The Kaczmarek Killer

[Teron_Ashfiend]

In the heat of combat the skilled pair delve deep into his mind, unknowingly, drawing forth combative routines and practices that have seen neither light nor air in countless centuries. The woman's speed likely presses the limits of human capability he is sure, and the constable's ability to turn anything into a weapon makes any conflict with him unpredictable. Whereas the living change and grow the dead stagnate but endure. Poisoned by his own hate, swelling like a pregnant geyser showering hot rain upon the earth his once holy blade turns to meet them.

Booted feet move swiftly, their conflict punctuated with scraping steel, lit sparks between blades, and mortal grunts and snarls of fury. For his part he is silent, clad in armor and fury, relentless in driving his attacks towards them to maim and slice and born with a skill through hundreds of years of war and bloodshed. The massive blade twists with a decided deftness in his mailed grasp, the sword an extension of arm and will, having wielded little else but this particular weapon for the long span of living and undying years.

Still he allows them the momentum, backing up even as the latest entrant into the raging conflict barrels into his back. The armored mountain moves, stumbling aside yet retaining his feet, his sides exposed to undoubtedly be punished by his enemies. Saber and make-shift spear gouge his neck and wrists, finding several entrances into his heavy armor to curse joints and tendons. The Marshal's solid blow causing his weary armor to groan in complaint as it begins to buckle beneath the four-part assault, his righteous cry ringing in his ears.

And beneath those words his eyes flare as captive suns, shedding light born from simmering outrage at being subject to such a curse. He turned beneath their assault, pushed into the defensive once more, his sword working with tireless fury to keep their blades away.

"I bring you shadow," he snarled with an avalanching, arctic tone in bestial retort. "I bring you hell."

With that he side-stepped into the Constable's own shadow, a dim but tall and flickering thing as he had let the offensive steer him closer to the shadow-casting flames. In an instant he is gone, vanished with nightmares and unfinished prayers.

Only to return in an instant, from Agnieszka's shadow amidst two arcs of his darkly glittering sword before the shadows swallow him again.

Appearing beside the Marshal, his blade aimed in a single, crushing downward strike that he is soon spirited away from.

Agnieszka's shadow expels him forth once more, spewing his billowing cold along with another pair of swift sword strikes.

Finally the Constable's shadow returns the Ashfiend from his blurring assault, and his blade descends upon Calomel amidst a pair of underhanded swings seeking to test and penetrate his defenses. His eyes seek out Cinnabar's, probing and boring into them, meeting hate with unbridled fury as if daring, testing the limits and strength of the presumptuous constable's anger.

[Cinnabar]

Blow after blow, step strike turn step strike block step strike recover strike block riposte step, a dance in which the dancers beat their own rhythm with limbs and weapons and footsteps that stamp and scuff across the farmyard dirt. The ground itself wracked between the blistering heat of the cottages-become-pyres and the eldritch chill that the Ashfiend leaves wherever he passes, fire and frost warring even as assailants besiege the ghoul from all sides.

There is some sense of bitter satisfaction in Calomel's snarl as he rains blows upon the fiend's blackened armour and withered flesh, for all that more splinters fly with each parry he makes, for all that his weapon erodes under flame and chill and the furious onslaught of his own inhuman strength. Then there are growled words from the Ashfiend, and the dance becomes disjointed as he takes a sidestep and--

--he's gone he's not there he's vanished he's--

--stepping out of the shadow beside Agnieszka, debased blade whirling at the girl before he steps--

--out of nothing next to Karolinger, traversing a distance of feet in the span of time between one heartbeat and the next as Calomel turns in place, his eyes sweeping the darkness and fire around them, and the fiend is gone almost as soon as that silvered gaze can follow him--

--back to the Kaczmarek girl to strike at her again and then he disappears--

--only to reappear there he's right there right next to you and it's only the purest and rawest of reflexes that has Cinnabar lifting the fork-handle to hastily turn aside the first underhand swipe.

