Welcome to Adventu, your final fantasy rp haven. adventu focuses on both canon and original characters from different worlds and timelines that have all been pulled to the world of zephon: a familiar final fantasy-styled land where all adventurers will fight, explore, and make new personal connections.
at adventu, we believe that colorful story and plots far outweigh the need for a battle system. rp should be about the writing, the fun, and the creativity. you will see that the only system on our site is the encouragement to create amazing adventures with other members. welcome to adventu... how will you arrive?
year 5, quarter 3
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It was nice, being able to do this; traveling freely, unburdened by the company of others.[break][break]
Kimahri had become so used to being close to people that moments of prolonged solitude became something of a delicacy for him, a treat to savor between periods where he would, inevitably, be met with some other individual. For the first time in a long while, their burdens were not worth concerning over. The feeling was somewhat liberating.[break][break]
Roughly three weeks had gone by since he left the frigid confines of Mount Hotan, having ventured far to the south in the hopes of finding greater challenge. The animals of the woodlands were for sustenance and yielded no practical experience for combat, and the fiends that roamed in search of blood and nothing else proved too easy to vanquish.[break][break]
As he traveled the lands, keeping away from any humans, the Ronso gradually learned of a forest to the west, one which supposedly teemed with all manner of hideous and terrifying creatures. Things birthed from the darkest nightmares, purposed to inflict wholesale dread. He could find these woods over the mountain range that kept them separate from the Kahiko Valley, a three-day excursion that many among the superstitious would have considered suicidal.[break][break]
Kimahri feared no monsters, nor did he turn away from any rumors of such. The Spirit Lance pulsed between his fingers, vibrating with every heartbeat, as if to fill its wielder's heart with courage. His left wrist tensed, reminding the Ronso of the armlet that sat cradled against the fur as he focused on the lingering presence of his tribe-kin, the spirits of every Ronso warrior that came before.[break][break]
With this image resting on his mind, Kimahri soon found his way to the foot of the Headstone Forest. An image of gnarled trees and lifeless branches, hollow and melancholy, fill his peripheral view. His pantherine nose detects a burning sensation, yet there is no fire or smoke around him for miles. Kimahri growls low. Magic was present in these woods. Powerful. Volatile. Dangerous.[break][break]
As if...as if the dead rule this place...[break][break]
The humans were right to exercise caution here, if nothing else. Kimahri had to be, as well.[break][break]
Prudently, the Ronso guardian begins to inch his way into the Headstone Forest, making sure to preserve the integrity of the tangled forest around him. There was no telling what manner of horrors lurked within its depths, and it was important for Kimahri to make sure he remained ignorant of them all the same.[break][break]
But, as Kimahri would soon discover for himself, there is more to the Headstone Forest than that which goes bump in the night.
[attr=class,bulk] Yuna had been inside the Headstone Forest twice before, and she couldn’t say that she had particularly enjoyed the revelations that had come with either visit. It was one thing to be warned about the visions that the specters produced, but it was another thing entirely to experience them. She had dealt with countless unsent back on Spira, but with a few notable exceptions, they were usually shadows of their former selves. It had been something else to be confronted with the very real image of her father as he tried to lure her off the safety of the forest path.
Still, even though Yuna wasn’t eager to step back into the Headstone Forest, she hadn’t had the heart to turn down the latest job that had come through the Dragonblades for her. Spring had settled over Provo recently, and the town was preparing for the Annual Sign Posting event that took place every year outside of the forest. From what Yuna understood, the townsfolk volunteered to make hundreds of signs, venturing as close to the trees as they dared to place warnings along the roads for travelers. Yuna hadn’t thought to ask what happened to the signs every year that they had to replace them so often, but she doubted that it was from natural causes.
The town guards had assured Yuna that the citizens of Provo didn’t actually enter the forest itself during the event, but there had been a few incidents in the past, so they asked if she would help clear out the spirits from near the entrance. Since the job concerned people’s safety, Yuna had accepted immediately. She was as well-equipped as she could be to handle ghosts, and even if she hadn’t set foot on Spira in over a year, she couldn’t help still feeling responsible to lead the unsent to peace. She was a summoner in name only now without the Fayth or the Farplane, but some habits were hard to break.
