All pity choked with custom of fell deeds.

[Jirai]

Kyra has taken care of herself, and there is an unreadable look from the scarred girl before Niall is turning aside. Her first goal is Glenn, though with a wary eye the whole time for those unconscious. Crouching beside the injured man, she stops the bleeding easily with a rune, but it is certainly not completely healed - that would be far more effort and risk for herself than she was willing for. But at least the man shouldn't bleed out.

[Sherazade]

Ryn felt it coming through the air, but he could not place himself in its path... to do so would leave the minions still standing free to harm her.... Anger bubbled within him, air filling his diaphragm but still he did not speak......

Walking the barrier of the mist, Val was somewhat disconnected from her body, well distant really but she still knew trouble was coming..... Then it was upon her lightning hit and her nerves became seared with pain... *won't let go, won't fail... won't let go* these two short litanies fell over each other on repeat in her mind as she fought to hold now flickering shields solid. In the physical world as her body crumpled steaming to the ground, her fingers clutched the clan symbol around her neck, but she did not call upon Synthia, no the call she flung out was to another... *please hear me Ixius... Help i cannot fail not in this.* Even still wreathed in pain she fought to stay within that misty place... to maintain her protection of the sleepers.
Having only the slimmest hope he would answer, would actually come to help her.

Minions were dispatched and Ryn turned just in time to see her fall, to see her form steaming...... "NO!" it was a word that burst from the depths of his being and thundered into the sky. "You will not harm her." True pitch ... notes, tones so pure they affected the world around him continued to echo, hang within the air. Foot stamped down hard upon the ground and he released a note its booming echoes making the earth tremble vibrate with his rage. On and on like a great bell it flowed, washing over the fiends minions seeking to strip them of his will and lay them to rest, racing towards the fiend locked in battle with the shepard knight. He had spoken now and there was no turning back.... he could, would no longer be able to hide behind Faux muteness.

Skin beginning to blister... reddened, pale white hair turning dark as ash as it smouldered, val was now struggling for every shallow rise and fall of her chest, but instead of pouring her power into healing herself it was pouring it into those shields..... she was not even aware her ward, her dark protector had spoken

[Teron_Ashfiend]

Who were you Teron...?

The Ashfiend spun upon his heels, wrenching Deliverance from his back and turning the paired weapons upon Ariane and Malaroth. His tireless speed struggled to keep up with the swordwoman's while his strength sought to match the Shepherd Knight's. With every step the trio danced, caressing one another with lengths of bitter steel, their footfalls kicking loose dirt, planting firmly, amidst the flurry of sword and steel and fluttering garments trailing behind them.

Who were you before Vraal...?

The contest of wills had warred within his memory. It had found footing in the remembered of a ruined chapel, beset by ashes and storms, bereft of the living save for himself, and his betrothed clutched in hands anointed with her scarlet life spilled carelessly upon the stone floor. There, a young man sat back against the toppled pews, staring at the intruders, all of them.

Tell me Teron, are you finding your Soul...?

Malaroth's blade swept towards his side, caught along a shuddering vambrace that creaked and groaned beneath the weapon's impact. With a savage snarl he knocked the knight's weapon aside in time for Ariane to skewer his back twice over which caught him for a moment, pain beginning to lance through him, coursing through his body as Bloodmoon's lightning had several months ago.

The wilted rose... That is what I was once called, long ago.

His arms splayed to his sides as Ariane's twin blades poured wrathful memory into him, tearing ancient wounds as surely as their conflict of wills had awoken that shattered youth and turned his hands towards the Ashfiend. Dulcet tones lanced through him like a single, burning spear skewering him to the spot, head jerked back in hateful spasm that bared teeth at the heavens and tore a rumbling roar from tattered, gray lips and hammered it into a tortured, anguished cry of blossoming agony. The ghost of a conscience tore through him, butchering through callous remnants of an aged soul draped in hateful chains and cobwebs of misery.

You're weeping, Penroll...

Wrenching sorrow tore his lips asunder, parted features upon a lifelessly taut visage clawed into the startling agony of six thousand years of hate and evil beginning to turn inward. Tree roots erupting from the canyon walls curled and shriveled at the horrid sound, life leaving them as they wilted from the hateful misery that rolled outward in deluge only to be wheeled inward by a battered will unable to deny the starved, neglected youth entombed within ever-burning rage and the chilling tomb of his armor. With every thundering clash of weapons, every wound that tore at his haggard flesh, age began to creep back in, restoring the memory of life to flesh familiar only with numbing hatred.