Off-balance, he barely meets the second sweep, corrupted steel drawing a hand's-length line of pain up his ribs, charred cloth and skin and muscle parting to show glimpses of white bone beneath before blood wells up from the wound; there's a shout that is more a roar of pain and fury from the silver-haired young man, and the earth hisses and smokes where those droplets land.

As the last blow falls Calomel is jumping back, a move that carries him away from his own shadow and into the fires that cast it, landing in a crouch in the centre of a blazing furnace that was once a home; flames flicker and coil across flesh that remains inured to their touch for all that he is clothed in them, impervious to the frightful radiance that reflects in strange patterns from his skin.

A creature of fire, a salamander that bathes in fire and yet is not consumed by it; in meeting his gaze, silvered and bright with the conflagration's light, one might believe it because these flames are not enough, they are a pallid and faltering warmth that cannot hope to match the fury in the man's eyes, the rage that pours from him like heat from iron made molten, a white-hot and annihilating incandescence. It is a fire of wrath that glows in his marrow and seethes in his veins and sings along his nerves and crackles across his skin and suffuses every fibre of him, and its focus is this black-plated thing of withered meat and ancient bone that still stands before him, that defies him by its very existence.

And yet for all that this fury flows through him and from him it is a controlled thing, a force guided by a mind that still reasons and calculates. So it is that the man afire seizes up a sturdy beam, perhaps once a roof-timber the thickness of a man's forearm that now hisses and crackles and twinkles with burning embers; with lengthening strides bursts out of the home-turned-furnace in a shower of sparks and embers and a billowing trail of fire and smoke; with frightful energy that beam is swung about, leverage harnessed to sweep it down in a ruinous arc intent on crushing the ghoul into an impacted mess of twisted metal and flesh and rags.

[Sadism]

What rose from amidst the pile of rubble the burning hut had become was shapeless and indistinguishable, a mass of nothingness. An impenetrable darkness within the bright flames that hungrily devoured the collapsed hut, and all that lay under. It was a blob, a mass of tentacles. It was certainly not something to encounter in the night. Tentacles heaved at burning timbers, sizzling and hissing even as the grasped where flames lay. Without concern, without an ounce of care, flaming wood was tossed aside, clearing the way for an exit, of sorts.

It would roll itself forward, using it's tentacles to push and pull, to drag itself from the fire. And when it at last had won it's freedom, it collapsed in on itself, laying quivering on the cool dirt. It was good and well, then, that so many were watching the assault against the Ashfiend. That gave it, him time to collect himself. It took time, it took too much time, to pull all the tentacles back into itself, to force it's amorphous existence into the semblance of a man's shape.

Eventually, he was able to bleed the colour back into himself, to bring forth the pale hue of his flesh, the glimmer of buckles. It was no easy feat; the fire, and it's accompanying brightness, had done much to sap his willpower. For now, he would rest and watch the Ashfiend.

If nothing else, he'd be pleased that he'd caused two good men to fall this night, and perhaps ensured that some few who could have been saved, had not been.

[Awry]

Three, four hundred yards, a man and a timber wolf. The gray creature was sitting on its hind legs, keenly watching the small figures clashing, warring. The man had his arms, bare except for fit long-gloves bound tight with straps, crossed behind his head. The small smile was not present on his face, as no one was watching - just a solemnly tired look.

As he reached the wolf, who had been ahead of him for once and leading with her ears, he sat down while cradling himself against the trunk of an oak. Not much to do and not much of a social life left him to wander the countryside aimlessly and observe, as he did, throughout his "vacation"... what a coincidence, now, that he wandered into such an event.

Well, Myrken was interesting place - it deserved an audience, however distant they might be.

[Vanidor]

The Shadows danced in the night, it seemed, darting too and fro in an effort to silence righteous opposition. First into the Constable, seen only as a flicker of armour and malice. Then into an assault upon Agnieszka, which rose painful fury in the breast of the Marshal. Then into his own shadow, that turned upon him and swept a massive blow down upon an armoured shoulder. The metal gave a horrific squeal as the plate was battered.

