The Cleansing Flame

[Carnath-Emory]

Blood ... satisfies. The friction of steel through muscle most certainly does. And it is a short-lived pleasure, for that blade's withdrawn like a whip-crack, body coiling for a second lunge; when Ashfiend turns upon her, this is what greets his fist. An arm that had lifted for bloodshed must defend instead, and Ashfiend's hand collides against its forearm with force enough to stagger her ironclad body. She is withdrawing almost immediately, for grappling is her weakness and always will be: her body is made for haste, for exquisite grace, and direly lacks the sheer strength required for close-quarters combat.

As these next moments prove.

She is withdrawing sharply, but the leg still slightly hampers, and Ashfiend is on her in an instant. Hands like vices upon the armoured shoulders, a grip that means almost to crush, and mistaking his intent, she is driving the brute end of her hilt up towards his chin --

And is flung almost immediately. Had he expected screams? There's not a sound, barely a gasp of breath, excepting the cough knocked from her lungs as she collides with something that ... does not incinerate her. It's a testament to the Constable's agility that he's managed to cushion that fall; a testament to Ashfiend's strength that both of them are sent tumbling into the coals. Some sound, then; some choking sound, for flame is a genuine terror for a metalclad body. There is a confusion of their limbs, a woman scrabbling to be free of what doesn't burn near so sorely as it might have --

And who emerges doubled, with armour that runs smooth and slick across one arm, which shows scorching across a hip. There is no doubt at all that Calomel is dying behind her, no doubt that he cannot be spared this. Renne's dagger finds its place in her hand. It's a smouldering thing that darts at Ashfiend, low and fast and with cold vengeance for its eyes.

[Cinnabar]

It's a split-second thing that has him moving to intercept Ariane as she is thrown, which might perhaps excuse the horrific gracelessness of what follows, the collision and the tumbling back into the fire.

The force of the pair of them crashing into the forge, constable and swordswoman in a tangle of limbs, sees a burst of brilliant sparks rising from the blazing coals, whirling up the chimney like a cloud of angry wasps; Cinnabar is left sprawled upon his back in the midst of it as Ariane struggles free, an arm flailing to find something which might be used to pull him free of the smithy's glowing heart, his lungs struggling for breath while the air around him writhes with unspeakable heat.

No doubt that he must be dying, no doubt that it is impossible to survive such a thing, to live on after being cast into such an inferno. And yet even as that slight and iron-clad figure charges the larger armoured foe he is moving, coughing, drawing in a wheezing breath, winded; then rolling to one side amid the fire and embers, one hand set down upon the bed of coals to push him upright while the other still holds the tongs with their serpentine prize firmly clasped between iron jaws.

Glowing embers coat his back as he rises to his feet, wreathing him in a cloak of smoke and sparks; his head swings round to fix a baleful, glittering gaze upon the Ashfiend, lips drawn back from teeth from between which spits a stream of guttural syllables, vile invective in some unknown tongue. His anger is a palpable thing, a fearsome pressure that falls upon the mind as the forge's heat beats in waves upon the skin, and he advances in Ariane's wake like some wrathful daemon, the furnace flames behind him casting his face into shadow, limning his form in a hellish crimson hue.

A length of unshaped iron is seized in passing, a heavy bar three fingers wide and the length of his arm, hefted as if it were a wand of willow. The tongs are brandished in his other hand, serpent cooling from shining yellow to glowing orange, and he stalks towards Teron with brutal murder writ clear in every fibre of his being.

[SinVraal]

Ashfiend crashed through the door like a murderous hurricane. The serpent waited, remaining relatively still in the ensuing scuffle betwixt the three. Soon, it had conjectured, the moment would come and it would escape.

"Mistress" struck, knowing well the lay of the dark creature's similiar though far older armor, and it threw them both onto the flames. A perfect time to...

except...

except Mistress was quickly on her feet... as was the Constable. Its ruby eyes simmered in the rolling heat that threatened to choke its metallic lungs, scorching them with dry hellfire and conjuring memories of an ancient, distant, burning place.

Already it began to feel its often body threatening to soften, the tail-blade's strength fading as darkness before dawn. It sprang to life, twisting and curling, lashing out at the Constable's iron grasp with fang and tail-blade. It had begun to corrode, the serpent realized, as the thongs bit all the deeper into softening silver scales.

