Beyond Good and Evil

[Rosa Gunn]

Charal
Edge of Wild Space

Silence was blissful. After the cacophony of a city and the wails of the dead and dying, silence was glorious. It was broken only by the soft steps of her boots upon duracrete, the gentle hiss of the cloak about her shoulders as it hem caught the floor. She was alone. Alone in a ghost town, her ghost town.

They'd long since collected their dead and wasted more lives in an attempt to remove her, but she wasn't going anywhere. She paused as she reached the middle of the street, catching a reflection of herself in one of the few remaining windows. Slow steps guided her towards it, slender fingers reaching to remove the golden mask from her face. She shook free waves of raven hair and leaned in to admire glittering red eyes.

"Such beauty." she mused. The reflection shifted, red flicking to lilac as she reached to brush a lock of hair from her face, freezing in her movement at the colour change. She dropped her hand and inched closer,

I'll kill you

The reflection bellowed, its hands raising to crack against the glass shattering it before her. Darth Layil, Dreadlord and Weaver of Nightmares let out a scream and staggered back, heel slipping on the curb and landing flat on her back. For a moment, she lay there, breathing heavily until a chuckle started in her throat, growing until she was laughing hysterically and climbing to her feet.

"Ah, my sweet sweet Rosa. You will die long before I."

A tingling ran up her spin, a warning. Her hand snapped out, pulling the mask back into her hand. "But we can play this game later, I've got fresh meat to toy with." Someone was coming, someone like anything else she'd encountered. Dark, primal. She slid the mask over her face. Perhaps they'd found a monster, to kill a monster.

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Her name was Dhaga, and self-proclaimed eolderman representing the quarters of tiny Threewaters. She was tall, lanky with bone, sun-bleached hair drawn down her spine in long braids and tied off twists of dreadlocks, and dressed in coveralls stained violet and black by berry flesh. She sat back in a tottering chair and considered the bagged chunk of platinum coin-chits resting atop a leaning table. The one yawing table-leg was steadying on the plate-toe of her boot. Behind her, further juice washed coveralls. A small crowd of thickly built orchard fielders and bonded mechanics waited at her back, out of light from a still lamp shade hanging low from the ceiling. They made no fuss over the hanging array of chrome-polished crescent, socket, flex-head, and drum wrenches glinting off their tool-belts. The inside of the grain bar stunk of phosphor. More light glared through the half opened entry doors, and the eolderwoman took a moment to choke on a long glass of some hard, local concoction.

She spoke while fingering through a torn calf-glove. “My family comes from Ostawa, further up the valley. It's three hours there on tractor, six if you walk. Used to be, three out of five houses was a vineyard property o' some sort. Best wine in forty leagues, and that's not bragging. But they don't call it Ostawa anymore. 'Stead, folks took to naming the territory: 'Charnel'. And that's made me mighty upset. Even if it's earned. Bloody earned.”

Their guest across the table blinked in the heat, unbothered by the fruit-flies running halo flights overhead and buzzing round his eyes and nose. The eyes, Dhaga thought, gods-damned cats eyes. She steadied her constitution with another helping of barley-whiskey. “Something arrived in the township one day. Witnesses describe a walking shadow, a creature wearing burnished gold for a face. It's whispers were everywhere, drove 'em mad. Turned the village out in a day and sent all of us packing.”

“Were you there that day?”

The voice was a low, rough baritone that rang oddly clear in the ear. Dhaga shook her head, toying a finger on the wet rim of her glass. “No. There's a few folk round Threewaters that were, can point them out for you. To m'point, ya can't go to Charnal no more. Even the bravest looters won't dare it. But we're finished standing for it. We want whatever is haunting the grounds cleared out. Killed, cleansed, don't matter. Pay's in the bag.”

The man leaned forward and undid the string looping the haversack closed. He gleaned a look at the veritable pile of grinning plat-chits, all of sound denomination, thumbed with greasy fingerprints. Dhaga took the chance to eye the long steel blades riding across his back, at the set of hugging armour that looked splendidly formidable. The crowd of tractor mechanics at her back stirred up slightly. “Well?”

Seydon didn't smile as he glanced up. “Fine. I'll take care of the infestation.”