That was what led Yuna to stand directly outside the forest one morning, shivering in the chill air of the sunrise as she took in her surroundings. Dew was sprinkled on the grass and the leaves of the gnarled trees closest to her, but a dense fog rolling lowly over the ground obscured most of what lay further along the path. The spring rains had made the path run thick with mud, so Yuna was forced to hold her staff one-handed so that she could lift her skirt above her boots with the other hand as she carefully navigated her way forward.
Once the trees were thick enough to obscure the view of the sky overhead, her left boot sank so deeply in mud that she had to pause to yank herself free. It looked like she hadn’t been the only one to become stuck in that spot--There were several other footprints lining the path here, but only one set made her pause and crouch down to examine it. All thought of protecting her skirt was gone as she let the blue dress sink into the mud.
“Kimahri,” she murmured, looking over the huge paw-like footprint with marks for claws, even if she knew her suspicion was ridiculous. She had yet to run into a single one of her guardians here on Zephon, and she had long since realized that she was alone here. Plenty of creatures other than a Ronso could have left marks like that. Yuna couldn’t even rule out the possibility that the forest had decided to toy with her by reminding her of her oldest friend and guardian.
Still, Yuna wasn’t able to swallow back her disappointment as she rose to her feet again. She still missed everyone more than she knew how to say, but now wasn’t the time to dwell on that. She had a job to do, and if she was far enough in the forest to be having visions, then she was far enough in to start.
There may not have been a Farplane here on Zephon, but Yuna still guessed that a sending would attract the attention of the unsent.
No matter where he turned his nose, Kimahri smelled only death. The forest practically stunk with decay. It made him even more leery of whatever godforsaken beast chose to dwell here. The floor of the gnarled woodlands ran thick with mud formed by a rainfall that happened recently, yet the Ronso was careful enough to use some of the fallen trunks as footing, his lance and slender tail both acting as counterbalances. Whatever flora existed here, aside from the rotting timbers and thorny brambles, served to showcase the inherent hostility of the Headstone Forest; vines of parasitic ivy wrap and constrict anything they touch, suffocating the life from them.[break][break]
Kimahri sighs slowly through open nostrils. There was no Farplane in this world, and he knew this. But the presence of lingering sentiments, emotions unfulfilled and forgotten by time, remind him of that which occasionally escaped such a plane of everlasting serenity and peace, unable to move on and embrace their final destinies. Monsters. Fiends. Horrors Kimahri had trained his entire life to kill. His instincts ran wild with anticipation of danger at every turn, even as he went deeper into the dark and misty woods.[break][break]
Then, once he began to reach a certain point, the light of the sun gradually disappeared beneath the swelling cradle of shadow. Even his sense of vision, which was superior to a human person's, found it difficult to perceive detail past more than a few meters at a time. Was the forest truly this large and condensed, or were there sinister forces at play here?[break][break]
As he ventured even deeper into the Headstone Forest, Kimahri could feel the atmosphere grow colder and more isolated from the rest of the outside world. What little signage he came across all read as dire warnings, urging him to turn back before it was too late. The Ronso ignored these postings, having no genuine reason to fear anything that haunted this place.[break][break]
The sound of branches snapping underfoot causes his ears to swivel in its direction, forcing the rest of Kimahri's body to face the same way. He flourished his spear with expert's finesse and growls low, narrowing his gaze, ready to impale the source of the noise.[break][break]
But there is nothing for him to look at.[break][break]
Kimahri hesitates to relax his stance; was this what the humans meant when they spoke of this wood as being haunted? Would he encounter one of the unsent? Was he already locked in a struggle with one he simply cannot perceive? Until one showed up, he could not justify acting on mere paranoia. With this rationale, the Ronso allowed his body's muscles to loosen, his form returning to a more combat neutral state. But his ears, they did not lie to him; somebody—something—was making sounds.[break][break]
And he was determined to find it.[break][break]
Without a word, the former guardian continues his navigation of the tenebrous forest, now forced to trek through deep pockets of mud to cover more land if he was to cross over to the other side.[break][break]
In his determination to explore, the Headstone Forest began to stir, watching his every move.
[attr=class,bulk] Yuna had intended to stay near the forest’s entrance--that was all that she’d been hired to clear after all--but she required a fair amount of space to perform a sending. At the very least, she needed room to maneuver her staff, but the snarled trees and vines grew too close to the path to allow her that. Yuna needed to find a wider clearing, so after a moment of hesitation, she brushed back a tree branch and continued forward.
