Counter Guardian Arturia @ Tower of Animus (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
no_longer_a_king) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
towerofanimus2013-03-26 10:58 pm
no_longer_a_king) wrote in towerofanimus2013-03-26 10:58 pm
ITP: Crystal caverns
Characters: [AU5] Arturia and open!
Setting: Floors 99, 80, 50, and 13 after the seasons event.
Format: Prose
Summary: Arturia starts looking for people from the elevator dive to help make a map, works for the day, is made a human sacrifice, and other various and sundry things.
Warnings: Prompt D involves ritual sacrifice and character death. Please pick it only if you're okay with that sort of content.
[A: Various; possibly going into Floor 77; Sauna]
Ever since the idea came to her, Arturia had been planning. She'd intended to do so much sooner, but then the plan had to be put on hold when the weather became strange. The time when the weather kept flipping through extremes had been a time to keep the map she and Diarmuid had made from falling apart. They'd still had to repair some parts of it, but at least they'd managed to save it.
But now? Now was a time to set her previous plan into motion. She knew the Administrators were watching and they would likely figure out the pattern to the people she was speaking with, but that would not stop her. Arturia had to try something, lest they wind up completely blind when Zelda and the others inevitably went back down below to obtain Dax's information.
So she asked around, searched. She recognized most of the faces of the others who had been in the elevator, but there had been so many people it was hard to remember them all. A few stuck out in her mind--especially Feferi--but the rest she had to search for. She knew she would make mistakes, but that was easy to rectify. It was hard for Arturia to become embarrassed when she had a specific reason to ask these people to a place like the sauna one on on.
"Excuse me," she said, leaning close to the person she'd just found and attempting to keep her voice low, "Would you accompany me to the sauna? There's an issue I'd like to discuss about last month."
[OOC: Since she's trying to find out through the grapevine, your character doesn't necessarily have to have been someone who went into the elevator for this prompt. It's fairly easy to make mistakes or be told the wrong information, after all.]
[B: Floor 99; Crystal Cave]
And then she preferred her moments of quiet. The cavern reminded her of some of the things Merlin showed her during her childhood and she sometimes found herself spending time here when she wanted to be alone. It was a quiet place and rather beautiful, even if looking too hard gave her a mild headache. Sometimes she even splashed the puddles just to hear the echo in the caverns.
And then there were times she just ran into people who got lost in the caverns, as the person she just ran into might have.
"Oh, hello. Are you having trouble finding your way?"
[C: Floor 80; Circus]
Whoever thought walking a tightrope suited her was out of their mind. She could do it, but with how often the ringleader would comment about her being 'beauteous' and 'graceful' and other such things, Arturia had half a mind to drive Caliburn through him. The only reason she even came was because she gave her word and she had half a mind to see if the Administrators would listen when she requested her job assignment to be changed.
Once again came the call for her to walk the tightrope, the spotlight one Arturia in her white dress holding the ridiculous lacy parasol they made her carry for no practical purpose she could think of. Certainly not for balance. The walk across the rope was only a hundred feet and while she did have to mind her balance Arturia was not human. This sort of thing was easy for one such as her to do.
And so it was with a bored expression she crossed the rope despite the ring leader's attempt to make it sound more dangerous than it was. Her expression was bored and if there was anyone at all in the audience they might comment upon how boring the tightrope walker was.
Once her part of the show was done she climbed down from the platform she'd been on and headed for the exit. Hopefully no one would require her assistance before she reached the door and she could, once again, forget she had even been assigned a job here.
[D: Floor 50; Ritual Sacrifice]
Normally when she passed through this floor nothing came of it. It was another floor, oddly decorated and not dangerous at all. It was one of the floors Arturia would use for training. There was nothing here but marble and windows. Nothing more.
Except something was different today. Very different. The marble had not changed, no, and as Arturia wandered toward the center to go through the motions of training with Caliburn she swore she heard chanting of some kind. A look over her shoulder told her there was no one there even if her instincts were screaming of the danger here.