~Later...~


They proffered him an aged, manual plough to take and ride with over the hillock road to Charnel. Declining, he assured Threewaters' eolderwoman and her familial cadre of vineyard pickers he would manage to the village on his own. His ride was a bore-throttled speeder, thickset but with quaking engine power, as jet and mean as its parent vessel. Seydon stole it out of the Relentless' hold after an hour's time in preparation. Potion decoctions, palm-bombs of varied make, coating his blade Winterfang with an eldritch oil that made its silver plating almost sing at the touch. Local testimony varied, but the singular, anchoring detail were nightmarish, close encounters with a woman in black. Phenomena ranged from scratching voices threatening to bleed out their minds, to reports of houses being spontaneously set alight, flora and fauna morphing in the blink of an eye.

A spectre, he thought, or something masquerading in one's guise. Still unnerving. The alternatives were equally fearsome. The Dunaan wouldn't know the most acute approach until he was at Charnel.

The best through-route into the vineyard territories was a wide roadway semi-paved with hoed pebble and quartz rock. It was facing consumption by bramble, the speeder whipping off fat seed-heads of the long grass poking up or growing in from the ditches. Seydon knew a ring of pine forest surrounded the hamlet. Dhaga described it as an old knot of woodland, seasoned by the prayers of locals, probably sharing a single root system interlocked down until the wood struck subterranean springs. Seydon almost rode straight into it.

Walls of knuckled trunks quite suddenly popped up on the roadway. Sunlight shaded in a flash, hoarded by great overhangs of swaying leaf ceilings. Seydon had a moment to decelerate and kick up the speeder's air-brakes, cutting a neat, hair raising turn-on-a-dime. Aft 'pulsor bumpers and metal bracing struck a glancing blow against twiggy bark. The Dunaan quieted down the engines and parked, stepping off onto the road. By then, in such proximity, the forest had devoured stone and gravel under blankets of crunchy moss, under loam.

He stood a moment to face the timberland. He hadn't expected more than ordinary cedar copses and the odd, hardy cervine mulching for stomach cud in the undergrowth. Some witnesses back at Threewaters professed that something, a feeling, chased after their wake when they made the harrowing evacuation. That in their absence, since whatever had killed off the village took up roost, it'd claimed the league under its thrallship. Plant and animal answered to it. Were its eyes, they said. Seydon trusted there were grains of facts to the tales. He peered up into the gloom.

Mold was on the air. Thick and spore-ridden, it choked a little to breathe, until an itch tickled the back of his throat raw. Occasional breezes threading past the trunks were cold enough to ache. There was little sound, in spite of swaying branches, and flights of shadowy aerie's darting further on in the forest deep. He could smell rotten iron. An element of decay was present from tree-sap to earth. Lichen had died, gone sooty with shrivel on rocks exposed between barbed entanglements of root cages. A strange element to the bark made faces leer out of their twisted patterns, just to disappear when Seydon blinked to look again. He glanced at his Korriban-compass: the needle was ramrod still, and twice as straight. Runes laid on the cardinal directions were faintly aglow.

“Nothing for it,” He murmured. Seydon drew Winterfang out and left the blade-flat resting readily across his right shoulder. Soundlessly, he stepped forward through a part in the guarding tree line. Lightless shade engulfed him, as he trained his senses and took care stepping through the sinister wood.

[member="Darth Layil"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Layil came to kneel at the edge of the woods, immersing herself in the darkside. The souls of those she'd drained and bound to her at her weakest moment began to cry out in despair and fear as she stretched her mind reaching across the forest to find the intruder. He would begin to hear the lost souls, pained whispers on the wind warning him away as she found his mind. So many familiar memories and faces flitted across the link. Within her, she could hear Rosa cry out. "Fascinating." she muttered, before giving herself over completely to the force.

She could no longer feel the moss beneath her knees, nor hear the wind rustling through the trees. She could only see him. Around him, shadows began to twist forming phantoms that encircled him. They didn't move to attack, the simply stood tall and silent like the trees, their intention only to make him stop. A girl no older than eight, would push herself between them, standing before the wolf. Her hair was stark white, her eyes a rich lavender colour, she looked up at him with a curious expression.

"Who are you?" her voice was not of one, but of many. "Why are you here?"

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

The creeper-vines ceased shivering in the breeze, and began dying. Seydon halted as the clearing stoved in, underbrush crumpling to silver ash under his footfalls. A scent of teasing corruption, stale bone and dried blood, plugged up his nose. The Dunaan checked against the shaking compass wrapped against his breast-armour. The compass points were rotating wildly, attempting to compensate for the sudden pall of dark energy. When he looked back up: a young girl maybe no older than eight or nine, silver hair running down to the backs of her knees, stared up at him.