Without me there would be nothing left, Penroll

He whirled about, armored fury wielding twin blades of fell power and thirsting for destruction, to be rid of agony dimmed in hate's unyielding furnace that had quieted conscience and soul beneath the roar of its cursed flames. Vraal's spoken curse, that bound him to unlife, echoed and drummed through his mind as the loosed Penroll began to move through him, inside, opening cages and unleashing nightmares, unleashing what he had released, revisiting not only the fury of his existence but the anguish as well.

We have endured, but we have not survived...

Locked in combat, locked in an awakening, inner man, truth began to tear its awful, terrible visage and skewered his infernal gaze with its own. Both blades descended for Ariane's shoulder in a powerful stroke, heedless if they should cleave through or be rebuffed, his next maneuver to spin the weapons in his hands and, bursting an armored plate upon his back with the exertion, drive both backwards towards the Shepherd Knight.

His second target offered a sudden, halting groan as both weapons found their mark. Yet, overlaying it all, the lost words of holy writ began to crawl through his mind and burrow into whatever soul writhed at his core.

Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done
and what I had toiled to achieve,
everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind;
nothing was gained under the sun.

As he beheld all that was under the sun, the flickering flames of that crimson gaze began to dim and melt, waxing into a fierce, penetrating blue that convulsed like rabid waves licking the placid shore. A salty, biting torrent that began to ebb and flow, wearing away at the all-consuming fire that framed his will and strengthened dead limbs with the semblance of life.

"I remember..." he choked in a strangled whisper, as justice and torment crushed the air from stilled lungs and the confession from ruined lips. Mailed hands abandoned his blades and instead strove for Ariane's throat, plunging for murder and blood to still that judgment that erupted from within.

"I remember everything..."

[Carnath-Emory]

It is a fact that the swordswoman's relations with Malaroth Deucalios have always been ... strained. She has explained this in the past to her student: that she is capable of liking the man well; that she is incapable of sharing a room with him easily, sharing a conversation with him civilly, sharing space with his squire without her fist occupying some portion of that woman's face.

Nevertheless, their mutual assault upon the Ashfiend has been an interval of seamless harmony.

By means of a virtuous blade and marshalled aggression Deucalios had held the Ashfiend's attention during those moments required for the swordswoman to reach them. She had not hesitated to use him for that purpose, to use him still in the first moments of her attack, but since then they have exchanged that role back and forth, each by turns seizing the Ashfiend's malice so that there are no easy victories here, no easy opportunities for the crippling blows of which he is so fond. Across loose earth littered with corpses they have moved, a cohesive whole with six arms, six legs, three minds engaged in systematic slaughter.

What had emerged from that dreaming state was the monster that Kyra had created, a thing flung far beyond the bleeding edge of humanity. As untiring as the living death which is the Ashfiend, as swift in its assault as quicksilver reflexes and a wealth of magicking can make mortal flesh become, and when two blades sweep down towards her she does not hesitate. The armoured body ducks low and swiftly forward, a katar is some biting stab towards the underneath of one raised arm, the first weapon carving through the empty air where she'd stood.

The second catches her as she darts back from him.

It is some tortured scream of metal upon metal as Arak's Ruin meets armour that does not care to yield. In the midst of it, a choked gasp of sound is drowned by the squeal of warring steel, and that blade comes away bloodied. But it is a relentless thing which Kyra had created -- which the Ashfiend has created, by means of a hundred needless slaughters, by splitting open that mage, by carving open her student, by leaving the governor a bloodied mess upon the floor. By striking shock into green eyes that stared as she was gone, gone...

Pain ought to pause her, damage ought to pause her, and still when some terrible groan escapes Deucalios she is leapt forward over again. A twist of loose earth beneath her heel, and two gleaming katars punched at him with all of her magnificent strength. For his throat, for that sweet spot low at his side where the armour's become weak, and nothing could stop this advance now. Nothing would stop it at all, and of a sudden nothing has to.

Those are tears which course upon his ravaged features.
Those are words which he speaks, strangled and slow and quiet.

