From Haidia's Heart, I stab at thee. (Closed to Lye)

(Continued from these events: Day 4 and is a progression/story based battle. Using my level 6 profile for this battle. Thank you.)

The Antifirmanent.

It blazed with it's angry inferno everywhere. Present was the large trees of Concordia Forest...Ruild...but they were grayed out and dying in the mysterious aether of The Antifirmanent. When Elthas met the mysterious girl calling herself Amari...he'd met for the second time a man named Lichensith. Lichensith and another had been torturing Amari horribly in unspeakable ways before Elthas was irrevocably summoned by Amari's anguish and pain. Elthas retreated from the event and returned to his native Concordia Forest, not knowing if Lichensith had the power to follow him across the lands of Phantaria and into the Antifirmanent. it was a blazing sky, with the fires of Hell everywhere. The wind was hot, scorching, and the clouds above were the debris and dust of a dead civilization. This was the Antifirmanent, and in many ways, different from the once gray, dead land of ghosts.

The trees of Concordia were scorched and gnarled.

A truly hideous representation of the Antifirmanent proper. Elthas, in his black robes, stood there calmly in a plain field. He knew what he had done in some ways...and in other ways he did not realize the gravity of the situation. With the scorching wind constantly flowing with sulpher in the air, debris, remains of a lost civilzation. The dead and the spirits of those who had turned away from final judgment were present. In the Antifirmanent, there were plenty of blinking doors that flashed in and out of reality and not reality. Elthas could see the gates of Phantaria blinking in and out in the distance and he was waiting.

He didn't necessarily hate Lichensith...he only knew that a challenge had been made.

So he would keep the gate of Phantaria open from within the chamber Amari's torture was horribly taking place.

He purposefully left that gate open for Lichensith to follow him to the depths of Haidia's farthest reaches.

Elthas held his spectral daggers in his hands, gripping the handles tightly. His robes were kinetic and shifted about in the harsh light of the Antifirmanent. He had lowered his hood so that Lichensith could see the face of his enemy. It was not an issue of good versus evil, or right versus wrong. Elthas had stumbled upon a harsh crime being committed and he would make Lichsensith pay for it. Or die trying.

Many thoughts passed through Elthas's mind as he considered the gravity of the situation.

He had no idea of what Lichensith had done to Amari since he left and transported back to Corone proper. Elthas stood in a relaxed position, his poker face at the ready. He did not know what type of an opponent he would facing in Lichensith. He only knew that a battle would be inevitable at that point. Elthas did not view himself as a Hero those days...but he had a strong sense of morality and justice and injustice. Perhaps, he had not been summoned by Amari on accident...maybe the Thaynehood had intervened. I will never know. Only thing that mattes is that he will come to me and I must be prepared for the war that is to come... And so,, Elthas would wait to the ends of time for his enemy to appear.

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For the sake of the setting, Lye is locked in a constant state of his Shadow Meld in order to survive the Antifirmament. Since the Antifirmament is on a parallel but separate plane to the Shadow Plane (headcannon), Lye is able to sustain it for the duration of this thread regardless of the limitations in his profile. As a drawback, his body still takes damage in this realm, negating all beneficial effects of Shadow Meld. This also means Lye cannot phase out of attacks and is unable to use Shadow Meld to negate blows during the duration of this fight.

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Salvar's eternal winter bit relentlessly at the flesh of mortals. Advencia, clad in revealing attire for both the current weather and present company, relayed her findings to a tall, silver haired gentlemen. Beside him, two burly thugs listened in to her report.

"We put up as many wards as we could, but we found something in her cabin," Advencia explained. The chilling breeze temped at her exposed chest and lengths of her legs. Yet as scantily clad in her white dress, she seemed unphased by the cold - a true testament to her hardened lifestyle with the Crimson Hand. With a slender hand, she motioned to a small wooden cabin twenty paces away.

"Something?" Lye asked. Unlike his feminine colleague, thick winter furs draped around his lean form. Falls of platinum hair blended in with the surrounding snow and his own pale skin. His verdant eyes followed her gesture and became slits as they fell upon the sight as she described it.

"We had Cantor provide his best assessment. He said it might be some kind of gate?" The group gazed on as a distortion of color writhed within the door-less cabin. The day prior, a man named Elthas appeared to him inside with regards to Lye's current captive, Amari. Tensions pulled taught as the specter laid threat upon Lye then vanished without a trace. In a fit of rage, the assassin deprived the building of its door and relocated its inhabitant to his own private quarters.