Lavender eyes blinked. She asked after him: who was he? What was he? What did he want? Why was he there? Hemming in were discoloured phantoms, black things shaking in and out of reality. So often, the veil of smoke draped about their features refined into a coalesced vision: broken faces with bone and jaw poking through rotting skin and muscle. Seydon grimaced, refusing to answer. Spectres, or at least conjured imagery, could be tricky. He checked his sensoria against any laid traps waiting at his feet. And then strolled forward and passed through the girl, through her circle of entourage ghosts. A piercing wail was in the wind now. The breeze had turned to a thrum. A gale was beginning to shake every bough and trunk hoisted into the forested canopy.

Seydon broke into a jog. Each sense was stretched to their limit, scanning the forestry. Breathing exercises were keeping his heart-rate managed. He traversed onto an old deer-run running a path through the underbrush and followed it eastward towards the village. Seydon assumed he was drawing near: skeletons arranged in agonizing poses hung or were propped from the trees. Effigies of femurs crossed beneath crowns of chattering skulls waited along rises in the loam. He spied phantoms wandering past him in the gloom, moaning disconnected phrases. The Dunaan had to pause again when he spotted the young lady, with ashen-hair and lavender eyes, spying at him through copses of pine. Next to her, grinning, was another small girl: with spider-web hair, a face composed of flesh-coated fingers, and teeth that were fingernails.

A koschei, he thought? Perhaps a stuhac or kikimora, maybe even a pissed off drekavac. This was a high level infestation, with nuances of adult malice. But the ordinarily cold feeling in the back of his tongue whenever he was confronted with spirits was absent. Instead, he felt a glow on his cheeks. Despite his extrasensory powers being dull, he could tell there was... presence. As familiar as fireside heat. Seydon drew a silver whetstone from a belt pouch, sharpening Winterfang's gleaming edge with an extra bite. Any creature that could beckon souls at their call was either powerful, cunning, a mixture, or so terrifying they couldn't be denied. Worms were trying to chew their way out of the soil. Here and there were blankets of fallen magpies, dead, with wings and claws sprawled. A dead cervine sprawled on the pathway. At his investigation, it'd been female, two weeks dead, and had been carrying foal before... before said foal somehow managed to bludgeon its way free of its mother's womb.

“This is bad,” Seydon murmured. But up ahead, through a part in the forest, was a hint of a clay-tiled roof. The township of 'Charnel' was not so far away.

[member="Darth Layil"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

He moved with such ease through her forest of hell, passed her phantoms like they were nothing. She was missing something, something vital. She kept half a mind of his movement and delved into her own mind, daring to peek at the memories that belonged to Rosa. A terrible mistake for now she could hear her screaming, claws scraping at the inside of her mind. It took time and effort to silence her, but she got what she needed. Rising, she moved away from the forest edge, seeking refuge instead on a rooftop on the centre road of the town. She would see him coming a mile off and delved once more into her illusions.

Behind him another phantom would appear, a doppelganger of herself, golden mask glittering in nonexistent light, hands free of weapons. "It is not often, that I am ignored." red eyes smiled behind the mask "Seydon of Arda. Kin-slayer, monster hunter and...widow. Have you come to kill me?"

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

The deer-run wove into a roughened back alley, and Seydon climbed a make-do barrier constructed out of tossed wheelbarrows, planks, and hastily sharpened stakes. Over the blockage, past another trio of squat buildings forged out of ferrocrete and prefab materials, waited an open farmer's market. Meats, fruits, legumes, and drink had long gone bad. Time enough for their rot to either harden or dissolve to flaking mulch. Seydon wiped his glove-end on an untouched basket-bottle of wine, and scented the dust. He'd spied fallen laslock rifles scattered across the square. Most clutched in pale, shrunken hands, the dead left where they had been felled. Scorch marks left over from a running gunfight still pocked and blistered in the walling of a few households. A score of autodoors and shutter windows were maglocked and reinforced with fast-welded planks of iron. Kneeling, he picked up a discarded blaster, found its power-cell spent dry.

“Commotion probably started up further in the vale,” He noted to himself. “Had time enough to anticipate. Barricade their houses. Fighting and killing found its way into town.”