Master had never told it how it could be destroyed. It had never spoken anything of its weaknesses. And, with horror that swept down upon it like a swarm of carrion birds, a chill that engulfed what heat that the serpent felt, it came to a startling revelation.

It did not know something. Not only did it not know, but the serpent's not knowing might lead to its destruction this very day... in the next few, passing moments.

Fear drove it into a lashing, coiling frenzy as it began to throw its coils about the thongs and pull, seeking to twist the tempered prongs from the constable's grasp while its serrated fangs and dart-like tail blade sought the lawman's hands.

Better to fall into Ashfiend's hands, it dimly thought, than face destruction.

[Teron_Ashfiend]

The hilt caught him square in the jaw, throwing his head back as the pair stumble against the bed of livid coals. He takes another step back, steadying himself once more, as his gaze brightens into a searing, raging, silent inferno. One hand grabs the mace at his side, a thick, flanged cudgel whose length is adorn with rust and the symbol of the One Faith: a hollow X captured by three concentric circles.

But Ariane is up, quickly despite her armor although she flows like the serpentine creature she has harbored for days. Long enough to enslave her, he considered as he hefts the mace to parry the blade that venemously strikes his face. The blade reflects the fires behind her and glances along the mace's shaft before scoring the length of his cheek beneath his hood.

The force even behind the half-parried thrust turns his head aside, tearing the scarf and allowing it to tumble free about his throat and hang across an armored chest as a noose waiting to be tightened. With a snarl of inhuman rage that bellows out to fill the steaming smithy, he wheels back to face her and raises the mace overhead.

His countenance is a deathly mask. Pallid, bloodless flesh lays taut over angled features and high-set bones. A shadow lairs perpetually over his nose and mouth, standing strong to seal away his visage from the throbbing light about them that casts a sickly blood-taint upon colorless cheeks. The shadows coil deepest about his eyes which simmer and sear with a livid, raging flame. As the inferno rages silently in his gaze, the forge about them threatens to dim as if the very air itself fueled the flames within him.

A booted foot attempts to drive up into Ariane's stomach as the mace comes down to hopefully split her skull. If her armor protected her as well as his own then he would batter his way through it if needs be. The mace whistles a crushing death as it descends in a swift, heavy arc.

In preperation for the closing constable's assault, Teron meets him gaze for hateful gaze. Respective anger and rage billows about them, caught up in the smoke all around them. That the constable still lives, draws breath, and insists on continuing the fight strikes him as a cold slap to the face. There was more to both of these than he had presumed.

Still, no servant of the demon would stop him now.

[Carnath-Emory]

Oh Ashfiend has the right of it: her armour hampers this woman's movement very little at all. It it not quite iron any longer, just as she is not quite human any longer, so that it's a monster inside and out which has rushed at him with such vicious intent.

It all goes very quickly, as such things tend to. It was one of her first lessons to young Kaczmarek: that a girl must forget all of the grand stories she's told, that three blows will end almost any fight; one, if the swordswoman is excellent, and she'd intended that Agnieszka be nothing else. It all goes very quickly, so that there's an instant in which to note the mace, that Ashfiend wields a weapon highly appropriate to his prodigious size. Another to discover that he persistently holds the confidence that this enormous strength gives him: the downwards blow is everything that she'd anticipated, and precisely the reason to approach from below.

It's a terrible gamble, of course.
Ask a woman if she cares.

So: her darting approach cannot completely evade around Ashfiend's brutal kick; the boot's edge collides with her armoured shoulder, knocks the woman neatly from her trajectory of attack. Renne's dagger comes into play at last, driven blindly for the knee-joint of that armour, and should it strike true, Ariane may have to reconsider her atheism. After all, the whole of her attention is for the schiavona, for parrying that mace would break her arm, and Ashfiend would promptly break the rest of her. Oh, no: there is no attempt at defense here at all, but instead a narrow blade that's driven furiously upwards, thrust hard for the gap beneath his arm that opened when he lifted that mace.

A very terrible gamble. A misjudgement will crush her skull. But hasn't it always been that way?

[Cinnabar]

Advancing in a halo of smoke and crackling cinders, the Constable seems somehow transformed by the fire, transmuted from a slim young man with a pleasant smile to some sort of force of nature, a spirit of fire and ash given form and deadly purpose. The silver serpent's writhing concerns him not at all, for it was against just such an eventuality that he'd elected to hold the thing with blacksmith's tongs, the snake well out of reach of his fingers even at full stretch.