Green-fire would have flared along the edge of that blade, as it surely did along the rim of his sallet and the wide lines of the pauldron. The runes inscribed within the metal seemed to moan as they bled off the energies required to absorb the blow, to lessen the impact, to protect the flesh within the plate. Aeryn made a silent prayer of thanks Master Smith Escubar and then Magus Artanis, for the work that went into making the armour that protected him. Truly, the blow had knocked the soldier to his knees, the point of his sabre thrust into the soil to keep himself upright. His shoulder blazed with the pain of the crushing blow, but it was mostly superficial. It felt mostly superficial.

Yet now, he could feel his will seeping. It took all of his concentration to maintain the strength enhancements and the mystical protections all at the same time. That was the cost of this armour, a slow siphoning of his essence that showed in a slight pallor to his face. Still, he pushed himself to his feet, eyes sweeping through the slit in his helm and catching the sight of Calomel. Calomel on fire of all things, and wielding a blazing spar as if it were a war-maul. It was a thing to consider, were this the time for such considerations. Another time, and Aeryn would have felt a true tinge of fear at such a sight. But he had lived through Orvere, through Jorn and Coran and the might of Gods whelming down upon the land.

Cinnabar was sweeping the weapon like a massive bludgeon, the thing a blare of fire and cinders that arced through the night. There that fueled the Marshal's will, the desire to drive on. A moral raising sight, if anything could be considered such here in Myrken. And as such, he is moving again. Surely the Ashfiend had not forgotten of his presence, for he had surely tasted the pain that mystical Soria had dealt. But if he could occupy the creature long enough for that swung mallet of fire to connect... It would be worth the sacrifice.

[channe]

Sacrifice.

Do not speak of sacrifice, Aeryn, do not -- for she'll find you in your grave, she'll slay you again for being slain.



From this fight, she'll develop quite the collection of scars, with her lack of armor giving the Ashfiend's sword open chance; but none of her wounds were terribly life-threatening until the devilish thing dissappears and decides to shadow-walk. This, mind, she was not ready for, not in the slightest, and her speed is no panacea this time, the feather tied to her waist not assisting her natural fleet-footed talents enough.

The blade slides nastily into her thigh and elicits a cry from the girl; a moment, a moment, a moment, a try for his arm, and then the second emergence? He'll gain a gouge of her flesh that is a somewhat-mirror to Cinnabar's, with the Ashfiend's blade making a slash in a curve from right underneath her chest to her side and another strike which she's able to mostly dodge, but will leave a bite in her upper dagger-arm. Blame the shadow-walking, blame something she did not expect, something she cannot believe. She stumbles back, and may have lost some of her momentum, except for the Ashfiend's next move --

Aeryn falls to his knees, and -- no. No. Not all of them in one day. No, not those she holds dear -- not all of them, not the lover, the savior, the brother, sweet Laranna --

"No more!"

She pushes herself to her feet, adrenaline steadying her injured leg, and when Aeryn charges she shifts, whirls, and takes the other side, dagger and sword brandished. She cannot charge, but she can most certainly fence against the daemon's weak spots. So, Ashfiend: occupy yourself on both sides with the Marshal and the girl, one using force, the other deft quickness against the open spots laid bare to her by his occupation with the other combatants.

And then Calomel wields the burning beam in his paroxysm, and holy holy holy God, how is he not dead, why is he still burning, holy holy --



Lina takes the child; unwillingly. It's Piotr, now, that is dragging her away, Piotr with his wrists around his Jerzy and his younger brothers, Piotr and the girls who know that they must go to save the others, but you can't blame her, can you? You cannot blame Magda, who is rooted to the spot -- "The children, those are my children," she says, pointing towards the fight, and for her the whole scene is not just this but that, too, homes on fire in the cold Dauntless winter and Faithful bodies in the street, armed men on horses screaming away just as quickly as they came -- and finally, and finally, this moves her feet. She sweeps up Elzbieta and runs, stammering prayers, and her movements spur the rest of them to go.



When Rhaena reaches Dominik, there isn't much she can do but attempt to drag him away. He is standing; he is lost.

