The Worst Possible Scenario

[Glenn]

Liquid metal was climbing up his arm. Just a few scant weeks ago, tentacles of light and power had enveloped him. That had been strangely pleasant, peaceful. This.. ? This in the midst of fire and bruising and blood? This was agony. He did not scream, but then he did not have to. It was all in his eyes, which were once more reverting to something petty and bestial and wild.

At the end, at the very end, despite all claims otherwise, despite all attempts at discipline, what were humans but animals?

But man was a savvy animal, a crafty one, the one who rose up out of the jungles while others died off, and Giuseppe was more crafty than most. One hand, one torch, remained free, and as his seconds were ticking down until there were no doors left at all, he did not strike at her again with it.

No, instead he threw it desperately past her, across her body, aiming towards that bottle of Derry Red not that far away. Did he want a distraction? Perhaps a more surefire death for both he and her? Then, after the clumsy throw, the assassin would try to bring his hand back past Ariane, to pull out his original blade along the way. It, like the motion before it, was clumsy, haggard. If he had gone for one or the other, then perhaps success? As it was...

As it was, the torch, thrown sidelong and awkwardly, hit the bottle, yes, but at a terrible angle. Fire and wood bounced back one way as wine and glass fell the other. It was not the result he wished for, not at all. That was Myrken for you, though. Even the wine would refuse to cooperate. It was whimsy, at the very end, that began to bring him back to himself, once again far, far too late.

[Carnath-Emory]

You don't move into grappling range. Her words to Glenn Burnie - a hundred times over and more, and spoken with grim sincerity every single time. You don't move into grappling range unless you're damned certain that you've the strength or the leverage to end that fight conclusively within moments. This is a living example of everything she'd told her student to resist, everything that she'd spent a lifetime avoiding, until the day that fluid armour fell under her command.

Until the day she learned reasons to do something other than kill.

"Stop," which is only a breath of sound that he'll never hear, this brutal stranger with his mouth torn wide and his eyes like desperate caverns. "I don't want - " and maybe the swordswoman doesn't even realise that she speaks; surely she doesn't, for hadn't this mess of fire and blood begun when her assassin abandoned reason? When he very plainly demonstrated his opinion of what she might or might not want? And yet these words, aborted by the jerk of his arm and the dull thud of toppling glass. Fire. Fire and wine. This is how he means them to die. He would have them burn. Her eyes are an outrage, torn wide and staring; her eyes are something else entirely when what tears is his weapon from her shoulder. With a single, brutal motion Giuseppe rips free four inches of steel and an excess of blood -

The pain is incredible. The pain is as large as the world.

Some terrible, racking cry torn from deep in her throat and that gauntlet clenches down upon his arm with a palmful of bristling steel; quicksilver has abandoned his cheeks in search of nostrils and eyes, for she is a thing of hurt and anger and half-leashed instinct and this is how his education must end. With no swords at all; firm in the grip of flame and steel and -

"I want you to live - "

but the pain is so much that the words can't escape her throat, and as she tumbles him down towards the floor her head rears back, slams its forehead solidly for his own.

[Glenn]

It worked.

Surprise, shock. Embarrassment for a professional such as he, though there was no time to feel it. As frustrated as he had been by the throw, by the fact he attempted both things when one or another would have been more successful, it still managed somehow to work. Embarrassment turned to relief, perhaps even hope. There was a chance now that she wouldn't walk away alive. There was a chance everything he fought for would be preserved. The people of Myrken did not know what they needed which is precisely why they needed Glenn Burnie. In this one, specific case, Glenn Burnie did not know, would not admit, would never admit, what it was that he needed.

Anything but her.

And that is why he needed Giuseppe. Relief turned to stubborn, exhausted, maddened pride in his eyes, but just for a moment. The metal overtook immediately thereafter.

He was falling. They were falling. He could not breathe, could not see, felt only pain and pride and everything else imaginable. He felt only everything there ever was. His head swam in oceans of glowing tentacles and foraged through forests of men who walked on all fours. He climbed in caves filled with burning devil women and the resounding, yet utterly silent cry of an unborn child that would never know life. And he fell body intertwined with this amazing woman of iron and curiosity here in this tavern not far from the edge of Myrken Wood.

Then as skull met metal met skull, the world went black, his body went limp, and he felt no more.