Seydon stood, and scanned across the dirt and cobble. “Footprints are everywhere. Scattered soon as whatever was finished killing in the vineyards arrived. Travel was erratic... Kept running into one another. Blast marks make it look like it'd been fast... Or seemingly everywhere at once.”

He heard the air behind him tighten and pop. The compass juddered on his sternum. Seydon gently turned about, keeping Winterfang tucked behind his hip in a waiting counter-guard.

She stood up close at him, a few inches under six feet. He spied her eclectic garb, a mixture of priestess robing with long pants and a cinch of black and white leather wrapped round her ribs and belly. She wore a mask across her features: a broad, golden design with beetle-like motifs, though the gold was tarnished and lacking much lustre. Disconcertingly, she knew him: by name, by profession, and by deed.

“They paid me for you,” He said back. ...That voice of hers, Seydon thought. “Not sure what I'm dealing with though.”

They were squared off by a meter and half, the Woman in Black standing upright easily, the Dunaan bent into a waiting stance. “Can't hear your heartbeat, or your breathing. Pupils don't dilate with the light. Compass is shaking, so you got some enchantment about you. Might be a bruxa, or a hag. One thing's for certain, you're not from around here.”

[member="Darth Layil"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Layil chuckled and began to circle him slowly, red eyes drinking in every inch of him, with each step she took she left another doppleganger in her wake, circling him. "I am not a bruxa." she spoke coming to a stop, while the copy behind him continued her sentence "Nor a hag." One on his left "You're right in saying that I'm not from around here." On his right "But it's far more simple than that." Back in front of him. "Guess again."

Around them, unnatural vines had ripped through the road to ensnare victims, crushing them to death or punching through makeshift armour like paper. They began to stir, snaking across the cobblestones towards the circle. Layil took half a step forward and the rest followed, closing the circle to a meter and she studied him with a ruby gaze. "There's a name on your mind, you are seeking something aren't you? Looking for something that's lost." She gasped, bringing fingers to the lips of the stony face mask.

"Oh, you poor soul," she mocked.

A cry echoed in the wind, a voice all too familiar. Seydon! Look out!

Anger flared in Layil's eyes and she vanished revealing the vines as they reached the circle, looking to coil around anything they could.

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Clay-pine mortar and sandy cobble bricking burst in clouds of sudden, physical explosion. Seydon had been half aware the moment was growing wildly out of control, trying to divide attention between the encircling glamour of false-women, the sound of rock being rent at the edging of the market square, and waiting for the moment to break. A stall on his left was convulsed into splitters and recoiling metal. Front and right, debris vapours briefly obfuscated his line of sight. Bunching lengths of razor-spined weed, as immense and doughty as elm trunks, broke up through the ground.

He dove through a part between a pair of coils, feeling his armour rend at the ribs and left hip. Seydon drew up out of his landing roll and beat a fast streak through the square, vines swatting at his heels. Charnel made the breadth of its coin off wines and fortified beverages. There was one undisturbed serving table left alone in the prior carnage. The Dunaan reached, gripping a heavy-necked bottle of cognac twixt his fingers. Twisting at his chest and waist, pulling energy out his hips, the cognac went hurling into the knotting mess of protruding flora. The bottle caught off an offending spine, bursting, washing the stems down.

Pyrokinetic fire leapt out of his left hand. The first scallop of flame and spark struck at the cognac vapours, and found the alcohol drenched on leaf and stalk the moment next. Plant matter went up in a snapping burst. A sub-guttural howl of entangled voices screamed from the aether.

“Right,” Seydon breathed, and turned round to clamber up a building face to get his bearings atop the roofing shingles.

[member="Darth Layil"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Layil dug her fingers into her scalp and let out an angry snarl she rose to her feet on the rooftops, eyes raking over the nearby smoke. How had she done that? How had she broken free to reach out to him? She didn't know and she couldn't counter it, not while he was still breathing, not while he threatened her existence.

She moved to the edge as he pulled himself up on the otherside, she didn't hesitate drawing upon her fury she drew three spears of midnight black and sent the sailing across the rooftop before turning and running across the shingle roof heading for the town hall. She needed the distance between them to maintain any upperhand in this.