Her progress was slow. The path was clearly defined, but it was cramped and muddy, and her blue skirt did little to protect her from the snarling brambles and tall grass. Still, Yuna was a little grateful for the distraction given the noises that she heard coming from deeper within the forest. She was sure that some of the cracking branches or low growls could be coming from actual fiends that made the woods their home, but Yuna suspected that the vast majority were the unsent spirits trying to frighten her and lure her off the path. She was at least prepared for their tricks and hallucinations this time. The best thing that she could do was raise her head and calmly keep going.
Eventually the forest split into different pathways, and Yuna stopped in front of the posted signage, deciding that she had enough room to do her work here. As always, she did her best to clear her mind of anything else and she took a few deep breaths before spinning to the right and raising her staff high over her head as she began. Truthfully, Yuna still wasn’t entirely sure what the sending did on Zephon with no farplane to speak of, but it seemed to have some effect on the dead. Indistinct whispers started up in the trees around her and leaves whipped around her skirt as Yuna danced. Just as she was about to bring her staff down to finish, a sharp crack echoed to her left.
Yuna’s eyes flew open and she stared into the trees uncertainly. “Hello?” She called out, on the off chance that it was another traveler, but as she cast her eyes over the scene, she zeroed in on another one of those strange footprints in the mud. Yuna’s heartbeat picked up a little as she crouched to examine it in case she’d been mistaken, but there was no missing the tell-tale claw marks near the the top of the large paw print.
The footprints led off the path. It was almost certainly a trap, but as Yuna let out a breath, she decided that she’d risk it just on the slightest possibility that one of her guardians could be here on Zephon. Straightening up, Yuna steeled herself before parting two of the trees and stepping between them to follow the trail. “Is anyone there?”
A hollow sigh, lonely and ephemeral, brushes through the dead and withered copses. The sensation causes Kimahri's fur to stand on end, as the wind emanated something of a warding effect against whatever fiends, wraiths, or other damnably transcendent terrors haunted the Headstone Forest.[break][break]
Memories of her, images clear as daylight, flood into his conscious mind. Her skirt twirls in perfect concert with the staff she holds, tracing gentle curves and arches into the waters of Kilika. Pyreflies gather in clusters as she prays for the dead. The ocean ascends with her slender form dancing gracefully on its crystalline surface. The funeral torches shudder and turn cold blue. The people mourn and wail, but she dances on, knowing that she must. Her heart aches with grief, not for herself, but for all of Spira. That was the duty of a Summoner.[break][break]
As if by a bolt of lightning, Kimahri is struck by a hesitant realization: a sending was not a concept native to this world, yet he had just felt its inimitable presence sweep its way through the woods. Was there one present here, at this moment, trying to enact one?[break][break]
Kimahri shakes his head at the thought. It was impossible, he told himself. This forest is attempting to play some kind of trick on him, or perhaps it was possessed of some hallucinatory quality that made it———[break][break]
“Hello?”[break][break]
His heart freezes in place. The voice is distant, but clear, enough for him to know exactly who had spoken. But the only thing the Ronso spearman can perceive, at least visually, are the mangled trees and thick pockets of mud. Kimahri grasps at the Spirit Lance with both hands now, driven by the certitude that he was being pursued by some evil creature.[break][break]
“Is anyone there?” Kimahri let's out a warrior's snarl and, turning his body to face this new enemy, aimed the celestial lance forward———[break][break]
His anticipation for combat transmogrifies, almost instantly, into unfiltered shock. His hold on the spear fades into visible trembling in a mixture of confusion and guilt; it is not why he raised his weapon that provokes these feelings, but who he turned it towards.[break][break]
An embroidered and pleated purple skirt, with black boots beneath. A yellow patterned sash tied in a musubi knot with clinching cords. Sleeves with a pink gradient. Brunette hair at shoulder length, a single braid on the right side. Eyes of different colors, one blue, one green. But it is her face—her smile—that gives the Ronso true pause.[break][break]
Her name sits at the base of his throat, but it refuses to be invoked. 'What are you doing here?' He wants to ask her this, but cannot bring himself to say the question, even though his soul screamed for the confirmation it so desperately craved. Was she really there, or was this just another cruel illusion of the forest?[break][break]
While he struggled to find the answers within himself, Yuna, or the figure that looked identical to her, began to move towards Kimahri in a slow, almost calculated gait. She never had difficulties getting close to him, even while every other person in his life found communication with a Ronso more physically trying than they were willing to put up with. Even though her presence in this place was worthy of concern, he should have found his lapse of stoicism before the only woman he ever truly cared for, this moment of visible weakness, as no surprise.[break][break]