He strides forwards, drawing close upon Ariane's heels and moving in counterpoint to her own actions. Where she ducks low beneath the swing of that mace, Cinnabar lashes out high, flicking the serpent's gaping teeth at Teron's face; meanwhile he swipes that brute length of iron to intersect with the mace's path, not aiming to block it - wasteful, inefficient, a poor use of effort liable to result in wrenched muscles and broken bones - but to deflect it, to knock it sideways enough that it might miss the crouching swordswoman; even if it does not connect the iron bar's momentum is used to bring it round in another swift lateral swipe at the armoured horror's face, intent on crushing that inhuman visage into a mangled mass of flesh and gore and splintered bone.

And all the while his own features are a mask of absolute fury as he hisses and snarls harsh sounds from the back of his throat, a torrent of maledictions against this intruder, this armour-clad monster who dares to interrupt his business, who dares to lash out at his friend, who dares to raise a hand against him as if to crush some trivial insect. Outrage and wrath and a desire to see the iron-shelled figure crushed utterly. Perhaps it will be so.

[SinVraal]

The serpent hissed in anguish as it became a burning weapon meant for Ashfiend's familiar face.

It glanced about as it began to realize that attempting to twist the thongs themselves free seemed a fruitless endeavor. Rather it began to whisper, taunt, tease.. and promise...

It promised itself as a weapon to strike down the marauding intruder. It promised itself as a guardian - perfect, ever-watchful, knowledgeable, perceptive...

It promised the power to be rid of Ashfiend and all the horrors that continued to perpetually plague Myrkenwood...

It promised Cinnabar... and Ariane...

[Teron_Ashfiend]

The familiar dance of combat against skilled enemies began to hum a familiar tune accompanied by the rhythm of the grunts, snarls and clashing steel that filled the heat-laden room about them with the joint symphony of their anger. His eyes flashed from within that pale, almost translucent-fleshed visage as mirrors of Cinnabar's hate as he caught the reflection of his own countenance in the Constable's own.

The pair work well together, he dourly considers as one drops almost to her knees and the second attempts to knock aside the descending, iron mace. With a thunderous echo, the length of unshaped steel casts his killing blow aside while Ariane's slender blade adds another scar to his blackened, heavy plate.

With the deflected blow, the mace's flanged head crashes amidst the hot coals in a shower of orange fury that cool and blacken as they rain down upon his tattered cloak and armored shoulders. Their descent is a vocal one as they hiss, spit and curse in their halo of violent doom. The furnace itself, clutching the burning coals, groans beneath the haft's impact against the furnace's lip.

The constable's second attack punishes his jaw and rocks his head about once more. Staggered for a moment, he pushes off of the mildly dented furnace lip and wheels about, wasting no words as errant, paper-thin strands of blond hair - some nearly reaching his shoulders, veil his grim visage. The mace screams towards Cinnabar amidst rolling coals that tumble towards the pair.

Meanwhile, as Ariane's blade thrusts towards his offending arm in a glittering arc, his free hand moves in an attempt to deflect the attack by striking the inside of her forearm with the back of a gloved hand that then darts towards her throat. Long fingers, more appropriate for playing instruments than grasping swords, then lunge towards her neck with a chilling grasp of cast iron.

One might call it confidence that prompted his bold, guileless tactics. In the back of his own mind, despite the resilience, strength and courage both had already displayed in spades, he yet regarded their defeat as inevitable. In the aged recesses of his consciousness, his victory was as assured as the crumbling of autumn beneath the relentless tread of winter.

A sepulchral voice echoes up from behind his shadowed countenance, shaped by the white flash of teeth, and carrying the ghost of a once-educated, high-born man.

"Your master cannot save you now."

It is a promise of the looming future, a future within whatever dark place from which his hollow voice is sourced. Dead, tattered remnants of lips twist into a cold scowl as his mace, after the attempt at striking Cinnabar, again descends as a fell, blunt shadow to devour Ariane.

The chill surrounding him burrows at the joints in her own armor, should they even exist, haunting, whispering - seeking to leech away the warmth of her body.

[Cinnabar]

Promises, promises. The Constable might have been amenable to them a day or two ago, even a few hours, any time in fact prior to the moment that Kinny Fletcherson had walked through the tavern's doors; to see such an innocuous order - go to the chapel spire, wait there a while - turned into such a travesty, such an abomination against all that is right and decent, is enough for him to harden his heart against such promises and offers, to steel himself against such temptation.