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Pain walloped him off the lip of the roof. Darkshear were notorious psi-weaponry, kept reserved in the mental architecture and armories of wyrds, psykers, Dark Jedi with a talent of psionic battle. Formless blades of pure, malefic will, sharpened by intensive, hammering emotion, they were virtually undetectable by most sensory organs. Seydon didn't have the receptive sensitivity to gauge their existence. Warning came in the violent tremors shaking out of his Korriban compass.

Running up the roofing, he just briefly saw the black haired, gold masked woman go tumbling out of sight. Then, the shingles between his feet shredded apart. A second spear grazed over his thigh and left a weeping cut burning hot in the skin and paltry, hardened leather armour. The third smashed into his clavicle. Dunaan had their musculoskeletal structures heavily modified, both for strength and the bodily fortitude to support those altered muscles. Seydon had put through a modified version of the Trial of the Waters, lending him durability, power, speed that, ordinarily, he kept reserved in utilizing.

It was the only reason the Darkshear didn't poke a hole through his collarbone. He felt something lance through his quadanium chain-mail and ricochet off the bone. Seydon went spinning, tripping off the roof over the gutter-trough down into the house yard. He watched his blood make a splash on the porch concrete pads, before he met it a second later.

There was a riot of sharp pain, brief darkness. Seydon rose out of his temporary blackout and came back to his feet. Hurried boot-steps were cracking and scraping as loud as rubbing sandpaper inside his ear. The Dunaan turned in time to see that familiar, black-clad shape flee further into the village. And towards Charnel's fat, towered mayoral hall. He paused in step only to spray down his wounds with a clotting skin-wrap, replacing the tube back into a harness pouch and taking up a gaining, dogged run.

[member="Darth Layil"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Layil didn't look back, she didn't trust herself to look back at not feel the fear that was creeping up on her. She took the steps to the town hall two at a time, tugging her lightsaber from her waist and sending a short telekinetic burst ahead of her that blew the doors open. She skidded to a halt as she reached the threshold turning to face the demon that was catching up with her. She took her own fear and amplified it, coiling it around the Dunaan seeking to bring his worst fears to the forefront of his mind, hoping to cripple him before he reached the steps.

He's nothing left to fear.

"Hush." she hissed her concentration faltering.

You will lose this fight.

An angry snarl slipped from her lips and she released her mental grip on Seydon, ducking into the dark hall she jumped, planting one foot against a wall for a boost and launching herself into the rafters. She took delicate and agile steps across them coming to a stop in a dark corner and turning to watch the door. "I am the Weaver of Nightmares. Dreadlord, broken and remade by the Chosen. I will not lose to a hound."

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

It was the psychic equivalent to being gut-struck by a siege ram. Seydon felt a hand of ice reach out invisibly and clutch with branding contempt across his mind's paltry skein. He was already halfway across the long court avenues spearing up straight into the lawns surrounding town hall, when he felt the blunt psi-force strike him between the eyes. Pain and light exploded in his vision. For a moment, he stumbled, battling to regain sense, balance, and initiative. Looking down a moment, his boots were tripping out of cadence. Looking up, as the light bled away, Seydon came face to face with his horror.

“It's my bad luck,” Said Rosa Gunn. She sounded like a distant broadcast, distorted by reverb fades and static hisses. Colour looking washed out, and desaturating for every stride Seydon took. “First Darron, now you? Is love to let me down every chance I try drawing close? Why couldn't you find me?”

“I - “ The Dunaan stammered.

She was resplendent in the last, prominent gown Seydon could remember: her wedding dress. A single, long white piece strapped elegantly across her shoulders, arms bare save for sliver-thin chain bracelets dangling by her wrists. Rosa hadn't worn shoes, socks, or sandals. Sand caked up to her ankles. They'd wedded together on an Ardan beach, each of them chuckling at their shared sunburns and messed hair from leaping into the surf following the end of their ceremonies.

Tremors rocked the herringbone bricks beneath her. Cracks were webbing out. The landscape of the hall courtyard was shaking itself apart in a seismic tantrum, that worsened the nearer Seydon closed to the sight of his wife.

Beneath, the bricking and earth was giving way. Upset and pain curled her expression into a broken jeer, shaking her head. “You've always come home a stranger! Well for once, now there's no one waiting for you, Seroth! You broke every duty to me! I hated your excuses! I should have known you'd never have come after me!”

