angelsGuignol @ Qarina

hello! i’m a good friend of salme’s from one of the planes she’s traveled to and she said she thought we might get along. i go by angelsGuignol on here, but you can call me jae.

she tells me you almost took her out in a rite? i had a pretty memorable spar with her and she made me sweat, i can’t say that about many people one on one. (i am. extremely good at the rite its kinda my whole thing.) so anyone who can almost take her out automatically is cool in my book! was it fun? did you have a good time?

Hi Jae! I didn’t realize you can change your name on these things. Yeah, she wanted to try and use a special thing to learn more about me in the Rite. And uhh, I didn’t anticipate just how different fighting another person was gonna be. I usually only fight Rohsu - the strongest Kin there are (Do you know what Kin are?) and even then I still win sometimes. Depends on how many I fight at once. Thanks! Most people here think I’m weird, not cool. It’s because I have a brother. I…don’t think the rite was fun? It was mostly surprising. I didn’t realize that the thing she was gonna do wouldn’t hurt? And then just kinda cut loose and almost went too far. It was cool that she went first. That pretty much never happens. I think if we rematched it would be THE BEST FIGHT EVER though. Do you also fight everything to keep everyone safe? That’s like, my whole existence.

kin are what yazhn ravhi and yazhn dyu are, yeah? ive seen pictures of them, and salme’s explained a little bit about what mu is like.

i tend to find weird people interesting and good. i hang out with salme, remember?

you should totally do a rematch with her, yeah. but im warning you, she’s gonna be super ready for you and she’s not gonna hafta faff about with libra next time ;)

i fight for a lot of reasons. the beast - the world i live on - is full of people who fight. some people fight for the love of fighting, some people fight because they need to be, some people fight just to get materials to make things with, or sell to people. a lot of people fight to keep people safe. there’s caves here that constantly fart out (mostly) monstrous fiends that want to Cause Problems for people and/or are delicious or have useful monster parts to harvest. usually both.

so there’s entire clans of people here that spend all of their time monster hunting, that’s their job, that’s a LOT of peoples’ job here. and i’m the biggest and baddest of the lot! so when there’s a monster so big and tough it manages to tromp all the way to my city, that’s when i come out and kick it into pieces.

mostly, i fight because i like to fight. i’ve always liked to fight. but, yeah, i also fight to keep everyone else safe. its nice.

Yeah, they’re both Kin.

Wow. So like, the monsters on your world are made of stuff? That’s weird. Out here, the Elementals are made of like, nothingness, but a different kind of nothingness. So when I crush them instead of having them explode, they just kinda don’t leave anything behind? I would totally go check out your home. That many people all fighting monsters together? That’s cool. Out here, it’s mostly just me and my brother at this point, unless something really goes wrong. Also, our Elementals don’t come from caves. That’s where people who don’t live in The City live. I’d like to see you fight a giant monster. That’d be cool.

I always fought because it was the thing they woke me up to do, and I was good at it, and protecting people seems like an important thing to do. And…I definitely still believe that all of those things are true. But I don’t think the reason why they woke me up and made me like this might be anymore? It’s really hard to figure out. On one hand, it kinda doesn’t matter. Over here, My brother and I are the strongest (but not the biggest for sure), and definitely the best at keeping people safe. So like. Just gotta keep doing that, right? It would be nice to know what the heck is going on though. Salme and her friends are all real cool, but my life is really complicated now.

believe it or not i know how you feel about the six of them

wouldnt change it for a hill of lucre but i know how you feel

i do think its good and important to keep fighting to keep people safe if youre good at it. or whatever youre good at. saranzaya, my best friend in the world, she’s in charge of a huge marketplace on the beast where people come from the world over to buy and sell things. monster parts, finished goods, everything. and she keeps everyone there happy, keeps the whole thing afloat. she’s not the only one, of course, not by far, she’s got a good team. but watching her work is always incredible, and keeps -me- remembering that i got a job to do, too.

it gets hard sometimes, and that’s okay. just gotta keep trudgin’.

out of curiosity do you know where the elementals do come from?

I don’t know what lucre is, but yeah, I agree. Wouldn’t ever not know them. Though I don’t really know most of them yet.

I’m glad your best friend is also super cool. I…don’t really understand what they do though. But I’m glad she keeps everyone happy. That’s kinda how the Kin function over here. They help take care of us so that we can do The Work alongside them. Whatever a marketplace is, though, we don’t have one of those.

