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Merle, you feel someone calling to you from within that portal, offering you help. Who is it?
[Laughs] Anybody?
Anybody.
...Alright, here’s what we’re gonna do. I summon… Lucretia.
Wait, really? [laughs]
You heard me. You said anyone, right Griffy? Anyone.
Well, okay. Yeah, we can work this one out. Here’s how we’re gonna play this.
Lucretia steps out of this spinning, humming portal, at the center of the Bond Engine, takes a couple steps forward, and stops. She seems… bewildered, by the sudden change of viewpoint, because, up until this very second, she’s been putting all her focus into channeling her spell. And, even more bewildering is the fact that, somehow, she’s still channeling that spell.
Merle instinctively looks up to the helm of the ship, where Lucretia was stationed next to Davenport, and, well… she’s still there. Still focused intently on taking the last of the Light from the Animus Bell and infusing it into her staff. She doesn’t appear to have noticed any sort of strangeness or abnormality going on. And the Lucretia who just stepped out of the Bond Engine is looking up there too, and she is very clearly as baffled as everyone else.
The Lucretia on the deck shakes her head, blinking. “Wait, I… hang on. What is even going on here.”
Merle gives a gruff chuckle, rubbing the back of his head. “Well, I, uh… can’t say I really have much of a clue, y’know, with this bond stuff and all that. Maybe it's some, ah, alternate version of yourself? From another time, or reality or... hell if I know, really.”
Lucretia nods slowly, her words chosen carefully. “Perhaps... we are in a bit of an… unprecedented scenario, I’d say, so I'm not sure there's really going to be any sort of proper answer to explain this. But, well… whatever this is, it doesn’t seem like it’s affecting my ability to channel, so I guess we’re good on that front. At least.”
“Yep, bonds are, uh, like that, I guess. So, then, as long as you’re down here… you wanna lend us a hand real quick?”
Lucretia’s eyes go wide in very apparent shock. “Oh, are you… sure? You want me here? To fight with you?”
The stocky dwarf gives another low chuckle, turning briefly to regard his hesitant crewmate, his sister in arms, with a warm, welcoming look in his single eye. “Lucretia? Absolutely.”
So, as you say that, Merle, Lucretia laughs, and you can see there’s a moment of… happiness, or relief maybe, in her eyes? And maybe you see that a tear or two starts to form in them? Like, I think from the nature of the scenario, even if she doesn't understand everything, she’s been able to infer that you could have called on, well, just about anyone for assistance, and the fact that you still called for her, after everything she’s done… I think she’s kinda touched, Merle.
“Yeah, yeah, I know… me and my big softie heart.” Merle grumbles, expression a bit bashful as he breaks the brief moment of silence.
"No, no, it's fine. It's good." Lucretia wipes her eyes a little bit before stepping forward, her staff held out at her side, and she turns to look back at her friend, smiling in a way she hasn’t properly smiled in years. “Tell me what you want me to do to this thing, Merle.”
“Well, ya know, Lucretia? You’ve been wavin’ that staff around all adventure, and all I’ve seen it do is put on a fancy light show as part of your whole smoke-and-mirrors switcheroonie operation. So why don’t you show us what that baby can really do?”
She nods, and lifts the white oak rod up, and even though this Lucretia and this staff aren’t glowing with the same sort of power that their, well, for lack of a better term, real counterparts are currently, there’s still a sudden and noticeable change in the air around her as she focuses the arcane energies within it.
She points it forward at the opal-black monster, and this pale blue light starts to coalesce around the tip of her staff, and it gathers itself into this tiny little blue sphere, which flies right at their dark foe. And when it hits, it explodes into this giant chunk of ice that flashes up and encases the monstrosity that is Shadow John in hardly a second.
That doesn’t last very long- there’s a thrashing from inside as Shadow John retaliates, and it only takes a few seconds of struggle to break its way free of the ice. But, as the ice bursts away from its form and cascades off of this shadowy monster and onto the deck, the orbs floating around it also falter in their orbit just a little bit, since the force of this shattering ice has peppered each of them, too, with this freezing shrapnel.
And Lucretia looks at her handiwork for a single satisfied moment, then turns to move back towards the portal, and just as she steps through, she looks to Merle, and she says, “Well, I don’t really think I can stick around long, unfortunately… but oh gods, that felt satisfying. I guess I hadn’t realized how good it might feel just to… well, to fight back so directly. Thank you, Merle. You three have got this.”
And with that, this Lucretia’s gone. The Lucretia at the helm is still intently channeling.
And next in the order is… Magnus.