ITP: Flowers

[no_longer_a_king]

Characters: Arturia; Open
Setting: Floors 25, 48, and the dorms
Format: Prose
Summary: Arturia returns to the tower, checks in with people, and gets Lancelot to give her swimming lessons.
Warnings: None, at the moment.

[A; Floor Twenty-Five; Meadow]
Arturia was quiet as she pulled at the flowers scattered here and there. To see so much beauty after seeing such destruction and decay firsthand was breathtaking, even if she knew the beauty before her was nothing more than an illusion. To see people and animals and not merely bodies and ruins was amazing.

When in her world--or what she believed to be her world--she had no idea how she even had a body, having only been a spirit before. But seeing as the world itself was dead, it made sense her soul manifest in the physical realm somehow with nowhere else for it to go. Or perhaps when she had been drawn into the Tower of Animus, the World had just summoned her into its service yet again. Whatever had happened, she had no idea how she was able to manifest, she simply had.

It only strengthened her resolve to find a way to stop this and perhaps restore the worlds. Arturia did not have much left, but she had made a vow to protect the world and she would not fail in that as well. She utterly refused. She had lost everything, failed in everything, she would not fail in this, too. Arturia would sooner lose her soul than allow things to remain as they are on these worlds.

That's why when she first awoke in the Tower again, after having her customary oatmeal, she went straight to the meadow. There was something she felt she needed to do. It was pointless, yes, but it felt very important in that moment to do this.

[B; Floor Forty-Eight; Graveyard]
"This" being to lay flowers before all the graves in the graveyard: each one representing a person sent away from the Tower, each one a person trapped in their dead world as she had briefly been. Each flower she laid was a silent promise to them she would find a way to restore the worlds, to save them from the horror and loneliness they had gone home to.

Many more graves were packed together now and part of her wondered if this was intentional. Had Ruana kept true to her promise to send people away while the Tower's power ran out. At five particular graves, she left a full bouquet of flowers rather than just one.

Gawain.

Ilya.

Shirou.

Sakura.

Irisviel.

At these graves she tended to linger longer. These were people who had been dear to her before coming to the Tower in their own way. People she had wanted to protect. People who had each helped shaped her or were dear to those who she cared for in some small way.

People who were now alone in wastelands. People she was bound and determined to save from that fate.

[C; Dorms]
Once she had done her little ritual, she decided to check the nameplates on the dorms for those she knew and how many were left. Given it was now July it was safe to assume the Tower's maintenance had been handed to another Administrator and the sick game of monsters Ruana had played was over with.

And so she looked door to door, in a few instances knocking to see if anyone was inside to ask about what she had missed in the last couple weeks, Then she moved on to the next door to check.

[Closed to chavelier_mal_fet]
If there was one thing the glamour going down and leaving her powerless had shown Arturia, it was the need for more skills that didn't rely on powers. She already planned on beginning to train in the weapons she knew how to use beside a sword. Perhaps she would find someone to teach her proper hand to hand in case she found herself not only powerless, but weaponless in the future. However, there was one vital skill she knew she would need. One very basic skill she had not had a need to learn before.

And only one person she trusted not to laugh at her for asking for help with it.

This is why she was before Lancelot's door, knocking on it. If there was anyone she trusted to properly teach her how to swim, it was he.

Comments

[no_longer_a_king]

"As far as we know, we will die if we leave the Tower, yes," she can admit that much. None of them knew the nature of their containment. with how much was layered in illusion here it was likely they would die the moment they left the Tower due to the wireframes that were their true bodies needing something vital from the Tower to keep functioning.

"How have you been faring here so far?"

And why, if this was a rescue mission, would Ruana keep bringing people here, knowing they were doomed to die here anyway?

[bashfulshifter]

Rick nodded stoically. That was something he'd been thinking about while waiting in line for his collar check-up earlier; he understood getting the fluid changed for the wire-frame box that held his soul if only because it so closely resembled how his own powers worked--or how he'd been told his powers worked, anyways. The shell on his back was like the frame, and the Element was the blue liquid in his collar and in his bed, both used to keep their souls bound and contained. If that was indeed the case it would make a surprising amount of sense. But then again, there were a lot of things Rick didn't know, and he didn't feel especially up to the task of thinking them out without any solid evidence to go on. Particularly now.

He shrugged, burying his fingers in his pockets and letting his eyes settle on the wavy grass horizon.

"...Okay, I think," said Rick, pensive and idling over each word. "Un--unharmed...nervous, definitely..."

Then a slight chuckle, and Rick pointed at his forehead. "Restless, if anything."