"Of course you do," Ariane whispers then, helpless not to. Helpless absolutely. "You always have. That lonely shore is not for you -- " And all of this with a voice that nearly trembles, all of this in some hoarse, low sound, and with eyes grown wide.

Wider still, when his hands seize her throat.

She yields to that touch, of course. She always has. It is an old fear, an old horror, and the Ashfiend had learned it of her very long ago. She is not meat, to lay still as it's butchered, but if there is a means to easily murder her, it is this; certainly such moments fill her dreams, so that night after night she wakes gasping for breath that can't be had. There is old hurt in the grey of these eyes; there is old loss. There is an element of hope that even his murderous grip cannot crush.

Upon her shoulders the armour is a suppurating, quicksilver mass.

[Khalika]

"When Love is not madness.....It is not Love..."


The Gypsy's eyes scanned her foes as one spoke. She was glad that some left to move the Mapmaker from harm. He carries a simple thing, a precious thing wrapped tightly around his leg. But as those words hit her...She smiled..

"If the world was only so clear as that....But life is not clear, and descision not always so easily made.."

Her words are sullen but true. She does not wish to spill Myrken blood and will do her best to prevent it...But she cannot turn from him now...Not after all that has happened, even after all that he has done. Because she understand the why....She understand Sorrow...Vengance has dripped from her blade...

But no other words or actions were taken..for a small rock pegged off her head, she looked up to see much action coming down the mountain, and aform with it. There was no time to move only enough to brace herself and catch whoever it was...

When the weight hit her she dropped her blade and grabbed the form falling to the ground. if uncouncious it would be near dead weight upon which she manuvered about..if partially concious she would use a bit more ease. As she looked to see who it was...There was a perk of her brow...

"Burel?....

In finer times she might jest about a Duke not being able to stay upon his steed...But...Teron...

It trickled at the back of her neck, a sense, a worry...No physical or right reason for it..She just knew..she had to go...

Snap judgements had her looking at the men then the Duke, she could use him as a hostage, well at least till he was awake...But she has not time for dead weight...Instead she heaves the form of the Duke towards her would be assailents.

"I think this is yours.."

She offers and then is gone..bolting with all the speed she owns...Towards the battle...Towards Teron...She would not confront any who she passes, she would weave and avoid...If need be perhaps a punch or a slam of the body, but nothing would slow her...As a desperate cry..slipping from her throat before she can hault it..

"TERON!!..."

[Tebrin]

Niall was tending to Glenn, following her command.

Ariane Carnath-Emory had awoken, enhanced as had been unfortunately required of the swordswoman, was pressing her assault upon Teron alongside Malaroth Deucalios. She could feel the rage within the center of that unholy miasma, and similarly the sorrow that replaced it. She could sense his distraction, his defeat upon the field of mental combat, could almost hear his agonized words.

Somewhere, Teron’s name was being screamed. This was of little concern to ivory-haired Kyra, who cradled the richly-carved chest against her breast, shoulders rising and falling with slow, steady, measured breaths.
And then, Ariane Carnath-Emory had suddenly, inexplicably ceased; Teron was upon her, massive hands clenched around the woman’s slender throat, and it was an exasperated sorceress that found her mental preparation stopped, found herself forced into action this very moment.

Yesterday, I dared to struggle…

Fair-skinned and pale-haired Kyra abruptly flipped the latch upon the mahogany box, throwing open the elegantly-carved lid to reveal within a set of familiar armor shards, glinting within the pale light of the daylight, a dizzying array of runic structures etched into their metallic surface. With an audible thudding sound, she threw the object to the ground, kicking up dirt in its wake. It was a heavy construction, shaking the ground with enough force that, were it not for the trample of feet and the roar of combat, those around would have easily heard it.

…Today, I dare to win.

Her voice rings out across the battlefield, un-naturally loud, eerily audible and crystalline, a piercing shout impossible to ignore, a facsimile of the other’s more desperate call:

“PENROLL!â€

[Vanidor]

Landing hard upon the ground had caused him to blacken out for a space of moments. The impact sending waves of pain sweeping up through his body. His mind snapped back into focus as he was tossed through the air, only to crash into a body of soldiers and constables. He would not allow the tangle to keep him for long, however, springing back to his feet despite the shouts and cries that surely surrounded his tumble.

