughter and heir anymore. This man must have been hired by Lord Bibligia to capture her and bring her back to Striberg. She spat her next words, tone venomous. ”I’m not going back.”

The man didn’t seem too worried by her resistance, his grin only widening. “Said you’d be difficult.” He drew a small object out of his belt, closing his eyes and cracking it open with his thumbnail. Light flashed from the object, arcane runes burning so brightly their shape was imprinted on her eyes. Eliza gasped in shock as she was momentarily blinded, but H.A.T.O.N. was already reacting to the situation. The skin of her eyebrow split open, smooth organic lenses slipping over her eyes. The world came back into sharp relief, although now she could see traces of heat in the environment as well. The mercenary had drawn his sword in his free hand and was approaching confidently, clearly expecting her to still be blinded.

Eliza quickly grabbed the leash of the aurora drake and snapped it, allowing the small creature to buzz further back from the confrontation. She flowed forward with surprising speed, right arm snapping up towards the man. There was a ripping noise as something protruded from underneath her glove, extending straight through the fabric as it grew. The bounty hunter managed to get his sword up in time to block the blade that had grown out of the back of her fist, his expression surprised. He stabbed forwards with the dagger, but she contemptuously knocked it aside with the back of her left hand. ”You have no idea.” Her voice was cold and hard, and there was a decidedly merciless cast to her features.

The bounty hunter spat out another stream of blue saliva before wading back into the fight, his smile vanishing behind a determined mask. He fought with appreciable skill and ferocity, but couldn’t find a hole in the girl’s defenses. Cuts appeared up and down the fabric of her sleeves, revealing that her skin had been converted to metal all the way to her torso. Eliza for her part tried her best to incapacitate him without doing lasting damage, but her own skill wasn’t enough to knock him out. The symbiote was devoted to keeping her alive; although it guided her actions when she was deflecting blows, it provided almost no information when it came to attacking.

She jumped back eventually, growling and raising her right hand. Her glove was in tatters, revealing the pulsating blue node set in the center of her palm. ”Galvanic Node, Mana Output 25%!” There was a flash of cold through her body as H.A.T.O.N. drew mana from her reserves and used it to activate one of its offensive abilities. A line of brilliant blue energy shot out of the node in a beam only a few fingers thick. It struck the mercenary in the center of his chest and exploded outwards into tendrils of dancing electricity. He grunted in pain and fell to one knee, his limbs and digits wracked by uncontrollable spasms. He opened his mouth as if to scream, but no sound emerged.

Eliza kept up the stream of power for several seconds until she was sure that the man was unconscious. By the time she cut off the mana fed into the node his hair was standing on end and the sickly sweet odor of singed flesh filled the air. She looked down at her ruined gloves with dismay. Gloomwood leather was expensive and utterly necessary; without the sound-dampening properties of the fabric her metal body parts made a horrendous racket. She sighed and whistled shrilly to call back her aurora drake. It flapped over and landed on her shoulder. Eliza was about to start walking again when she felt a shiver crawl down the nape of her neck, quickly followed by a sensation of utter dread.

The girl turned in time to see that the small object the mercenary had activated at the start of their fight was glowing once more, the air around it shimmering from the amount of mana emanating from its surface. A beam of light shot up from it, curving away towards the north. Eliza stared at the humming beacon, her expression falling as she realized what the rock must be. A few seconds later there was a large flash that forced her to look away, wincing.

When she looked back, her father stood there.

Lord Ethan Bibligia was not a very intimidating man. He was short and gaunt, with a certain clerkish quality. His dark hair and goatee were impassably groomed, and a pair of spectacles rested on the tip of his nose that made his eyes look overly large. He was wearing fine clothes and had a ring on one hand that glinted in the fading light of the teleportation waystone. His eyes were chilling, a pale blue so light they almost looked to be white, and there was not a shred of mercy to be seen in them. There was a notable undercurrent of anger in his voice when he spoke, his displeasure cutting through her like a knife. “Eliza.” The ambient noise of the plains seemed to fade in volume when he spoke, making it all but impossible to ignore his words.

”F-f-father…” She couldn’t completely suppress the stutter in her voice. This was the man that had kept her cloistered away within their mansion for years, endlessly conducting experiments on the symbiote within her body. She had only recently earned the privilege to travel freely within Striberg, and that had been because there had been rumors surrounding her absence at the social events hosted by the nobility. Eliza knew that her father was rumored to be one of the strongest magicians in the entire City, ranking among the likes of Archmaesters and High Sages. Even if her entire body was converted to a weapon by H.A.T.O.N. she doubted she would be able to stand up to him.

“What were you thinking, running away from home?” He held out one hand, beckoning imperiously. “Come with me.”