"Elthas." The name slipped from the assassin's lips as he watched the abnormality twist and phase, skewing the light around it.

"Who?" Advencia asked, still flustered from her previous exchange with her master.

"It doesn't concern you, Advencia." Lye turned to the vertically challenged killer and warned her with a silent snarl. The girl protested with crossed arms, pushing her bosoms from already questionable coverage. "Don't you have some mark to seduce and assassinate?"

"Not at the moment..." She retorted, thick with venom.

"That's all, then. Go find something to occupy yourself with." He shooed her and turned to the two men that idly waited. "Change of plans, Theo and Earlwin, come with me." After a nod from his associates, Lye made way for the cabin.

"Fine then..." Advencia spat as the trio ventured away from her. "I'll see what that little bitch is up to then..." With a mischievous sneer, the femme fatale started toward the longhouse opposite them.

The others approached the cabin, and the two men hesitated in the doorway. Lye's boots sounded against the oaken floors which groaned under his weight. A change of wind pulled his silvery locks inward toward the epicenter of the odd distortion. From it, exuded an unnatural warmth while simultaneously broadcasting an eerie chill down the back of the assassin's spine.

"Sir," Earlwin began, concern thick on his brow. "Where do you think it leads?"

"To him," Lye replied, lips curled at the ends into a smile.

"Him?" Theo looked to his brother and the two shrugged.

"Yes, you two are going to help me take care of a pest. Follow me," Lye commanded. He inched closer to the anomaly until something latched onto the core of his being. Like leaves swept up in an vortex, the distortion gripped him and pulled him toward it. Resist as he tried, Lye felt as if his body was being torn asunder. Staggered and pained, he grew closer until the form of his being twisted, warped, and vanished into the center of the gate.

Like waking from a dream, reality blurred and a new flood of senses slammed into his body. Heat like nothing felt before threatened to singe his skin - a stark contrast to the blizzards of the Scavian Wilds. More prominently, Lye fell to his knees, hand clutched tightly to the fabrics above his chest. A pressure weighted down on him, crushing the air from his lungs and wrapping its thorny grip around his beating heart. He tried to inhale, failing to breath in this world's unusual atmosphere.

He checked behind him and found his return cut-off. Panic threatened to grip him, unaware of Elthas' steeled gaze. Options thinning, Lye willed upon the aide of the Shadow Plane. Then, like a switch flipped, all ailments lifted. Unlike the the other world, Lye felt his connection to the shadow plane stabilize. Holding himself between here nor there became effortless - part in Elthas' plane and part in his own shadow plane.

Lye rose, eyes meeting his enemy. The sweltering heat still lashed out at Lye's skin, forcing him to shed his arctic furs. Like tinder, they lit aflame at his feet, unable to withstand the full brunt of this new reality.

"Elthas," Lye greeted. He drew his enchanted knives from their scabbard upon the utterance of Famine's name.

Blades drawn, a sudden interruption cast Theo and Earlwin into the fray. From nothing, they appeared and also collapsed upon the weight of this realm. Their weapons fell to the ground of the mirrored forest and attempted screams became guttural struggles for air. Their flesh singed, blistered and boiled. Then, the two brothers lit aflame, thrashing as the life drained from their bodies in an utterly violent manner.

Lye, keeping his focus on his enemy, stepped forward and free from his colleagues' final struggles.

"You threatened me in my home, taunted me with secrets, and left an invitation on my doorstep to this..." He gestured to the blazing woods around him. "This hell..."

His arms fell to his side and grip tightened on the hilts of his weapons.

"Well, you have my undivided attention."

Elthas, son of clan Belthasar, looked upon Lichensith Ulroke as he truly was.

He nodded casually towards the assassin, understanding the gravity of the situation. His eyes studied the man carefully, the other two who died in the mysterious alternate plane were inconsequential. Elthas had a job to do. Do I really need a reason to do the right thing...? Does Amari even really matter? Elthas considered the situation at hand very carefully. He wanted to be absolutely certain he could speak to Lichensith and perhaps reach him if he could. The battle would only be one rung of the ladder. There was a many tiered puzzle that needed to be solved. In his own way, Elthas knew he had done the right thing. Either way...one of them was going down. Elthas looked at the man very carefully. He did not show any emotion on his own face, he merely stared forward. Perhaps coldly, more coldly than he initially meant to. But without realizing it he observed that he, Elthas, had much in common with Lichensith. Under different circumstances they may have been allied...maybe.