As the distance between them slowly closes, Kimahri's spear drifted toward the mud. With every step taken, she leaves behind an aroma that gradually pulls Kimahri's senses into a fog-like stupor. His breathing grows heavy and labored, like his lungs were filling with water instead of air. Every single muscle in his body felt on the verge of complete surrender, relaxed and unhindered by all the worldly stresses. The closer she walked, the more inebriating these effects became to him.[break][break]
However, his mind claws for reality with reckless abandon, fully aware of what was happening, yet physically incapable of resisting the effects of so insidious a trap. Kimahri could feel himself being wrenched away from all sense of control over his own body, like how a boatswain might panic in terror at the presence of an impending tidal wave; it is the Greenmother's implicit reminder of her superiority over all other sentient races, that there are things capable of surpassing any intelligent creature's defenses by way of sheer evolutionary ingenuity.[break][break]
When the figure wearing Yuna's face had finally reached the beastkin, it smiles at him, savoring his inability to fight back against such an inescapable allure. The Ronso's body shudders and twitches, eyes fully glossed over, fangs poking through curled lips as a matter of mechanical reflex. Wherever Kimahri was, mentally, it was no longer the Headstone Forest.[break][break]
She reaches up to touch his broken horn, and in the moment her skin makes contact with it, Kimahri gasps aloud and seizes up. From its base, ominous red tendrils branched out like a network of arteries and veins, slithering their way down his pantherine frame until it sharply contrasted against his blue fur. He gurgles, unable to form words, but the attempt is as short-lived as it is redundant. His shoulders drop at last, as does the tip of the Spirit Lance, and following a brief stretch of several seconds, no further efforts to resist were made again.[break][break]
In newly unnerving fashion, Kimahri slowly cranes his glassy gaze in the direction that the voice had come from. He then, robotically, turns to face Yuna, who nods back to him with an implicit eagerness. Anyone observing these events would know by now that a directive was just issued to him, and he, being as loyal to the High Summoner as one could be, was fully ready to comply.[break][break]
Infused with a much darker purpose, the Ronso begins to stalk his way toward the only other person roaming within the Headstone Forest, completely robbed of any and all ability to warn who Kimarhi was now certain was the true Yuna; he was a slave, for all intents and purposes, to the malevolent will of a creature that neither of them were truly prepared to deal with.[break][break]
[attr=class,bulk] The forest was quiet in response to the questions that Yuna had called out, and she began to wonder if everything had been an illusion after all. She glanced back a little uncertainly towards the direction of the path, but in the end she decided to keep moving forward. Maybe her guardians weren’t here, but she still had a hard time believing that a footprint like that could have come from anything other than a Ronso. She certainly hadn’t met another race quite like them here on Zephon, and she was so desperate to find someone else from Spira that she was willing to take the risk that this was a trap.
As Yuna crept forward through the trees, she strained her ears to hear something other than the chirping of insects or the rush of the wind. For a while she failed to pick up on anything else significant, but suddenly there was a small snap of a twig underfoot to her right, and she whirled around to face the sound, her earrings and sash ornaments jangling together with how quickly she’d moved. There was a figure looking at her from the other side of some thickets, and Yuna felt her lips part in shock at the same time that her fingers loosened around her staff.
It couldn’t be…
“...Kimahri?” The question was tentative. Yuna knew instantly that the person was a Ronso, but she briefly doubted herself on their identity--some sort of red pattern was scattered across their blue fur in a way that she’d never seen on a Ronso before. Still, as she ran her eyes over the feline man, her throat started to feel tight as she spotted traits that were more familiar. He had always been a little smaller than most Ronso, though he still felt huge to Yuna. He never really talked about it, but she also knew how much his broken horn bothered him. Yuna had always wished that he didn’t have to be so ashamed of it. His journey to gain his people’s acceptance had been long and hard, and he had never deserved that. He had been there for her unconditionally since she was a child. Yuna had always wished that she could have helped him on his own personal pilgrimage as much as he had helped her.
“Kimahri!” She was no longer uncertain. Dropping her staff, she leapt over a tangle of weeds to get to him faster. She only paused for a split second once she was right in front of him--the red tendrils that she’d taken to be cloth from a distance actually looked like some sort of plant, and there was something a little glassy about his yellow eyes that wasn’t usually there. Still, he looked far too real to be an illusion, and the lump in her throat reminded her that she hadn’t seen her very first guardian in so long. It was hard to care about what her instincts were warning her compared to that wave of emotion.