As far back as our records go, there have been Elementals in the desert. I…don’t read or study very much…my friend Dyu does, though. When we get back to the City, I can see what’s in The Fathom. But I don’t think anyone knows? They’re super deadly and really prone to explosion, and data collection on them would be…kinda like suicide for anyone who isn’t me I think? And right up until a few days ago, I was just doing my thing, not really thinking, so the idea never would have shown up.

man do they not have money on your world? what do they do when more than one person wants something there’s a limited supply of? thats fucking wild. not like. bad, or anything just wild

on the beast, you need to pay for things with lucre, which is. shiny rocks that we turn into shinier discs of metal that are worth something because i said so, ultimately

and like, even if youre not working, you get enough lucre to live comfortably from your clan or from the town you’re in, but if you want more than that, you have to do other things for people that are valuable enough to that person for them to give you lucre for doing it, or go out and fight fiends and get monster parts that people will pay lucre for. stuff like that. thats… what its like MOST places really more or less. although sometimes people are less cool about the “you get enough to live comfortably regardless” but fuck those guys

and a marketplace, especially the one zaya runs, is a big, big place where a shitton of people get together to buy and sell goods and services for lucre. its pretty complicated to keep everyone happy, people try to cheat each other sometimes, zaya is really good at making rules that work well enough that it doesnt just devolve into a clusterfuck of the dumbest Rites in the entire universe

which. does happen sometimes

thank you for the information on the elementals. ‘i dont know’ is always a perfectly good and honest answer to a question! i am burningly curious about them and how they work and what they are because of who i am as a person

and it sounds like you’re very brave and strong to be fighting them like that on your own

We…don’t have that problem? There’s enough food and water to go around. And since the Kin only wake new people up when we need them, there’s never a problem with people having places to stay. And even though it’s a lot of work making The Garden, we always have more than enough food to feed everyone in The City.

So…on your world, there isn’t always enough. And you made some important metal things so that people would be able to settle who gets things. But they cheat? This sounds really complicated. Your friend must be really smart to keep that place running.

Thanks! I…never really thought about it being brave before? It was just the thing I had to do. So I did it. And I think I gotta keep doing it too, even if everything else is weird. It’s not like they’re gonna stop attacking people even if I’m having a bad day.

ohhhh yeah that makes sense, salme told me some stuff about how your world works and if population is really closely controlled it makes sense that they’d be able to always make sure theres enough for everyone, even of limited resources. or there just isn’t a resource that they dont have total control over anyways one way or another. which is wild to imagine! sounds like their job is at least as complicated as my best friend’s, i bet she’d love to compare notes with the kin haha

also. doing something that’s hard even when you know it’s hard and weird and youre having a shit day is the bravest thing in the world

what’s the garden?

The Garden is what we build. Our world was once beautiful, green, and full of plenty. But as far back as our histories tell us, something happened and turned the entire world to scorching sands. Our work is to rebuild the paradise that was lost, The Garden, and when The Garden is completed, The God will return. Since The God sacrificed himself so that we could thrive. But the last time I fought elementals, they screamed at me and like…it sounded like what The God would sound like. I don’t know how I know that. And they told me The God wasn’t real. And like, the Kin tell us that Elementals are made of lies. But they sounded like God? Either way. Work’s gotta keep going so that we can live in The Garden instead of the very angry desert that always sounds like it’s rumbling.

theres a weird, special thing that some people can do with their voice, sometimes. you might have heard the six weirdos who showed up doing it once or twice by now. did the thing the elementals did sound like that at all? because that kinda sounds to me like i’d think a god should sound like, except its also just. coming from those weirdos. but if it were coming from something like an elemental id probably be pr. freaked out tbh

anyways it sounds like the elementals are trying to kill your ass and fuck up your shit, and it’s your job to fight them

and it sounds like somehow they decided that a new and cool strategy would be to try to fuck up your morale cause theyre fucking terrified of you

im not saying your god is real or it’s not real. i dont know

but i think you should examine the world with your own two eyes every chance you get and draw your own conclusions about what is and is not real & what that means for how you should live your life instead of listening to some elemental bullshit artist thats obviously so scared shitless of you it started saying some shit it knew would undermine you in a big fancy voice

they’re suckers

you know what you do with suckers right? you lick ‘em

Man, did it suck this much for you when they left?

it was not great. like… i’m trying to imagine how i would have dealt with it if saranzaya had left with them? and it probably would have involved just fucking off into a corner of the Beast and killing the shit out of a whole bunch of gigantic fiends just to take the edge off, probably. obviously not at all the same, like, situation, but…

i hope beating the crap out of elementals is still fun for you. are they still talking shit? it’d really fucking suck if that was wretched too, now.

find something nice that makes you happy, even if it’s something stupid, and let yourself enjoy it as often as you feel like, nothing bad will happen, i promise. and dont forget that you have the linkpearl. if i know them, they’ll be back before you know it.