Meanwhile it is an interesting tactical scenario that plays out within the smithy's firelit confines: on the one side that looming figure, undoubtedly strong, formidably armoured with iron, taller than either of his opponents, wielding a mace heavy enough to crush bones and mangle limbs with ease; on the other side, two figures slighter in frame and less well-armoured, favouring swiftness of movement over brute strength; one with a weapon that cannot strike through those heavy plates but instead seeks to slide between them, the other with a pair of weapons never intended for such a purpose.

Not that that seems to impede him overmuch. For one used to fencing against light blades that mace seems laughably clumsy, ungainly, and slow - still dangerous, yes, if one is careless, and more to be dodged than parried. Which he does with liquid grace, a smooth step back and a twist of the spine to let the brutal club pass him by with an inch or two to spare.

No sooner has it swept by than he is closing again, circling round to force Teron to divide his attention between constable and swordswoman. Iron bar and tongs are held ready for a moment, then applied to the armoured figure in a veritable torrent of blows.

There is a rhythm to it, a rapid tempo as first the tongs are held in guard position while the length of metal is swept in low, aimed for Teron's ribs; then the bar is withdrawn to guard and the tongs flicked out in their place, lashing at the Ashfiend's face before retreating again. This pattern is repeated rapidly, always one weapon striking while the other guards, never aiming at the same target twice in a row, a relentless assault that is almost a dance, such is the fluidity of his movements as he circles his foe, ducking and weaving to confound any counterattack.

Surely no man can move so quickly, no man can strike with such force, no man can continue to lash out over and over again with so little sign of slowing or tiring; it begs the question of what kind of creature is this man, his back coated in smouldering coals and eyes blazing like silvered mirrors?

His blows might not connect, and even if they do they might not breach that blackened armour. Whatever happens, his intent is clear: to force this looming figure onto the defensive, to push him back, to harass him and distract him enough that he must turn his attention away from the swordswoman. Whether this is to spare her that mace or to grant her an opening in Teron's defences is unclear, but either way that battering rain of iron continues unabated.

[Carnath-Emory]

Promises indeed, whispered to a woman who heeds them only from a single voice. Promises, for a woman whose single, desperate desire cannot be granted by this chyort beast, as it had proven with the spectre of Kinny Fletcherson: 'repair for me a person whose spirit is surely lost', she might have dared to say, but the Fletcher's boy has dashed that tiny, terrible hope. That is what would have come of it: that stumbling, mumbling husk, unrecognisable save for the shape of its features.

Not much different to what she has now, a woman must reckon.

Still, Ariane's mind is susceptible: not to misspoken temptations, perhaps, but certainly to fact of that sibilant voice. It whispers and tempts, its teases in hissing counterpoint to the dull clang of tongs against mace, the piercing squeal of dagger across plate. It multiplies the voices in this terrible smithy, so that for an instant, a mind engaged in the business of reflex and instinct, of eight years' experience and an exquisitely tight focus, becomes startled. There is one enemy. There are five. There are at least four people in this room. Show me who must die --

It is absolutely essential that she withdraw from grappling range, because that will murder her very swiftly. Ariane will sacrifice a riposte to that, for Ashfiend brushes the schiavona's arm aside, and leaves his own open for a sure cut from her dagger. But that blow would not even cripple, and it is not worth the risk, and her ears are blinded with sound; she is skipping two steps backwards, light and swift on her toes, and her head jerking aside to search that glare of voices, so that it's no surprise at all that Ashfiend's elegant gauntlet has caught her about the throat.

That, too, is a dangerous maneuver. It might have held his arm motionless, so that the schiavona could sever its elbow-joint. It could have drawn him near enough that a dagger might find his eye. It is eight different deaths in this single moment, but none of this matters, for he has his fingers around her throat, and the woman is surely dying of it.

It is a slow weight that Ashfiend must support, fiercely tense across the spine, tremblingly limp in its limbs; her knees have already collapsed. They are shocked eyes, which stare from within her helm's confines, wide and wild and filled with the certainty of what comes now. Master, he says, to a guard that was dismissed from service months ago, and it reaches her through the musty, choking stink of old feathers and moth-eaten sheets. Cold creeps between the cracks and edges of her armour, but then it already had: a woman is drowning, a woman is wheezing for breath between lips drawn soundlessly wide, and the chill that is Ashfiend only excites the armour into a bristling frenzy. Oh, it is keen edges and cruelly-curved carapaces, iron's mindless reaction to a woman's terror; it is an abdundance of tiny hooks and scythes to texture gauntlets and shoulders. It is a rush of cold quicksilver to smother her terrified face, to drown Ashfiend's own gauntlet and climb swiftly to the elbow, for she reckons with the inevitable, here; with a doom that was not erased, but simply postponed.