Yuna was usually more reserved and not overtly comfortable with being physically affectionate, but in that moment she threw her arms around Kimahri in a way that she hadn’t done since she was a little girl. “Please be real…”
Emerging from between a cluster of dead trees, unthinking and unfeeling, the hornless Ronso fixates on the silent compulsion that guides him through the Headstone Forest, but ceased all forward movement once a new presence made itself known through an expression of bewildered shock. It was a human woman. One who looked exactly identical to Yuna.[break][break]
Glassy orbs for eyes reflect nothing back to her, nothing that she would be able to outwardly recognize; where there ought to be some feeling of gratitude or excitement for the moment, there is only a hollow emptiness. Kimahri's body stood there, unresponsive, cold and still like the hand of death, even as she frantically hopped over brush and bramble to shorten the distance between them.[break][break]
She moves to embrace the guardian, hopeful that he would recognize her. But Kimahri does not return the gesture. Unlike so many other times before, her touch failed to elicit any warmth from him. The lifeless canopies rattle above with vicious delight, as if mocking the summoner for her naivety. There would be no catharsis in this reunion. It is a cruel and bitter wake-up call; the one she valued so dearly had become a thoughtless puppet of the Headstone Forest, stripped of identity, now fully enslaved to its malignant and insidious will.[break][break]
As if ready to burst, the vein-like protrusions sprawled across his fur began to throb and pulsate. The inside of his throat seizes shut, and Kimahri suddenly drops to both knees with an audible snarl, dropping the Spirit Lance to the earth while he began grasping at his own neck, as if something were trying to suffocate him from within. Panicked eyes dart in every direction, unable to see anything from behind their glossy haze. If he could not hear her before, it was all but certain now that her words would fail to anchor the Ronso in reality.[break][break]
Fear becomes anger. Something invisible was trying to kill him, and he could not fight back against it. Kimahri's mouth begins to foam at its corners. He grits his fangs into each other so hard they seemed ready to break into pieces.[break][break]
Anger becomes hate. He wants to rid himself of this unseen force, to be restored to a moment before this anguish became part of his life. He want to kill it. Undo its existence.[break][break]
Hate becomes suffering. Blood and isolation, these are all he ever deserved. There is no escaping his true nature. He is a beast of fury, unrelenting, hateful, mindless. A beast worthy of its true nature will never be tamed.[break][break]
The veins in his fur bloom with baleful scarlet light. Consumed by pain, drowning in rage, Kimahri roars with murderous frenzy, and begins to lash out with reckless abandon, aiming for no one, but driven by wild instinct to find and kill the woman that looked like Yuna. The Headstone Forest stirs with implicit triumph, eager to allow its new servant an opportunity to rip and tear apart the only other human currently present.[break][break]
Anyone else would have killed him at the first sign of trouble. Thankfully, this was not just anyone.[break][break]
But, could Yuna rescue Kimahri from the jaws of despair, as he had done for her so many times before?
[attr=class,bulk] Something was wrong. Yuna had known that on some level when she’d reached for Kimahri, but she’d been too relieved to really process what she was seeing until now. There was no sign of recognition in his eyes, and he made no move to return her embrace. If anything, his body seemed to stiffen when she touched him as the odd red tendrils spread across his fur squeezed in like a vice.
The Ronso snarled in her face as he let his spear drop and suddenly fell to his knees. Yuna felt her heart sink as he began viciously clawing at his own throat. His roar had never once been directed at her before, and the sound sent a little jolt of fear through her that she didn’t like associating with Kimahri. Even worse, he began foaming at the mouth in a way that made it clear he couldn’t breathe.
“Kimahri!” Yuna fell to her knees next to him and stared at him in horror for a moment before trying to reach for one of the thin scarlet vines wrapped around him. They were the only thing that was out of place that was visible to her, so Yuna could only conclude that they were hurting him. Before she could make contact with the plant though, Kimahri began to lash out with his claws. Yuna was forced to fall back as one struck her arm, and she let out a gasp of pain as the sensation caught up with her. Blood was trickling down her arm and dotting against her silk sleeve, and she clasped one hand over the wound as she stumbled to her feet.