A foot slapped against the ground, pain again sweeping through his body. He felt it now, the pain the signaled a sprained or broken ankle. Another twinge of angry hurt that spoke of broken ribs as he drew a breath. The face behind the mask screwed into a visage of pain as his hand gripped the hilt of his sword and swept the weapon it's resting place. Another pained breath, eyes sweeping to discern his location and the events that were currently occurring. There. His eyes found Ariane. Saw the arm that was extended and seeming to crush the life from her.

Saw Khalika, running pell-mell towards the scene as well, brushing aside those who dared stand in her path. Another breath, a lancing of pain as the broken ribs at his side dug into his body. Free hand snapped down to withdraw his long bladed knife. A prayer was said under his breath, deliverance request from Adon on High, and the knife was hurled with a great discharge of breath at the running Gypsy.

As soon as he released the knife, he'd be following the course of that weapon. Had he not made a promise to Ariane earlier this day? He had indeed, and here he sought to uphold it. Despite the pain that shot up his leg every time it landed upon the rocky ground, attempting to ignore the stabbing at his side with every breath, he charged onwards. Were he allowed the chance, the Duke would sweep his blade upwards and aim to bring it down upon the Ashfiend, hoping to sever hand from arm, or at the least take his ire away from Ariane. Long enough for the silverskinned woman to do her business.

[Cinnabar]

Cinnabar awakens to singing.

Still the roar of battle around him, reflected and magnified from harsh stone walls, sounds of tormented steel and flesh; but something sweeter above it all, something more pure and beautiful, and it's for the source of this that he searches as he clambers to his feet once more, seeking to regain his bearings. Kyra. The sorceress working her magic once more, for all that she'd been struck down, run through mere moments before.

And yet there's a more discordant cry as well, a familiar voice that has Calomel scowling as Quiller dashes towards the fight, towards the Fiend; that armoured figure still lashing out, still fighting despite the device's magics. In the next moment Calomel is raising his voice to call more commands - still separated from the conflict by soldiers and Constables, but his voice carries clearly enough.

"The Fiend falters! Protect the sorceress!" The ghoul is is struck, shows pain at the blows inflicted while Myrken's champions awaken and stand once more, and with these developments there is the sense that the tide might yet be turning. Armed and armoured figures move to flank Kyra, weapons ready, features tight with the fear and fury of battle, willing to sell their lives dearly now that they have been given something to cling to, a chance that they might not be slaughtered in vain. A shout goes up, fierce and determined and filled with renewed vigour and faith:

"Myrken prevails!"

Now that they have been given hope.

[Malaroth]

Malaroth had managed to deflect that first ferocious assault that dug his feet into the earth and sent his arms trembling. Teeth gnashed together, mirroring the thundering steel that had briefly met and, thankfully, his weapon had largely repelled. Any lesser blade would have surely snapped beneath the Ashfiend's potency.

It is not long before the quicksilver Ariane has joined the fray. A sardonic smirk quipped across pale lips in a private joke, a brief panacea in this combat of swift steps and screaming weapons. The combat, he mused, was much like his relationship with her, this faithful hound of the Governor who was threats and oaths and rudeness; he on the one side and she on the other - likely to one day meet blades were it not for some mutual foe between them.

Teron does not offer long for such comic reposes however, for he is twisting and turning, armor groaning beneath the towering figure's strength that lends him a certain raw speed. That ancient armor is like a skin to the undead creature and Malaroth is forced to swiftly repel a swift pair of blows. Whatever their plan had been he hoped it had worked, and found prayers emerging unbidden from a heart that had long since locked them out.

His enemy's attention is for Ariane once more and, seizing the opportunity, he has raised his sword overhead to shear through the neck and back of the black-hearted monster before them whose armor simmered with the sun at noonday in poignant reminder of all that he had once been echoed by the gorgeous, rising chorus of the blind sorceress whose lyrics wrought their own beautiful meaning upon his ears. It was a soft eulogy for this creature, a requiem for the Scourge of Myrken, and it was a far prettier thing than the Ashfiend deserved.

Before his blade could descend the Ashfiend had struck swiftly and surely, dead hands driven in hateful fury backwards and into the Shepherd Knight. Lancing agony tore through both sides, upward and into the depths of his body, searing it with mangling hate that stole the breath fmro his lungs and likely the life from his body. The sword lingered in his hands, a dangling afterthought that clattered and echoed to the earth as wide eyes stared in haunting disbelief at how easily and quickly it had happened, how surely Teron had sentenced him to death.