I don't want to die, is the whole of her senseless world. I don't want to die.

But I will.

[Teron_Ashfiend]

The barrage of steel and serpent chime and rattle against his armor. He meets the swift flurry with a distracted swing of his mace, buying himself a moment on which to concentrate on Ariane as his fingers begin to constrict and crush her life into nothingness. The tremble of her lips, the tension in her countenance, are flint to the tinder of his memories. At once a hundred men and women are there with her, trembling, quivering... dying.

And, behind their breathless chorus of ragged gasps and pleas for mercy, which this woman doesn't waste breath for, the set of her eyes and the cast of her cheekbones gives him a moment's pause. In the space of a heartbeat the woman's hair lengthend, her features softened, and the warrior-woman he is dragging to the brink of oblivion peers up at him with ride wound eyes.

A name escapes him, muttered to himself and underscoring their battle as a simple, quiet note - perhaps unnoticed to them, or simply meaningless. His fiery gaze softens, a hateful hunger distracted by a moment of false recognition.

The armor, parasitical, lashes onto his arm. The cool seep of it beginning to wind about his wrist erases the ghost haunting Ariane's countenance. A snarl of horror, empowering itself into rage, escapes his lips as he aims another potent kick at the woman's chest in order to seperate the two of them and escape the clutches of her armor.

As he turns to face the constable he is greeted with a flurry of angry blows, striking him like vipers. He absorbs the first attack, letting it thunder against his armored chest and gouge across one of the weeping roses etched into the steel quickly followed by the burning serpent that sears the side of his neck and gouges the lifeless flesh with its teeth.

He raises the mace between them as the onslaught continues, gripping its stout iron length with both hands and turning it as he waxes purely defensive to deflect the incoming barrage. Still, several quicker strikes slip past his defenses though the ringing exchange brings a smile to the remnants of his lips as he measures his assailant's posture, rhythm and speed.

Metal, snake, metal, snake... He allows Cinnabar to begin to push him back, away from Ariane; his steps small and steady as the bar slams against his forearm and sets the armor plates chiming against the corrupt flesh beneath.

As the thongs come in again, perhaps aimed at his unprotected face, one of his hands releases the mace and darts towards the thongs - attempting to grab them near the sizzling serpent that brands the inside of his wrist through the worn glove. Should his hand find a sure grasp, Teron plants his feet to try and pull Cinnabar towards him - attempting to use the constable's forward momentum to draw him off balance and - as the mace sinks beneath his own mace - bear the flanged edges up towards the Constable's chin.

[Cinnabar]

Metal rings upon metal as Cinnabar strikes again and again, sometimes clashing against Teron's mace, sometimes adding fresh scratches and dents to that scorched armour, iron sparking with the ferocity of his blows. Despite his manifest rage his blows are regular, pounding at the Ashfiend's defences as a smith might work a piece of metal, and it is this predictability which allows the unliving thing's gauntlet to close around the tongs once more, much to the Constable's annoyance.

This is compounded as he's hauled towards the armoured man, who still holds the weight advantage despite Cinnabar's own surprising strength; after the first moment's resistance he abruptly moves with Teron, pulling close to the armoured figure such that the heavy mace might be trapped between them as he grins fiercely into that gaunt-boned face.

It's a proximity that's almost intimate, a twisted parody of a lovers' clinch; an illusion broken as the Constable lets his iron billet clatter to the floor in favour of reaching to grab at the lip of Teron's breastplate below his chin, the intent being to haul himself up or to drag the Ashfiend down such that he might vigorously apply his brow to bridge of the cadaverous figure's nose. It's deeply unlikely that he learned such a move during his fencing apprenticeship; perhaps he's been called on to break up tavern brawls in the course of his duties; perhaps he's just improvising.

Meanwhile his other hand maintains its deathgrip on the tongs, keeping those jaws clamped tight upon the writhing red-hot serpent. He's not willing to see it released, not now, not when it might make its escape or even turn upon those who had intended its destruction. He can do without that kind of distraction, thank you very much.