“Cure,” she murmured to stem the bleeding before backing away another step or two from the raging Ronso. Her instincts screamed at her to run away and grab her staff from where she’d dropped it. She might have listened if it had been anyone else who had attacked her, but this was Kimahri. The only person who had always been by her side. Always. Even when she had been new to Besaid or when no one else had supported her decision to become a summoner, Yuna hadn’t been alone because she’d had Kimahri. He had quietly supported her for over a decade, and she could never turn her back on him.
These weren’t his actions. Yuna didn’t know how, but she’d stand her ground until she could find out what was happening to him.
“I won’t leave you,” she promised him earnestly, clasping her hands in front of her in preparation of casting a spell. It wouldn’t be as focused without her staff, but she’d have to manage. “Let me be your guardian this time.”
With that, Yuna cast Nul-Blaze on Kimahri, waiting until there was an orange ball circling above his head to indicate that he was briefly immune to fire magic before she ran back towards him. She didn’t know if she could avoid any of his attacks--physical fights weren’t really her strong suit--but she did her best to duck under his arms and grab onto one of the plant tendrils. Hauling it as far away from his body as her slender arms would allow, she called upon one of the few Black Magic spells that she’d picked up near the end of her pilgrimage. “Fira.”
How horrible this must feel for Yuna, to watch her closest friend and protector be stripped of all identity and reason, overwhelmed with desperation to alleviate his suffering any way that she can, only to react with terror as a wild, pointed claw grazes the flesh, just barely, but enough to send flecks of her blood dripping onto the lifeless forest floor.[break][break]
But compassion is a rarity in the fevered pitch of battle. Yuna was never the sort of person who could turn her back on somebody that needed help, and this instance was no exception to that rule. But, as she had reminded herself, the summoner was now dealing with Kimahri. For ten years he served as her guardian, well before he ever formally received the title, stoically approving her every choice in life, even if it ran counter to the wishes or reasons of other people.[break][break]
In watching these haunted hinterlands inflict unthinkable tortures upon this normally quiet and reserved Ronso, Yuna would be forced to confront the parts of his beastly nature he had worked so hard to keep away from her, brought to the surface against his will as this pitiful state of frothing suffocation and furious lashing claws.[break][break]
And it would seem that, in trying to touch one of the sinewy tendrils, Yuna had somehow amplified whatever invisible agony Kimahri felt ripping him apart from within, causing his muscles to spasm and limbs to seize uncontrollably as the vine-like protrusions and patterns glowed in their distinctive crimson menace. His eyes, hazy and full of terror, darting everywhere but able to see nothing, twitch with every haggard breath his lungs failed to take.[break][break]
There wasn't much Yuna could do without exacerbating his condition, but her theories were at least correct: somehow, the vein-like growths embedded into his fur were correlated to Kimahri's suffering.[break][break]
Kimahri's upper body throws itself backwards, shoulders slamming into the ground as both arms follow suit, beating into the mud with audible force. Reflexively he grasps at his throat again, but the gesture is futile. Psychosis wrenches control of all nervous impulse, and he begins to flail about in mindless abandon.[break][break]
There is a window of opportunity to act, a moment of clarity in the eye of the storm. Yuna takes her shot; she casts a spell of warding to produce a flickering sphere of orange light above the beast-man's anguished form, Nul-Blaze, then lunges in her guardian's direction, reaching for one of the pulsating growths. If Kimahri had been cognizant of all that was going on, he might have scolded her for being reckless, but driving the summoner now is a mixture of courage and desperation.[break][break]
Against this backdrop of despair, her valor shines bright and true, and she succeeds in grasping onto the densest of the tendrils, pulling as hard as she can while Kimahri's arms swipe and brush past her considerably smaller figure with feral lethality, unable to strike at the phantoms plaguing his every thought.[break][break]
But her actions are not without consequence, and in trying to remove the growths with as much force as her body could muster, this would reveal the plant's diabolical mechanism of operation, as the vines that wrapped around the raging Ronso's body had already buried themselves deep into his fur and flesh, and the act of ripping them from the body served to create a growing lattice of gaping punctures and bleeding lacerations. More pain meant deeper rage, and Kimahri would scream out another fearsome roar to express this.[break][break]
Yuna's plan was to set the botanical menace alight with fire magic, and her casting of Nul-Blaze would protect Kimahri from the scorching heat of her spell. Without her staff to act as the catalyst, the cluster of fleshy tendrils in her grasp proved a sufficient replacement, and with a single command, she causes the vines to burst alight with a mighty gout of arcane fire.[break][break]