Until the thing rolls from the hut -- his eyes go wide, and he stumbles back a few steps, probably right into the girl.

[Jirai]

Rhaena

No, no one could blame Magda. Not in the slightest. But there was relief as the family moved off - towards safety, she prayed. And the girl raced towards another member of that family.

There was shock, as Cinnabar went into the flames - and far more shock as the man stood there, wreathed in flames, unharmed...and there was a suspicious flash of a thought that she would think more on later, for here was Dominik stumbling into her, and her hands coming up to steady the both of them - she doesn't even notice the thing crawling from the hut, for her attention is fixed on something far worse, to her mind.

"Agnieszka!" The cry ripped from her lips is little more than an anguished whisper, audible only to those standing nearby.

She gave Dominik a light shove in the direction the rest of the Kaczmareks had gone - towards safety. The girl's voice was surprisingly rough. "Your children need you." For he had that much, at least. More than she had had.

And then, whether or not the man had moved, she was dropping into a crouch, making herself less noticeable against the background of the hungry flames. Damn her promises. Steeling herself for the attempt, the girl carefully reached her mind out to the Fiend's. It was a subtle trick, this, but did it work as she intended it would be enough to throw the thing's attacks off ever so slightly, hopefully giving the defenders a better chance to evade its attacks. It was a little thing, but sometimes that was all that was needed.

[Teron_Ashfiend]

The mind of such a creature is a strange, alien thing. It is at first contact a barren wasteland of gray mist and dead trees, each a gravestone marking the death of thoughts and feelings that filled mortal men. One or two trees might bear a single or pairing of yet green leaves, even the tree of compassion. But beneath it all, past a thin crust, swelled a raging, infernal core of white hot fury that consumed everything and hid something, even beyond that - something secret and unknown perhaps even to the Ashfiend. A firm hold of such a mind might be the grasping of a smoldering poker fresh from the flames. And slowly, with such contact, the heat might seek to spread, entirely of its own accord, into an invading consciousness.

Yet such workings come to a creature focusing on and surrounded by three of definite skill and all possessing some degree of supernatural progress. The world is a dizzied thing for a moment after his flurry of shadow-steps, weapon hefted even as Agnieszka and the Marshal move to divide him. His armored torso twists furiously beneath their combined assault, heavy black boots seeking to maneuver him to face both at once and yet the pair doggedly maintaining their discipline. His movements, swift and disciplined, bely a familiarity with such circumstances and yet they are difficult all the same. Every moment his back is to Agnieszka she punctures his armored back, making use of and widening the hole Karolinger had begun there. Her weapons begin to dig into hidden tendons, slowing his movements even further.

The heavier armed and armored Karolinger rattles his armor with every blow, metal screeching in complaint, blades meeting on occasion, and not when he seeks Agnieszka's blood. With Rhaena's grasp upon his mind, Cinnabar's new makeshift weapon descends to hammer against his scorched pauldron. The ancient armor creaks and groans in complaint even as the weapon hisses in exposure to the Ashfiend's chilling aura. A second blow from the Constable has him rocked to the side, the weapon left to be held in only one hand as his free extremity moves to grab Cinnabar's third attack.

His strength enough to swing Deliverance with only one hand, he spares a pair of such sweeping attacks to ward off Agnieszka and, should his grasp upon Cinnabar's weapon prove firm enough, he would attempt to slam the burning beam into the stalwart Marshal with a hideous snarl.

[Kait]

Myrken was burning again, or at least one small part of it was. Shock mingled with terror in the heart of the squire as she urged her mount onto a new path. Booted feet to its belly and a sharp tug of the reins sent the mare unwillingly toward the silhouette of smoke and light filling the air above another farm, and too soon both its nostrils and those of its rider would be full of the scents of burning flesh and tinder.

The world started pulsing with anger and need as hazel eyes took in so many injured, attacking still, and the Fiend at the heart of yet another mess. It would be a desperate voice that called to the monster, and it would falter occasionally as acrid smoke overwhelmed, but the words were coming, those horribly brilliant, idiotic words.

