[CRP] Fragments of the Phoenix

[Silence]

What? Are you sure? Yes, ok, got it... thanks.

The beetle gave one last message to the hive, before it finally relented its spirit. It had done enough, and now it could rest. So long hiding around Jenova, remaining undetected, living in fear, but now, now it had done all that the hive could ask of it. It could die, knowing that it had served its purpose, and in doing so, had helped the hive's purpose, the purpose that every beetle in the hive believed in.

Youken looked up at the two crystal bugs that he had been intending to keep alive, but there was no point now. These things were the spirits of dead phoenix people, those people who had been created by Etaine. They'd used that weapon, and they'd paid for it. Now, they weren't the same creatures that they were before. No different to an undead creature, only this time, Youken had no idea how to revert the creature.

He'd killed a good few of them already without thinking about it, just because, well, they had chosen their path. He wasn't chosing it for them anymore. They knew what they were doing when they used that weapon.

For that reason, he didn't feel anything as within the time it took him to draw a breath, he created two daggers in the palms of his hands, then threw them. Without waiting to see if they were dead from being struck through with the blades created from his own bone, he ordered the beetles within the blades to split apart from each other and attack those crystal bugs.

His job was to keep them off the witcher, but the easiest way to do that was just to get rid of them. He held out his hand towards one of them, as if casting a spell, then gave the beetles in his arm an order, channelling force into them as he did so.

His arm changed shape, forming something like a very long lance, which impaled one of the two creatures. He then turned to the other, which was probably already dead, but he might as well be sure.

Reaching into his cloak, he drew a single large wooden disk attached to a wire, then grasped the wire and swung the disk around his head once, then slammed it into the crystal bug, the wire seeming to lengthen as necessary to get the right length. In actual fact, it was being fed out of the disk as he required, but that didn't much matter. Both disk and bug hurtled into the ground, then the disk split apart. There was a second of silence before the contents of the disk were hurled out by the mechanisms within it. Knives, wooden splinters, bits of broken glass, and even two forks were send flying at point blank range into the bug. Youken didn't need to check to know that it wasn't a threat anymore. All that was left of the disk were the thirty beetles inside it which had operated it, which then scuttled back to rejoin the hive.

That hadn't felt like a fight. That had felt like... well, like swatting a bug.

He turned to Reaver to see him fighting the important one.

"Do what you want with it now. Turns out, I chose the right person to lead here. You don't need teh leave it alive anymore. As for coming here to find you, I didn't. I told you why I was here, and now I don't need to be, but don't get big headed witcher. I think I trained under you for what, three months maybe? I don't think I ever really got anywhere under your teaching... if you wanna know where any of my skill comes from, it's from a bunch of changelings who showed me what I was, and then me just improvisin and then remembering how teh get results that I liked."

"I'm grateful and all, and if yeh wanna come back teh Widu at any point, I've kept your tavern in working order. Hell, if yeh hired somebody teh run it, it's in as good condition as the Mysts place by now, but as far as I'm concerned, you can go and do whatever you want. After all, yeh've never let anything stop you doing just that before now, have yeh?"

"Now, excuse me, you can deal with that big bug, I'm gonna go congratulate a friend on a job well done and apologise for not bein more help. See yeh witcher."

With that, Alder glanced around himself, and then turned and walked away. He was done with all of this. As far as he was concerned, Eteine was no longer his problem, mainly because it was now in good hands. If there was anybody who could be trusted with this kind of thing, it was Karcier. Meanwhile, he had enough problems with the children of Damonica and Xellior.

The beetle had reported that Karcier was headed back to Widu. While he had no idea where he was right then, Youken placed a beetle on his palm anyway. Munay would know where he was, so he just needed to give the beetle one order.

Leaving Reaver with the bug, he turned away, confident that the witcher would be fine. He did this kind of thing on a daily basis, and Youken had done half of the fight for him.

Youken waited for the beetle to pick a direction, then followed it, his hand once again acting like a compass, taking him towards the one place where no force in Secfenia that he knew of could harm him if he didn't want them to.

"Munay, take us home."

((I'll be dropping Alder out of this rp for a while then unless I see a moment where I really want to reintroduce him. I feel like he's played his role now.))