Skill: [Analyze]

Designation: Inspection Type

A common inspection skill for combatants or those who have an inclination towards the martial arts. This includes adventurers, soldiers and guardsmen whose occupations are fraught with danger. Therefore, Analyze helps them gauge the might of their foes relative to themselves. Is the basis for the threat levels assigned by the guilds for monsters; the skill weighs how much of your own ability to pit against someone else in order to come on top; other esoteric parameters are applied by the World and cannot be quantified in discrete terms. Can be rebuffed by Obfuscation artifacts, some magic items or the analyzed subject’s magical aura. -World Compendium of Skills , The Order of Vesper, Church of Thea

They’d come for him, even this far north and they’d come for him. He thought maybe, just maybe it would end with the skullduggery of court politics; he took his leave and left them to it. But Lo and behold, they came stealing away in the dark and damp tunnels of a dungeon.

Swift of foot and faint of presence, they came with daggers primed to stab. It was his fault that one of his party had to take one in the back for him. He, yet stood while she wasted away, drawing her last breath.

Healing potions did not work; would a cleric have made a difference? Mayhap if he’d learnt a healing spell or two things would’ve been different. Some ‘Generalist [Mage] he was; he thought himself to be well rounded and yet—

“[Fire Ball]! [Sticky Web], [Trip Vine]!” spell after spell he lobbed at his suicidal foes. The numbers of foes, uncountable...what types of monsters had they faced?

He couldn’t tell, they kept on blurring into one another—he couldn’t tell them apart, bipeds, quadrupeds, hexapeds, millipeds…all he cared about was downing them.

Whatever shape, or form, fang or claw they came with, he didn’t care…He was going to melt with acid, pummel them with rocks or outright incinerate them to ashes— “[ Solar Ray]!” mana burn be damned

“[Aggregate Volley]! [Piercing Shot], [ Sylvan Archer’s Art: Medusa’s Thorns]!” arrow after arrow blurred from her quiver. Some from skills, some mundane others…made of magic. Magic which was flagging.

How many potions of rejuvenation had she taken? No idea, there was no need to count—the number was many if she could feel the potions roiling in her stomach. She felt queasy, like having drunk lots of water after eating oily boiled meat.

She shut down that memory and locked it away in the corners of her mind; just thinking of it made her want to chuck the contents of her stomach. It was not her fault she didn’t learn how to cook.

Her hands were sore, archer’s vambrace was riddled with more scuffmarks than she could count. Twang and twang sang her bow, that’s all she was living for, in the here and the now. One arrow let loose was one less monster to she’d have to face when she ran out of them.

Maybe, if she hadn’t rushed the evaluation they wouldn’t been holing up here like a pack of swamp rats clinging to reeds as a maelstrom drunk the water around them. The dungeon had broken and safe rooms were no longer providing respite; worse still, every running battle with their foes put them between a stronger monster and a very difficult place.

She had failed as a leader—no, if fact she was just a pretend leader, leaving all the work to her second; a more capable woman than she. She was the leader and she was the face of their party.

Primals damn it all if she wasn’t going to get her out of there alive. If they all got out while she yet drew breath, she would stop chasing after her sister’s coattails. As long as her bow was taut enough to fling an arrow, she would string a chain of them until her elbows gave out.

He prided himself, a master of obfuscation. It was in his class description; use of underhanded means to get the upper hand… All he had to do is get behind his foe and— ‘[Back Stab]!’ to the vitals and it all goes down. Before the foul ichor could even reach his garb, he was off to the next victim.

Be it hide or scale, bark or fur, his [Blade of Phantasm] would get through, as long as the conditions were right and he struck from the shadows thanks to [Veil of Vesper]; it was one of his most formidable skills in his repertoire. A rogue was not a rogue if they could not strike from someplace someone did not expect.

He could smell a feint coming from a twitch or muscle, or a roll of the eye even the change in the air. It was very hard to trap him if you never saw him coming. Until today his skills had never failed him…no his skills had been ever faithful; he was just excusing his failure to his party.

If he talked more with his party, maybe he would have warned them in time. They would have avoided a catastrophe…easily. Silence was golden, and speech was silvern, that’s how he weighed his interactions.

But damn all the Crowns to Vesper’s pits if they weren’t worth the life of his party member. He would trade his life for hers if he could because she did not deserve to go the way she was; not when her life still burned bright.