Instincts that proved correct the moment she looked forward again. There were ghosts of two hooded figures before her and before she could even move they had clamped their hands onto her arms into a icy vice-like grip and began to drag her toward the center of the room.
"Get your hands off of me!" she roared, wrenching her arm free from one and turning to punch the other. Except her hand went right through the hooded figure. Before she could even blink it had grabbed her arm again, twisting it painfully behind her even though she continued to struggle. Whatever these things had in store for her, she knew it would not be good. Especially if it was ghosts. If there was one thing Arturia loathed more in this tower beyond the Administrators it was definitely the ghosts.
[E: Floor 13; Cathedral]
Arturia did not like churches very much.
Not that there was anything wrong with a church in and of itself, just that churches brought up too many memories for her. It'd been in a church where she'd found Shirou, then confronted by Kotomine who had been the man his father had feared the most. Then had come the offer he had made as the Overseer for the Holy Grail War. An offer she had been unable to refuse thanks to one single errant thought keeping her from staying her hand.
Arturia balled her hands into fists as she stood at the end of the aisle, trying to will the memory away. She justified coming here and only standing in the back every few days as trying to make the memory less painful. If she relived it enough then maybe, just maybe, the pain in her heart would numb just a bit, especially now that Shirou was here. Alive and well and she found herself unable to tell him of what she'd done.
If she was to protect him, she needed to be strong. She needed to be able to look at him without seeing his corpse in his place. To do that she needed to make sure those memories didn't get in the way. That boy was most certainly not the boy she had betrayed and she refused to do the same thing again. Now if only, despite everything, it would stay in the past.
Setting: Floors 99, 80, 50, and 13 after the seasons event.
Format: Prose
Summary: Arturia starts looking for people from the elevator dive to help make a map, works for the day, is made a human sacrifice, and other various and sundry things.
Warnings: Prompt D involves ritual sacrifice and character death. Please pick it only if you're okay with that sort of content.
[A: Various; possibly going into Floor 77; Sauna]
Ever since the idea came to her, Arturia had been planning. She'd intended to do so much sooner, but then the plan had to be put on hold when the weather became strange. The time when the weather kept flipping through extremes had been a time to keep the map she and Diarmuid had made from falling apart. They'd still had to repair some parts of it, but at least they'd managed to save it.
But now? Now was a time to set her previous plan into motion. She knew the Administrators were watching and they would likely figure out the pattern to the people she was speaking with, but that would not stop her. Arturia had to try something, lest they wind up completely blind when Zelda and the others inevitably went back down below to obtain Dax's information.
So she asked around, searched. She recognized most of the faces of the others who had been in the elevator, but there had been so many people it was hard to remember them all. A few stuck out in her mind--especially Feferi--but the rest she had to search for. She knew she would make mistakes, but that was easy to rectify. It was hard for Arturia to become embarrassed when she had a specific reason to ask these people to a place like the sauna one on on.
"Excuse me," she said, leaning close to the person she'd just found and attempting to keep her voice low, "Would you accompany me to the sauna? There's an issue I'd like to discuss about last month."
[OOC: Since she's trying to find out through the grapevine, your character doesn't necessarily have to have been someone who went into the elevator for this prompt. It's fairly easy to make mistakes or be told the wrong information, after all.]
[B: Floor 99; Crystal Cave]
And then she preferred her moments of quiet. The cavern reminded her of some of the things Merlin showed her during her childhood and she sometimes found herself spending time here when she wanted to be alone. It was a quiet place and rather beautiful, even if looking too hard gave her a mild headache. Sometimes she even splashed the puddles just to hear the echo in the caverns.
And then there were times she just ran into people who got lost in the caverns, as the person she just ran into might have.
"Oh, hello. Are you having trouble finding your way?"
[C: Floor 80; Circus]
Whoever thought walking a tightrope suited her was out of their mind. She could do it, but with how often the ringleader would comment about her being 'beauteous' and 'graceful' and other such things, Arturia had half a mind to drive Caliburn through him. The only reason she even came was because she gave her word and she had half a mind to see if the Administrators would listen when she requested her job assignment to be changed.