Those twin weapons tempered in blood and hate remained skewered through his faltering frame. He crumbled to his knees, eyes staring at the broad armored back looming before him, shrouded in a haunting, biting chill. A brook of blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth, ashen features drawing taut, haggard and immensely pale. He watched as Ariane dueled with the Ashfiend as a thought drifted across a hazing mind:

It was far too easy a thing to die at Teron's hands.

[Sherazade]

There was a curious property to the Pins Valaeli had wrought for the order, something she had done, that tied her body and soul to it, as long as one member survived and wore it, and now that came into play.

Valaeli's pin was the first to begin glowing as Malaroth faltered, was pierced by those swords, and soon all others in the order present and not , who wore the devices, the dragon twisted around the shepards crook, would feel their leader was in trouble.... It was a call not just for presence, for rescue but for the strength to fight deaths approach.

As for the lady herself, she was still unmoving apart from the shallow rise and fall of her chest, deaf even to the note that continued to roll from Davaryn's lips, sliding beneath those of the singing sorcerous, laying waste to Teron's minions as Saranath's clear note forced them back beyond the gates of death... he could not use the walkers note here, for too many of the allie's of their wounded could be affected by it.

[Teron_Ashfiend]

With both blades forgotten in Malaroth's sides, the Ashfiend's full attention attempted to descend upon Ariane as surely as his mailed hands had. There is movement around them, a dread circle of spears ready to be broken by his wrath, a wrath inwardly challenged following the harrowing battle of wills. But they still did not fully comprehend the gravity of that conflict, for most of his opponents had challenged him with swords and weapons within an environment that removed pain from their bodies. They could not understand that it was not only a battle of wills, of which had endured for thousands of years. It was a battle of memory.

Ariane may have been the only one who conceivably understood.

For that reason she needed to perish.

The ruptured fury, stagnant and festering, broke free down the length of his arms and erupted into murderous hands that sought to crush and collapse the throat that struggled to fill with blasphemous breath in the presence of the living dead. Eyes flickered wildly spilling cerulean shadows upon her as the chill hungry stormed about them both, at war with mortal and immortal, as the latter warred against himself.

"I must make you hurt," he confessed in a secret whisper, itself a strangled and struggling thing that sounded to his own ears muffled - a secret struggling against the churning, inward tide of a stirred but frail conscience.

Kyra's sorcery wrapped about him, dragging his feet along the ground. Still hate kept him upright, dragging Ariane along with him as Burel raced closer. Setting himself a moment he planted his feet and swung both trembling arms, aiming to intercept the descending blade with the woman herself whose armor sputtered and wept, convulsing about her slender shoulders.

Who were you, the questioned echoed as both of his names split the air in femininely sanguine tones. A hoarse, desperate cry and a coarse command - one pleading for him to continue and the other sentencing him to an ending. Teron and Penroll, Ashfiend and acolyte, murderer and man, both called and tore at the remembered images of each other until both bled the sour tears and the awful tapestry of his fury vented upon generations of men began to pulse through him with the memory of living blood.

"Alastir was right," he snarled in bitter rage, accepting the truth that elft him impotent to all save this one last act, his goal since the ever-dying had begun, since Vraal's burning seed had been planted:

to destroy this woman

to purge the world of all save his resurrected betrothed, that nothing could take her away again.

to destroy everything in order to finally forget.

A war waged in himself anew, even as a stirred conscience threatned to buckle against the ponderous weight of indulged and consuming hatred, even as Kyra's magic drew him closer to his waiting prison.

It would be a prison that forced him totally inward, totally upon and against himself.

It would be a black and violent hell.

[Tebrin]

But Ariane would not perish this day.

The same sorcery which bound Teron and drew him inexorably nearer tugged at his fingers, pried apart his grip, forced him to separate with his quarry. Ariane would find herself repelled by the same force which attracted Teron - the pale-haired woman's spell knew its allies from its foes, and diligently excluded Carnath-Emory from its grip.

The overpowering of the Ashfiend was not an easy task, and sweat beaded upon the petite, young-looking woman's brow... but her steps did not falter, her voice did not waver, and her spell held strong, wrenching Teron from his prey and pulling him inevitably nearer to his final resting place.