Oh, he would sell his own soul to Vesper if he could let her breath one more day… but if she fell before him, well, he knew who was responsible and as soon as he got out of that swamp hole, their blood was the one he was going to spill next—down to the last man.

Some people did say he was living his life fast and he would die young for sure. The way he drunk away his coin, slept with any willing woman and chased every skirt that he fancied. Sure he got rebuffed sometimes...well most times but it wasn't like the world lacked for women right? They came in every shape and every size, every shade and every price. As long as it was his money that he spent, why did it matter what he spent it on.

He wasn't hurting anyone. People were just so hard to read sometimes, if only they understood just how hard it was going face to face with monsters that could tear you, limb from limb if they so much snorted your way.

"[Sword Art: Reverse Slash]!"— it was just his way of coping. He knew just how, like witch's silver, things could change at the drop of a hat. Today's success would be tomorrow's tragedy, so what harm would it bring to want to live in the moment?

Chance was a fickle mistress, like a fire...warm and comforting when good then scorching hot when bad...was that why he was attracted to the primal of fire because he lived for the things that got his blood pumping?

Ustrina was rumored to be a woman after all, why else would they call women hot? Anyway that was not the time to be thinking of such things, he promised that whenever he was on the job, he would keep his mind on the job, case in point, "[Ustrina's bindings]!"—

Let it never be said that he wasn't faithful to anything; he was wholly devoted to his fire swordsmanship that's why he had the skill to show for it! It kept his target where he wanted them as he went all in for—the lunge that would pierce the heart; that's how chains worked.

A merry band of misfits was her first impression when they got together; but it was her merry band all the same. Sure they did fight and squabble sometimes; about who came to work with a hangover when they could have bought a potion of rejuvenation to fend off the consequences of their indulgence. Or over burning some of their food after insisting on cooking even though the cooking skills were non-existent; try as they might they couldn’t for the life them get the class or its approximation.

Though the latter was like a little sister, quite a handful with mommy issues that had to be coddled away. Always chasing after her blood relative who couldn’t even give them the time of day; she could see right through her.

Her ambition was her way of saying, ‘look at me, I am here’ all she wanted was someone to recognize her effort. At least she did try, sometimes the girl got angry and lashed out complaining that she was being smothered, but she knew—oh she knew, she was very poor at expressing her feelings.

The other one was silent, quiet and curt. Only spoke when spoken to. She saw that he was trying and couldn’t push him to be something he wasn’t because she couldn’t take issue with not talking.

As long as he got the message across, she was fine with letting him pace himself. He was the constant in the party and she couldn’t remember when he did something unexpected; so there were rarely any conflicts between them. He was—well, he was a good friend.

And the little brother too, the one who tried to be so many things at once. Always putting up a façade to show nothing bothered him. He thought he was covering it up well, but sometimes, she could see the chinks in his armor—another unloved soul who felt as if they had the weight of Eryth on their shoulders.

Lately he’d been more open, more trustful of the people around him despite what his past had done to him. But sometimes, the past—the past troublesome claws. Once it got its hooks in you, short of taking its own pound of flesh, it would never let you go and it came calling today.

That’s how they’d arrived here, with their backs against a barely functioning safe zone fighting to survive by the skin of their teeth. Potions quaffed to the last bottle such that they were operating on fumes. The last of the healing potions were wasted on her—that was her only regret. She did not regret taking shrapnel for someone she considered her little brother even if she knew she was not going to get out of it alive, she could at least try.

People did say she was too kind; giving away some of her earnings to the church in spite of the fact that she’d come from the streets; picking up the slack as the actual leader of Wyvern’s Woe because someone had to do it.

She did not regret her kindness even though her own lifeblood continued to down her. Poetic wasn’t it? That the one person who’d failed her was her own body.

She wondered who would take treats to the children at the Church now—who would keep the party together when she knew it would fall apart after she was gone—who would tell a certain sylvani girl that she was doing enough and that someone could see and appreciate her as a person separate from her abilities.

She also wondered if her new friend would forgive her for leaving when they’d just gotten to know each other. She knew how ragged the sylvani girl ran herself; so much that she barely had any friends or hobbies save for those from her places of work.

Her last wish—her last wish before the Nightfell came to take her to the other side, was—was that they would not dwell on her death. Because her lungs could no longer air her wish, she left them her last smile instead; her last memento to the happy things worth remembering.

She took life’s final shuddering breath as her heart beat one last moment—as her hands, soaked crimson by the lifeblood pooling from her bosom, went still and the light faded from her unfocused eyes.