"Hear me Ashfiend, I will give you Vraal!" The shying horse would be swung round to the outer reaches of those fighting him so fiercely, so that he might see. She sat astride the roan mare in her knight's colors, breast embellished with the shepard's staff and that twining ivy, and laid down her life as promise, for it was all she had.


"On my life and my heart as it would bleed for my people, give Myrken but three weeks peace, and you will have Sin Vraal and none to interfere." She would sell the man in an instant, for any single soul here, and as she shouted the words above the din she realized they were meant to the depths of her being. Three weeks of safety, of planning, and training; all they could do now was to distract and hope, and each action was meant for buying time so that others might escape, might get in even a small hit. A silent prayer she said to whatever gods would listen that they would let him leave if Ashfiend were to agree, that she herself would not raise fist or steel against the creature and turn her own words to nothing but rot.

If nothing more, maybe she would buy them all a few seconds. Time was so precious against this particular foe; maybe, just maybe it would mean the difference between death and surivial for someone.

[Cinnabar]

Furious motion in every blow, as if he would knock the Ashfiend apart through main force; shouts of combined rage and exultation as each blow lands, as that blackened armour is dented and battered beneath the weight of burning timber.

As the ghoul seizes the other end of the spar Calomel snarls low, shifting his stance to brace his feet against the sore-abused ground and resist; charred wood crackles beneath his fingers, tendons standing out like cables in wrists and neck, holding his improvised bludgeon firm in a two-handed grip against Teron's one. Soot and ash make a monochrome creature of him, limned in fiery gold and scarlet and wreathed in a pall of smoke; time for another dance of sorts.

The smouldering beam is held tense between them for a moment, and in the next instant the silver-haired youth is moving, maintaining that death-grip on his weapon while darting sideways, circling the ghoul with a lunge and a tug on the blackened spar. Moving to pull the timber across and around to give the Ashfiend a choice: relinquish the thing, thus allowing Cinnabar to brandish it freely once more; or have it get in the way of that blackened blade's swings, have Calomel's hauling and dragging on the thing throw him off-balance and open him to further attacks from his other foes.

Either way the fiend will have his attention split, his position besieged from all angles. These three with the strongest of reasons to see the beast ended, the fiercest of desires to destroy the Ashfiend once and for all. And beyond them, their friends and allies and brothers-in-arms ready to take their place should they fall.

[Vanidor]

There was a surge of hope welling in Karolinger's breast at this sight, of Calomel resolutely gripping the flaming length of timber. He allowed a moment to suck down a breath, it hurt being this close to the flames. Being this close to the source of malevolent chill. The bleed-off of magical energies seemed to slack upon his shoulders, almost as if his strength was waning from the exertion of this event. The makers of his armour had never truly stated a time limit before the wearer of the gear would become incapacitated, but it was a worry. He hoped he had enough time left in him to either end the Ashfiend, or drive him away to lick his wounds.

In either case, he would center himself, drawing upon the technique of the Void, a thing that Kerrak had espoused and Coran had often spoke about. Others that he knew, masters of the sword, had spoken of the Oneness. They all had to be the same thing, to empty the mind of all passion and emotion and pains. To float alone in a sea of nothingness. It rarely came to a man so ruled by his own wills and passions as was the Marshal, but for a moment it did. Long enough for him to suck down another, less painful, breath. To allow the glow to battered shoulders to strengthen a small degree.

He hoped it would last long enough for Aeryn to deliver the blow he was aiming for. Enough with the hits to that resilient torso, for while they did damage and it was obvious that it was happening, it did not seem to slow the ghoul down at all. The fortitude granted by undeath was beyond most mortal reckoning, for truth. So instead he would sweep steely-sharp Soria, the sabre to cut through the air with a barbaric hum. Aeryn Karolinger would vent his fury as well, a scream that would have woken the dead on any other night. He aimed the blow for the arm, that which swung the beautifully deadly Deliverance.

For the joint of elbow, where upper arm met forearm. Somewhere in that range, as the beast wrestled with the High Constable.

The Light give it to be enough.