Once again came the call for her to walk the tightrope, the spotlight one Arturia in her white dress holding the ridiculous lacy parasol they made her carry for no practical purpose she could think of. Certainly not for balance. The walk across the rope was only a hundred feet and while she did have to mind her balance Arturia was not human. This sort of thing was easy for one such as her to do.
And so it was with a bored expression she crossed the rope despite the ring leader's attempt to make it sound more dangerous than it was. Her expression was bored and if there was anyone at all in the audience they might comment upon how boring the tightrope walker was.
Once her part of the show was done she climbed down from the platform she'd been on and headed for the exit. Hopefully no one would require her assistance before she reached the door and she could, once again, forget she had even been assigned a job here.
[D: Floor 50; Ritual Sacrifice]
Normally when she passed through this floor nothing came of it. It was another floor, oddly decorated and not dangerous at all. It was one of the floors Arturia would use for training. There was nothing here but marble and windows. Nothing more.
Except something was different today. Very different. The marble had not changed, no, and as Arturia wandered toward the center to go through the motions of training with Caliburn she swore she heard chanting of some kind. A look over her shoulder told her there was no one there even if her instincts were screaming of the danger here.
Instincts that proved correct the moment she looked forward again. There were ghosts of two hooded figures before her and before she could even move they had clamped their hands onto her arms into a icy vice-like grip and began to drag her toward the center of the room.
"Get your hands off of me!" she roared, wrenching her arm free from one and turning to punch the other. Except her hand went right through the hooded figure. Before she could even blink it had grabbed her arm again, twisting it painfully behind her even though she continued to struggle. Whatever these things had in store for her, she knew it would not be good. Especially if it was ghosts. If there was one thing Arturia loathed more in this tower beyond the Administrators it was definitely the ghosts.
[E: Floor 13; Cathedral]
Arturia did not like churches very much.
Not that there was anything wrong with a church in and of itself, just that churches brought up too many memories for her. It'd been in a church where she'd found Shirou, then confronted by Kotomine who had been the man his father had feared the most. Then had come the offer he had made as the Overseer for the Holy Grail War. An offer she had been unable to refuse thanks to one single errant thought keeping her from staying her hand.
Arturia balled her hands into fists as she stood at the end of the aisle, trying to will the memory away. She justified coming here and only standing in the back every few days as trying to make the memory less painful. If she relived it enough then maybe, just maybe, the pain in her heart would numb just a bit, especially now that Shirou was here. Alive and well and she found herself unable to tell him of what she'd done.
If she was to protect him, she needed to be strong. She needed to be able to look at him without seeing his corpse in his place. To do that she needed to make sure those memories didn't get in the way. That boy was most certainly not the boy she had betrayed and she refused to do the same thing again. Now if only, despite everything, it would stay in the past.
no subject
Hopefully she would not wind up jumpy as she had been before. That was her biggest fear about teaching him again.
"As for the monsters.... I shall tell you that once I know your skill level and feel you are ready to join me in the evenings."
no subject
He'll pick up the trick of reading the atmosphere. Eventually. As it stands, he looks at her from beside the exit of the circus with no qualms, regarding her as Saber with a different wardrobe, even if she had already told him to his face she was a different version of that woman.
Shirou wants to protest when she says he needs to wait for his level of skill to evaluated before he can join her in the evenings, but with a reluctant frown, he lets it go wordlessly.
no subject
"Floor thirty-three, then. I prefer training out of doors when I have the chance." Then again, even when she had lived in a castle, there had never been a room dedicated solely to training like a dojo. That had been a novelty she'd enjoyed about Shirou's era.
"Is there anything else?"
no subject
"Sure, it's settled then. We'll practice on floor thirty-three later," then he stumbled over Saber's next question. No, there wasn't, he was still sorting things out and coming to her to ask if she would like to to train together again was part of that, but he didn't want to leave just like that.
"Not exactly?"