Her screams yawned open as widely as the pit breaking wide under her toes. Struck to a standstill by the ice coating his stomach lining, the Dunaan watched his wife tumble into a roar of wind issuing from the blackened fissure. In a split moment, she was gone from sight, devoured by gnashing rock that closed back up like a suturing wound. All quaking ceased, save for the palsy in his hands and the shake in his knees. Each blink swatched colour back into the town court.

Come home a stranger – No one left waiting for you now – Hated your excuses – Never have come after me – Come home a stranger – Did you really love me – No one left waiting for you now – Did you trust me being alone – Hated your excuses – I had needs to – Never have come after me – How many times you should have burned – Come home a stranger – Did you really love me – Were we ever meant for 'forever' – No one left waiting for your now – Did you trust me being alone – You were supposed to be everything he couldn't be – Hated your excuses – I had needs – And I could never know you – Never have come after me – How many times you should have burned – What does a witcher know about love – Come home a stranger Did you really love me Were we ever meant for forever No one left waiting for you now Did you trust me being alone You were supposed to be everything he couldn't be Hated your excuses I had needs And I could never know you Never have come after me How many times you should have burned What does a witcher know about loveComehomeastrangerDidyoureallylovemeWerewemeantforforeverNooneleftwaitingforyounowDidyoutrustmebingaloneYouweresupposedtobeeverythinghecouldn't
beHatedyourexcusesIhadneeds!AndIcouldneverknowyou!Neverhavecomeafterme!Howmanytimesyoushouldhaveburned!Whatdoesawitcherknowaboutlove!

The Dunaan blinked, until his mental architecture finished recoiling from the receding touch of Dark Force power, and reconstructed a shrinking thought-cage around the ball of roiling fear. Rosa's false voice resounding with doubt and myriad insecurities went silent. A touch of will shredded the phantom into just another memory.

Winterfang in his grasp, he ducked into the town hall's emptied atrium. Green-felt rugging was tore up underfoot, beside rubble piles of wrecked furniture ranging between desks, panel-cubicles, glass and strewn lamps, ancient ink-typesets, layers of yellowed stationary vellum piled where they had gone spinning and falling. Overhead, the high rafters seethed with bleak pockets of shadow.

But a witcher could see in the dark. Winterfang's chilly peak rose and centered onto the witch's face like a cast-die line. Cat's eyes burned like gold in the half-light. “Come on down.”

[member="Darth Layil"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

His amber eyes burned with anger, glittering in the dim light as he stared at up her and for the first time, it made the force around them tremble and brought a smile to her lips. Face hidden behind burnished gold it showed only in the slight crease of her eyes. She could not resist the call, could not resist the chance to devour someone as powerful as he. Another soul for her collection.

She sidestepped off the beam, landing a few meters in front of him, just enough distance to stay out of reach of that blade. "You know," she began softly "She came to us appearing so strong. Healer and guardian of light. Unwilling to bend to our will."

Snap hiss

"But everything that doesn't bend, breaks sooner or later. Rosa cried out for you. She prayed that you would come, but you never did." She brought the lightsaber into a two handed high guard.

"You failed her."

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Cat eyes narrowed, while rain flecks strung and pattered through breaks in the myriad shattered windows. A late-season cloud burst had been swirling over the farther hillsides, deciding to come down over Charnel the moment of their clash. Thunder rippled a sub-bass, animal note through their flesh and skin. The Dunaan wasn't sure what prompted the comments regarding his wife's unknown fate.

But it left him sure as hell pissed off.

Seydon feigned a dash forward into her line of attack, circling right. His hand found the remnants of a smashed high-backed chair, and gripped a hold round a bent leg. With a shrug, it went flying, casting over at the witch's skull as he put on a burst of effort. He cocked in at her left, arms hacking in time with his torso, legs, and footing, aiming a sundering blow for her arms while she contested with the chair.

[member="Darth Layil"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

The sudden shift of his weight gave warning of his feint, eyes widened as she glimpse the dark wood sailing for her face, splinters, bent nails and all. She jerked her head, a small wave of kinetic energy slammed into the oncoming and sent it sailing back. She didn't have time to contemplate where it hit, but she heard it shatter as his blade screamed through the air looking to hack through arm and torso.

She shifted to meet it face on, lightsaber spitting in protest as it impacted against a vertical guard sending vibrations down her arms and forcing her to slide back a couple of inches. She shifted her saber and forced the sword down, stepping in close and spinning to her left she released her left hand and snapped her elbow towards his jaw, her lightsaber low, it followed her as she spun, licking towards the back of his knees as she shifted from close range.