The girl took a step away, shaking her head from side to side and scrunching up her face. ”No! I won’t!” Her father’s expression darkened, but she continued before he could say anything. The emotions that she had been holding inside for years broke to the surface, escaping her in a tirade. ”I’m not a test subject, father! I’m your daughter! You’re supposed to protect me! I’m tired of being treated like a rat in your lab, tested every day! I want to do things! Go to the Academy like all of my friends! Travel across Imythess! Meet new people! You can’t treat me like this!” She was shouting by now, tears dripping out from behind the quartz lenses and dripping down her cheeks.

”It’s not my fault that this happened! Haton might be your greatest work, but this is my life! I won’t let you lock me away anymore! I’m old enough to make my own decisions, to have my own choices! I’m an adult!” She stopped screaming for several seconds, breathing heavily and glaring at her father. ”You have to let me go, daddy.” There was a plaintive, pleading thread in her voice, a hint of desperation.

Ethan watched her for almost a full minute in contemplative silence. When he did speak, a frosty chill had entered his voice. “You beg for acceptance as an adult, yet the choices you make are those of an unbalanced adolescent. If you had this conversation with me calmly and rationally we might have reached a compromise. Instead, you chose to run, crippling some of my men and making a laughingstock of me.” He raised one hand, palm facing towards the girl. “You have behaved like a spoiled brat, and so that is how I will treat you.” His eyes narrowed dangerously. “You should count yourself lucky that I do not plan on disciplining you as harshly as you deserve.”

Although nothing seemed to happen, Eliza knew that her father was preparing his own magic. The lenses over his eyes were withdrawn and replaced with another set, this time one that would allow her to see magical energy. In this spectrums he could see that power was gather all around her father, brightest in his outstretched hand. She threw herself aside as that energy shot forward, missing her by inches.

”Activate Defensive Platform!” The cloth of her shirt bulged across her back, ripping as a metal disc forced itself out of her clothes. The edge of the shield was lined with several pulsating nodes, and it floated of its own volition to hover between her and Ethan. His next bolt of magical energy struck the direct center of the disc, leaving a deep dent across its surface. Eliza threw both hands forward, mien desperate. ”Deploy Shield Hardware!” Systems activated on either arm, deploying more defenses that were magic-based instead of physical. A glowing blue shield took the next attack and disappeared in a flash of mana, while a glass-like barrier was shattered and littered the ground with shards of crystallized mana.

“Stop this foolishness at once.” She could see more energy gathering around her father, a shell that encased him from head to toe. His magical abilities were unlike any that the highborn girl had seen or heard of before. Ethan Bibligia used his magic to literally freeze the molecular components of the air in place, creating ultra-hard and utterly invisible constructs that could be manipulated in myriad ways. Eliza knew that any attack she could muster would be ineffective against his superior defenses, just as she could not block his attacks for an extended period of time. Her defensive platform was sparking and moving sluggishly, and her alternative methods of protection had been exhausted within seconds.

Emergency Retreat System Activating in 3…2…1…

Eliza’s eyes widened as she realized what was happening. H.A.T.O.N. had sensed the difference in power between her and her father and was taking matters into its own hands. She doubted she could have stopped the symbiote if she wanted to. There was a tingling sensation throughout her entire frame similar to the feeling when blood was returning to a limb that had fallen asleep. She caught a glimpse of her father’s face, twisted with anger and surprise, and then there was the impression of fast movement. Her stomach roiled uncomfortable and she had to swallow down her rising gorge. The sensation faded after a few seconds. Eliza looked around and saw that she was in a completely different section of the plains. No road was in sight and the landscape looked utterly different, with a lighter shade of grass and some small, stubby trees growing scattered around.

Her aurora drake was still perched on one shoulder, making soft mewling noises of discomfort and its talents tightly clutching her shirt. Eliza lifted it down and held it in her arms, cooing soft words of comfort to the frightened animal. The highborn girl knew she was shaking and crying but couldn’t seem to find the strength to stop it. She abruptly sat down in the grass, hugging the soft creature close and sobbing, her teardrops falling on its downy feathers. She might be the scion of House Bibligia, but if the confrontation with her father had made one thing clear it was that he did not consider her his heir.

She looked down at her finger, where she still wore the Bibligia ring. It was forged out of electrum and platinum, marked with their crest and worth a small fortune. Eliza slid it off of her finger, pulling back her arm as if she were going to cast it away… and stopped at the last second, with her fingers still tightly wrapped around the jewelry. Just because he has forsaken me doesn’t mean I am not a Bibligia…

She sat like that for a long time, aurora drake cradled in her lap and tightly clutching the last remaining trace of her family.
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