[Carnath-Emory]

There is some dreaming moment in the midst of this, during which the world is frozen over, and pallid frost creeps from the fingers which clutch her throat, infecting the flesh with cold certainty. Some heartbeat's measure, and the gaze fixed upon her is an ocean of milky jade, beautiful and furious and achingly vulnerable.

... my girl, my girl, are you afraid of me...

And perhaps some name is spoken, perhaps some meaningless syllable, but it's over like blinking: something heavy has struck her chest with tremendous force, and iron creaks dull protests beneath it. So do the shelves, when she collides with them, that being the force of Ashfiend's blow, so that wood is snapping like tinder and showering tongs and bowls and files down upon her struggling body. There's an interval of abject confusion here: the world is a blackened, burning place, filled with showering sparks and the percussion of iron upon plate; the swordswoman is fallen, a hand clawing strings of quicksilver away from her naked throat, fighting for breath as if she'd near died for true. This lunacy devours valuable time: Ashfiend has been driven gradually past her, Calomel's back is a nightmare of dim-lit flesh and smouldering coals (he cannot survive this, he cannot cannot cannot -- ), and when she rises at last, it is in haste and and with a shower of scrap and chains.

The first step staggers. The second delivers the schiavona back into a grasp that only slightly wavers. The third has a chisel in her hand to replace the lost dagger, and the whole of darting for the pair and their murderous embrace, with a trajectory that slightly ... wavers. This sprint takes her hard past them, delivers the woman to her destination just rear of Ashfiend's shoulder, where she means to deliver that chisel to the back of his neck. And quickly now, because time has begun to direly matter: the chestplate's hammered concave, severely constricting her lungs; Calomel's a mess of burning coal -- they are surely dying here. And that's nothing new at all.

The trick is just to make sure that Ashfiend does first.

[Teron_Ashfiend]

The embrace again catches him off guard though, as the constable willingly embraces him and grabs ahold of his armor, Teron considers that he should only expect the unexpected from this particular lawman. Cinnabar's ferocity seems to tap some deep reservoir of courage, foolishness... or something else. Something not entirely human.. or not entirely mortal.

It touched a memory that robbed the smithy of its black and crimson colors, replacing them with a vast, open sky and the broad, stone expanse of a lost city. Araq had defied him to the last man, the last day, the last hour of the siege of that city. Teron had forged the sword he now bore specifically to combat the strange and powerful warrior-prince and the man lived on only in that one memory of his destruction for the blade had been christened Araq's Ruin.

As the thought of retreat plays upon the back of his mind, and the mace is indeed sandwiched between them, he spies the furnace and its heat that makes even the air about them wilt. The constable is up in the air then as Ashfiend's knees bow and their faces collide, star-silver and livid crimson seeking to nullify the life, or unlife, in their counterparts.

Now that brashness will cost you, Teron considered, as he too welcomed the embrace. He forgets the mace, the weapon bowing between them before tumbling loudly to the floor. A streak of quicksilver darts behind him, the woman arisen already, while his gloved hands move to grab the constable just beneath his shoulders.

The chill perpetually bleeds from him, attempting to threaten Cinnabar as it did Ariane. He wondered, amidst the chaos of their brawl, if this one would feel it or even care. Was he always so ferocious, he considered, or merely almost mad?

As he moves to grasp the constable he is already pressing forward with swift strides. The tattered length of his cloak flares behind him as an ancient battle-standard, teasing Ariane as she positions herself to strike. Quickly, he considers, it must be done - if this particular strategy will even work.

Once his hands are upon the constable, if his grip can remain sure, his plan is simple: to rush Cinnabar back against the furnace and pin him against, and beneath, the nest of coals.

[SinVraal]

The serpent hissed, straining and snarling, as fear lurked in the wildly undulating shadows that surrounded them all and renacted their combative dance against the walls of the smithy.

The heat had increased a hundred fold for the tiny creature as the chill that surrounded Teron like a grim halo slipped between partially softened scales and whispered, swore, destruction and death for the serpent and for its master.

Perhaps for "Mistress" as well.

Ashfiend's hand clamps down upon the tongs, his fingers close, the metal prongs groaning in complaint before Cinnabar leaps. Though out of Teron's reach for the moment, the serpent is not, perhaps, out of his.

It stretches and reaches for the swirling hem of Ashfiend's cloak. Attempting to grab hold - attempting to pull itself free and escape.