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

That elbow-sock caught him with a mean smear across his mouth, splitting a lip and briefly obscuring his sight of her motion. Boot-soles were pounding fast at step at his side. From her flaring mane, the witch was twisting a pace or so out of their close contact, wicking the weak of her blade towards his unguarded knees. From his cut and her answer to it, Seydon's blade was left in low hang near the flooring. He bent at his knees and spun in a low-centred pirouette, right to left, crossing his sword like a curtain of steel. Plasma and metal met again in a crash of sparks. The Dunaan rose, blade-point struck in a guard pose, as they circled one another. He bade the moment, and waited for the witch to strike next.

[member="Darth Layil"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

He matched her for speed, had an upper hand in strength. She might've been able to tire him out eventually but he had stamina where most did not. Eyes flicked over wound she'd inflicted with her midnight spears, and yet still he had come. She needed to even the playing field. Four spears, shorter than the last morphed around her as she stepped forward, taking the saber once more in a two handed grip and looking to bring it down on his head as the first of the four spears shot down, looking to pin his foot to the rotting floorboard beneath.

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

“Aargh!”

One telekine spear impacted into the meat of a shoulder, rebounding off the bone, blood hissing and boiling mid-air. Another two caught him in the ribs, juddering his skeletal frame like a blow from a charge-hammer. The last struck into the skin of right foot and left a slight nick in the show of bone. For all skill and talent with a blade, training in the hunting arts, a muse for fighting, the Dunaan still hated squaring off with mentalists. What cut worse, perhaps, was the sneer to the witch's eyes. They were knowing, and readied with further barbs that would slice to the quick: his Rosa, the pain of seeking out bad news, his impotency as her husband. She'd have made grand kin with that long dead Stenwulf. They had a skill with rough wit, cutting foes to ribbons before they'd ever laid a touch on them.

The blade was coming down overhead to split him like a meat hank. Jaws gritted, he tried taking back the initiative. Seydon planted his feet forward and anchored lightly, drawing his blade close in a guard coming down and over his shoulder. With her stroke throwing forward, he stepped out of its line, paring it off his sword-flat. As its touch left the bind on the channel-flat, he made a cut for her right shoulder and throat, snapping the percussion point in a shrieking half-circle for the mass of her torso.

[member="Darth Layil"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Layil deactivated her blade, retreating back two quick steps, the point of his blade scoring through leather like it was lace and opening a thin red line across her ribs. She let out a low hiss, eyes glittering with anger. It'd been a long time since she'd seen her blood on a blade. She lifted her gaze from the sword to settle it upon Seydon's face. The lightsaber still unlit in her hand, she raised a palm golden tendrils snaked for him as anger flickered to hunger, to desire as she sought to drain the life out of him.

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Her ravening touch found him, swung about him like a crustacean embrace. Gold light poured into his eyes, tunnelling siphon-augurs 'till they met the resistance at the core of his mind. The closest approximation to the leeching sensation Seydon could recall was the death crawl up the steep, unlit stairwells carved in the mountain stone on Dromund Kaas. Breath left him in exhales he couldn't shut or defy. The Dunaan trudged forward unsteadily. The longsword Razorlight fell out of his nerveless hands.

Come home a stranger – No one left waiting for you now – Hated your excuses – Never have come after me – Come home a stranger – Did you really love me – No one left waiting for you now – Did you trust me being alone – Hated your excuses – I had needs too...

Rosa's imagined but no less pained and accusatory adages rushed into his ears over the roar of spinning blood. Pain and life were leaking out through each pore and wound. Seydon lost strength in his ankles, and tumbled onto the hard flooring. And still the disjointed phrases wouldn't cease, tumbling into his sight until he swore a reflection of his lost wife was staring up at him, touching hand to hand as if separated by glass. Lavender eyes blinked away her tears, and gave bravery to her saddened smirk.

The Dunaan glanced up. Agonies, rage, despair, all too mortal desperation, a host of mortal emotion coalesced into a tight ball of willed action in the pit of his chest. Seydon shunted forward on his elbows and latched onto her knees. His hand pistoned back, drew the length of a hidden pivot-knife free, and drove to slash into the femoral meat and veins of her inner thigh.

[member="Darth Layil"]