The mahogany chest stood proudly upon the floor, beaming with brilliant azure light which extended to swirl about the forms of Ashfiend and sorceress both, elegant and graceful motions of hands seeming to reel him in like one might collect a snared fish.

Who was he? It was a question he would have an impossible amount of time to consider. A lesson he had failed to learn in unlife might become clear from the empty void towards which he fell:

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

There was no pity in the woman who seeked to sentence him to the endless void. There was no sorrow. There was only the knowledge of what needed to be done - and the strength to do it. Ariane had waxed poetic about pity and sorrow for the murderous Ashfiend; Kyra knew only what must occur to cease endless destruction.

The Ashfiend must fall - no matter how cruel the fate which awaited him.

Her song reached a fevered crescendo, and brilliant sapphire flared to a blinding white, until neither she, nor the Ashfiend could be distinguished amidst its light. A shock of power scorched the air, lancets of light darting from her fingertips to attempt to spear the Ashfiend through his chest - and, through them, funnel his essence into the prepared phylactery... into the shards of his shattered armor.

And there, end him.

[Khalika]

***An excert from a Letter sent to the Gypsy Khalika Quiller, from the Mapmaker Glenn Burnie.**

the only way to truly vanquish Teron is to install an emotion in him other than hatred, namely love. We could send you to do this, but somehow I imagine sending you anywhere in the name of love would end in the the death of hundreds of innocents.

She was running, through the masses, towards the fight. She saw Malroth fall, then Ariane...No, she could not let this continue....

"TERON!.....STOP!?PLEASE.....

The words spurter out as a slicing of pain rips through her side, a dagger thrown true. It sends her flying to the ground, the rocky dirt gnarls up the side of her face as she hits it full force. One hand reaches around to try to covering the wound, as blood flows like the tiniest streams over her fingers.

Her fight was dwindling as she saw Teron ripping at a woman she once called friend...Tears break the heart, as that seen tares her. Then foots step banging into the earth has her spying a more active Burel running past and towards the frey....

Knifed in the back...in the back. This sudden thought snaps through that black part of her mind, that part she watches so closely so carefully. To much stimulation...to much of everything. She never wanted it to come to this, always thought of them. they have yet to think of her.

That flash of anger pulls her to her knees. Fingers straining for the blade, through pain and aching muscle she reaches for the blasted thing, so dilegently placed into her back. Brushing it with her finger tips a grunt pitches in her throat, as she pullled the blade from her flesh with a howling cry. Pain is molded into anger, as her fingers hold the bloody knife, she drives her body up back onto her feet and races to return the favor....

Teeth grind as each step moves her closer..To Malroth painting the ground red, To Ariane caught in the clutches of the fiend, To Burel to save his friend, that reason alone may have swade her anger.

But then there was Teron, who did think of her.

She is upon them as instict has her pulling one of the blades from Malroth proned form, and swing wildly.....


Towards Terons hands...

She once felt those same hands upon her throat, one night Caer Gardraark. It is because of that night she cries out now..

"THIS MUST STOP NOW!!!!....

There before him she was bleeding, did her attack? or perhaps her plea have him release Ariane? Or at least pause to see her?

"Let it go, for these last minutes let it go..."

Then she was falling, the sword slipping from her fingers as she crumbles. it is to him now, return to his hate, or catch her as she falls towards his feet....

"Don't let me die alone...."


There in that voice.....was sorrow...


***any excert to Mapmaker Glenn burnie from the Gypsy Khalika Quiller..

" Stick to Maps, you are no cupid"

[Carnath-Emory]

"I must make you hurt," confides one monster to another, and dying beneath his hands, living beneath his hands, enduring beneath his hands, she lifts her eyes to his cerulean own. Wide and solemn is this gaze, haunted by the spirits of old hurts, old horrors; solemn is the voice as well, barely a breath of sound because she can barely draw a breath at all, but he has confessed this thing, and this is her whispered reply:

"You already have."

Mailed hands had seized her throat and grasped the will from her limbs as well; like a kitten caught by a fist she'd hung there between his hands. An incongruous sight, this gleam of bloodied armour, this body that hangs so limply even when two potent forces make her briefly the focus of their conflict. Kyra's enchanted beckons must be nigh irresistable, if it will lure even the Ashfiend into this unwilling approach, and is there some momentum to the skid of his heels through earth and corpses? The swordswoman cannot be sure; her eyes are for her murderer's, and she sees nothing else at all.