[channe]

Supernatural progress -- something she would not admit, as much as it was true, as much as that battered feather still tied in three places to her belt assists her speed just that much.

She feels something, something terrible and cold amidst the screaming pain of her wounds, something which she has not of yet connected to the Ashfiend. And, for the Kaczmarek girl, there is simply rage and fear, the world drawn down to this, the three of them working so hard to kill something that is already dead, something that will simply not die properly, and although her weapon cuts tendons and weakens the Ashfiend, she knows it will not be enough.

Agnieszka cannot use force like the Marshal or the High Constable. She is strong, but there's simply not enough of her without armor; that's why she's trained up her speed and accuracy, heeded Ariane's lessons even as she became confused about heeding Ariane, had worked on becoming as fast as she could to counter the soldiers in the training ring.

But she still hates to take a hit, and the Ashfiend swipes, and she's -- well, she's caught in a bad place, and has to scramble back to avoid it, the tip of the sword gashing just underneath her collarbone -- but that's all right, she thinks, the Ashfiend was distracted for enough of a moment for Cinnabar to be able to make his move; that's what she wants, she wants the Ashfiend distracted long enough for those who use force to bring the glory -- and for Agnieszka to hold the knife, wield it -- and plunge it for the sweet spot on his back they'd already opened.



"My wife -- is in there --" Dominik says, clutching Rhaena in the heat of the fire. "I can't leave her -- who's going to help her to the hospital --"

She attempts to push him towards the other Kaczmareks, now shadowy figures against the forest, running towards town with the rest of Calomel's workers; he whirls, going to clutch her shoulders again. The children are never left alone for long in the Kaczmarek family; there is always someone there with them, and he knows that today will be no exception -- "I have to get her out!"

The tone of his voice, though, will tell Rhaena that he already knows that such things are impossible, even as he tears back to the hut --

[Carnath-Emory]

There is only one thing which distinguishes Ariane Emory from those other warriors and families and fools gathered here, and it is not courage: reserve that for the likes of unarmoured Agnieszka, who is so very vulnerable to the sweep of fell Deliverance; for squire Patience, who thinks to shout reason into the heart of the 'Fiend. It is not strength, for hers is so small a thing when set aside that of the Constable, who wields that burning log like it was a bludgeon; or Aeryn Karolinger, bright within armour that burns with livid witchfire. It is not even fear, for there is so much of that here tonight, so very much --

It is a smaller thing by far.
It is the certainty that they cannot defeat the Ashfiend tonight.

Having fought the monstrous thing twice before now, she has arrived at that certainty. Having seen what swords will do to the 'Fiend, what burning flame and furious outrage will accomplish. Having sunk her own blade more than once into that dead, dead flesh, she has no doubts at all that he will survive even this encounter; she charges at that tangle of bodies, but with no illusions whatsoever of destroying the 'Fiend at the heart of it. But neither with despair, for this is what she ought to have said long ago, this is what she's certain of: that a thing that cannot be slain may still be contained. May still be moved, be maneuvered.

May still be bent to their will.

There is no weapon in her hand: she won't add another futile blade to what Janeiro and Constable already wield. There is simply a great black blot of a warhorse that is galloping hard towards that tangle of bodies, but at a strange trajectory; it takes them dangerously near to one of those doomed buildings, and she swings low in the saddle. Onwards yet, and she is rising fluidly in the stirrups, a flaming brand caught fresh in her hand, and this is what she brandishes now as she closes upon the 'Fiend and his foes.

This is what she flings into the heart of them, this small thing -- but oh, it blazes brilliantly when it lands; it enfolds them in more warm and golden light than burning timber ought to supply. It illuminates; it murders the long shadows that had stretched around them.

And she is onwards then, is moving hard past them, because that squire is her goal: Patience has shouted a remarkable thing, and Ariane rides for her now because her habit is to guard...

And because she has very much willed the Ashfiend to hear those words.

[Jirai]

Rhaena

The slow growing heat of rage, the spreading white-hot fury... and it was as painful as had she stuck her hands into the fire that burned so near behind her. She shielded herself against it, as best she could, strengthening what grasp she had, trying to hinder the Fiend as best she could. And then there was movement nearby. It was a distraction, but she did not break the link entirely.