The conflagration triggers a chain reaction, causing the resultant flames to streak down the length of the vines still attached to the struggling Ronso until he, too, found himself consumed by its explosive wrath. Yuna's protective charm would, indeed, ensure no harm would befall her friend, but that was only if she had cast the spell directly at him; Nul-Blaze would do nothing to stop the Ronso from crying out in distress the moment he felt the clinging tendrils, now roasting under the scorching heat, sear and burn at his insides like hot knives to butter.[break][break]
Kimahri convulses, too overwhelmed by Yuna's magic and the rush of pheromones being poured into his nerves from the dying growths. A cocktail of foam and drool oozes from between his mouthful of gnashing fangs while the Ronso's dead-eyed gaze uncannily fixes itself to Yuna's position, head and neck shivering as though some vestigial part of his former nature tried to resist the forces that possessed him to act this way.[break][break]
The shivering turns to a gurgling snarl, then into a primitive roar, but what followed after this would be far worse in its greater implications; possessed by the will of the forest, Kimahri rears himself back with an open mouth, and from it came a tremendous and terrible, sweeping cascade of flames.[break][break]
The Fire Breath. And there would be no restraint in its execution, either.[break][break]
As festering fear consumes the mind, the great blaze poured from forest floor to the gnarled canopies above, enveloping the surrounding area in a roaring inferno that would only threaten to spread and grow if left unchecked, wetness from the prior rainfall be damned entirely. Moving erratically amidst the flames as they piled on top of one another was the silhouette of Kimahri, fighting against enemies that did not exist, certain he was to kill the impostor that assumed Yuna's face, physically desperate to fulfill this task but visibly absent of any cognitive reasoning or sapient thought.[break][break]
It proved true enough: whatever these plants were, they were destroying Kimahri's mind. Attempting to remove them worsens their deleterious effects. And now a portion of Headstone Forest had been set aflame.[break][break]
[attr=class,bulk] Yuna had assumed that the vines were constricting Kimahri’s airflow, but she hadn’t realized just how deeply they clung to him. She had expected resistance as she hauled one tendril away from his body, but the plant left behind a litany of puncture wounds where it had been nestled among his fur. Yuna’s heart squeezed a little at the sight of so much blood on her friend, and it renewed her determination to see the thing burn.
Unfortunately its agony at her spell seemed to be nothing compared to Kimahri’s.
The Ronso’s entire body seized up, and Yuna grabbed at his shoulder in horror as flecks of foam started leaking from his mouth. “Kimahri! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-!” A roar cut her off, and she flinched backwards an inch or two at the sheer volume of his voice, but he was right. Her intentions didn’t mean anything. Yuna might have only had one chance to save him, and she’d chosen wrong.
She needed her staff. Perhaps this was some sort of status effect unique to the Headstone Forest? It did seem similar to the Confusion that plants on Bikanel Island could inflict. If so, then Yuna could cure it, but it would help to have her staff for a spell like that. Before Yuna could move though, Kimahri suddenly reared back and brought his arm up towards his face in a familiar motion. If she had never seen one of his Ronso Rages before, then she would have gotten hit dead on, but she had seen him fight so often that she knew its significance immediately.
Gasping, she leapt to her feet and sprang towards a nearby tree, doing her best to shield herself behind it. She didn’t know which of his blue magic attacks was coming, but a scorching rush of heat that singed her flesh and set the forest blazing to life in a crackling mass of fire answered that quickly enough. Fire Breath. Was that his answer to her pathetic attempt at help? Her stomach sank, and she looked up to see that the tree she’d used for shelter had lit up in flames that spread from branch to branch faster than a natural fire would have.
Her staff.
The path behind her was blocked by fire, but she needed it for Kimahri’s sake. Now more than ever. Stealing herself, Yuna leapt towards the crackling flames, feeling the heat worse than ever. “Watera!” She doused herself as much as the fire hoping that it would prevent her dress or sleeves from burning before she sprang through. Something sharp and hot licked at her exposed upper arms, but she clenched her teeth and ignored it as she scooped up the long rod where it lay in the grass.
Coughing, she emerged back into the clearing with it, pressing one hand over her mouth in an attempt to breathe easier. The smoke was becoming too thick to breathe here, but she had one thing to try before she could get them to a safer location. She could channel her magic much easier now with her rod as a focus, so Yuna brought it down in front of her and looked up again at the hurt Ronso. “Esuna.”