A month and more ago she and Kyra had spoken of this moment, and Ariane had chosen her words very carefully; a caution, perhaps, that only another swordsman would fully grasp. She had sworn herself to the mage's defense. She had stated as a matter of simple fact that she was wholly capable of keeping the Ashfiend's sword at bay. What she had not implied was that she could defeat him.

What she had not suggested at any point was that she would survive this encounter.

It is far too easy a thing to die at Teron's hands. It is far too easy a thing to perish beneath any man's strangling grasp; perhaps when she gazes up towards his eyes, they are a long-ago husband's features that she sees. Perhaps she glimpses cloudy green where there ought to be cerulean, perhaps her own grey glistens with the unshed hurt of what was, what is, what may never be.

But mark this: that the Ashfiend has swung her into Burel's path, and if that man's sword is not diverted, it will carve across her spine with a squeal of agonised metal. Another thin groove for the armour's surface, another heavy dent at its highest point -- but that blade does not penetrate. Burel, who knows this armour very well, has made a very safe gamble.

Mark this: that at her shoulders, the armour is a fury of churning iron; that beneath the Fiend's cold grip cool quicksilver stirs. Assaulted by shouted words and the imperative of Kyra's call, he may not notice this, may not realise until the stuff has emerged in a storm of thin and glistening tendrils. A thousand tiny threads grasp for gauntleted fingers, for wrists and forearms.

The swordswoman had once given herself over to the Ashfiend's keeping: the choice to steal her away had been his alone, but she'd awaited him in that black pit of an abandoned well, knowing very well that the encounter which would follow was essential. There was no other way to say what had to be said, no other way at all to learn, to understand. Today his hands are around her neck and the skin's well-bruised beneath them, the throat half-crushed, but she had placed herself before him, she had placed herself into his hands a second time.

This encounter is no less essential than the first.

They end as they began in that forge long ago, but this time it is a long gaze between her eyes and his, and this time it concludes with the stiffening of iron beneath his touch. Fear makes her yield; a promise makes her defy. And as Kyra's magics move to drag her from him, still this quicksilver will cling for some terrible moment, before snapping back to the flesh from which it was birthed. There is no voice left for words, for the merciless crush of his hands has ended that capacity, but despite it the mouth shapes its silent hopes:

You are above this.

Let go.

[Malaroth]

Malaroth had fallen to his knees, Deliverance and Arak's Ruin skewering his armored frame in murderous precision. Each breath came with haggard labor while Valaeli's magic began its protective work to safeguard the shepherd of the knighthood itself, who had forged it from his hands and guarded it with his sword and blood that even now spilled to feed the hungry earth.

As the accursed gypsy passes by, his lips part in silent agony as hot air is forced from between them, a secret of life clung to as she tears free Deliverance and seeks to wield the ponderous, once-holy blade. Yet from the wound in his side there is blood, yes, but too little, too few, from a body suddenly greedy and unwilling to share.; a miser of crimson life suddenly offended at parting with such treasure.

His body responds by a sudden flushing of his features with the ashen stain that lingers upon his cheeks. The air about him grows decidedly cold, enough to color his breath in opalescent clouds of excruciating fume, as his blade tip finds purchase in the coarse ground, an emboldened hand grasping the handle as ashen shadows coil protectively about his threatening wounds and bind mortality to a stubborn frame.

A lurching stumble brings him to his wearied feet, air escaping him in serpentine tendrils, while a flickering gaze takes in the Duke, gypsy and Ariane all caught up in combating the fiend. The monster's broad back lay toward him, steadily approaching in the midst of a forming ring of spear men. Each step carried with it the remembered heat of the fire that consumed the Chapter House, each stirred pebble echoed the cries of those who were burned alive, who held the line at Snowstill and were conveniently forgotten by those in power, who struggled against the 'fiend without reward or honor given to them save the solidarity of their ranks, the honor of their master, and the knowledge of courage in the face of desperate odds.

Close enough, he hefted his weapon while one knee claimed him once more. Baring white teeth he leveled the tip against Teron's lower back and, finding one of the aggravated holes there, drove his weapon up and through the monster.