Oh, no. He was not going back to the hut. This was no Calomel, to be wreathed in flames and unharmed, as the burns he already bore attested. She was grabbing at him with surprising strength. She might be dragged along with him, but she was not letting go! Even though she was shaking. "Dominik!" She pleaded. Oh, she knew his pain first hand. "Please Dominik!"

[Teron_Ashfiend]

Twisted, burning planks and flurried weapons scrape and scar his battered, weary armor. All is chaos, at the center of which is the tireless, churning, Ashfiend whose dark blade lashes out with merciless abandon to deflect and murder. What chaos there is suddenly detonates, consuming itself, as the knot of enemies pulls taut against him.

The deft Constable twist and turns, bringing leverage that forces him to leave Agnieszka defended for he is unwilling to relinquish it at first. Booted feet dig and scrape into the earth, attempting to match Cinnabar's strength with one trembling, furious arm clad in ancient, blackened steel. Yet before he can attempt to muster his strength correctly, the farm girl's precision marks his back yet again. A metallic, edged roar escapes the hidden, tattered lips concealed beyond the taut folds of a gray scarf. A moment later Karolinger's weapon connects with his elbow, the blow marked by the ferocious shriek of complaining metal.

At once his sword arm begins to buckle, tendons torn, bone scarred. The triple assault leaves him reeling, staggered steps leading him away from the savage pack even as Patience's voice begins to carry over the battle-din and grows ever louder as if amplified by some secret sorcery. Blinding light accompanies the words, a mock-messenger from accursed Heaven, even as Deliverance threatens to fall from his grasp.

It is the last danger that grants him a sudden and surprising frenzy to his speed. A free hand, having attempted to manipulate Cinnabar's weapon a few moments ago, moves to snatch Deliverance as his grasp weakens and the ultimatum seeps through the evening air punctuated with short, ragged breaths and the mournful cries of the living. There is little doubt, in his aged mind, that the three can destroy him even as armored fingers squeeze Deliverance's handle as if to crush the metal that groans in complaint.

Yet, between light and words, the steady pressure upon his mind that gnaws away and trembles with the possible and unfamiliar certainty of distinct doubt, the shouts of farmers for lost friends, a quiet voice arises and echoes for his ears alone.

Relent, Teron.

A tremble takes him, a slight thing that sets his mailed hands shaking with barely restrained fury that smacks of a command voiced as reason.

Relent.

In that moment where there is little but light, his flaring eyes dim, their baleful, flickering dance of undying enmity given pause with a potent and private reminder that he does not understand. All at once the weight of his unlife bears down with a weighty palm as if to bow his shoulders which begin to stoop, drawing a stir from the withered heart in his chest.

His gaze moves between the assembled mass, united against their common foe. He spares Patience a brief study, recognizing her from the fields of Snowstill, before regarding the others warily. The Marshal's rank was unknown to him yet he came at the head of several men which spoke of some title, and he knew Calomel's role well enough. There was also Agnieszka to consider even as the blade lowered to his side. Did it really matter if they tried to track him down regardless, so long as he had Vraal? The search for his once master had gone disturbingly cold. Yet here the squire stood, offering the creature he had hunted almost forever, an offer that echoed words spoken of by Ariane and Ignas once before.

Perhaps they could be trusted, to some degree. Or if not, perhaps it was worth the risk.

"Three weeks, squire," he offered in a voice that displayed no lack of breath nor fatigue, but found definition in its unearthly and echoing rumble, the coarse metal that flecked each syllable. A lingering gaze from fiery crimson eyes, sizing up each foe in turn, as he slid Deliverance onto his back once more.

He turned and began to stride from the group in the suddenly tense peace accord that had been struck. Mailed fists waited at his side as he stalked from them and the lingering light, aware that one might move to continue their conflict and almost welcoming it for the chance to vent his frustration.

Frustration for the brief stirring of uneasiness at his core.