Elthas could feel the weight of the burning inferno around the two of them. "Needed to bring you out here so we could talk." Elthas continued. "Figured that given the circumstances, you were not game for speaking socially about your charge." Elthas considered the time he had spent with Amari and had gotten to know her. He knew there was no future for he and Amari, but she had at least become a friend. Her image reminded him of why he was there with the enemy present. "For all it's worth I respect the fact that you did not know." But alas, his heart belonged to the mortal woman named Hylda Terrentius and perhaps it would always be so..."But your attempt to break the girl brought me to her...it was an unexpected circumstance. In the Antifirmanent I spoke to something that the body you were breaking housed. A sort of chain connects this entity to the body. You have stumbled upon a piece of a much larger puzzle that does not belong to me, you, or anyone."

In the short and brief time he had talked to Amari...he had grown to respect the entity. He did not have a name for whatever race Amari belonged to...only that there was a power hidden deep within the entity. He looked at Lichensith for a long moment. "So here's the thing. I know its probably too late for you to stop and redeem yourself in this matter. What has happened with me, you, Amari...was a lot more than the mere game that we are about to play." His eyes never left Lihensith. "So I have given you something." Elthas said. "What you do with that information is entirely up to you." Though in his mind, he had already committed to the idea of fighting Lichensith. Simply to fight the man. The spiritual entity calling herself Amari was of little consequence at that point. It was even that Elthas hated Lichensith, his own feelings mattered very little where Lichensith was actually concerned.

Elthas stood a few feet away from Lichensith, facing him directly. The Phantaria gate closed down behind Lichensith nearly as an after thought. Elthas knew he was now trapped in this blazing inferno with one of the most dangerous men on Althanas. And Elthas...was not afraid.

"So," began the elf's counterpart. "You put me through all this trouble..." He pointed his blade at Elthas with a leer. "...for that?"

The two men that were tasked with helping him smoldered behind him. Columns of smoke spiraled into the air from ashen statues, held twisted in agony and horror. Lye stepped away from them, at terms with his unexpected loss. Already, this elf claimed two of his men and long term advocates of the Crimson Hand. With his grip firm and anger tempered only by his curiosity, the assassin began a slow and wide pace around his opponent.

"The whole world is a piece to some puzzle or another. There is always some calamity that waits on a butterfly's whisper," Lye chastised, eyes fixed and studious of the specter before him. "You, me, this place: all parts of something larger by one means or another."

Lye's boots stopped on the charred earth to Elthas' side. Both men faced opposite directions, gazes locked in anticipation of one another.

"You've given me nothing," Lye spat, teeth bared with the rage induced by the elf's actions. "I'm not so crass as to deny a man his final words, but I will be damned to accept this lunacy for anything more than what it is."

The fires raged behind Lye. Trees as tall as the blackened sky and as wide as houses burned in an everlasting orange fire. In a colorless land of ashen grass and grey dirt, the assassin's piercing green gaze and firelight pale skin stood stark contrast. His mere existence in the Antifirmament proved testament to his will and power.

"If you have no useful reason for your crimes against my house, then make honest on your threat." Lye's feet sifted and purchased a firm footing. "Amari is my charge, the Sanctum is my home, and those two were brothers of my cause." Lye's head nodded to the husks of Theo and Earlwin. "So if all this has been to talk, then talk and stop wasting my time."

"Or," he hissed. "Prepare your steel."

He is insane...he did not listen. Elthas for a moment, as Lichensith walked towards him, had a sad expression on his face. In a lot of ways, his opponent was a pathetic man. That does not mean he is any less dangerous. Elthas held his spectral blades at bay, listening to the acid-edged words that his foe spouted. He shook his head. "That's your reply then?" Elthas said with sadness in his voice, the choice had been made. All around him, the inferno swirled about the ruined trees. Gnarled barks were consistently blasted by the scorching waste. Elthas respected his opponent, but made no mistake about it, the man was his enemy. Elthas smiled at that point. Around the wraith, the spectral mantle began to ripple in anger. Though Elthas was physically calm, he felt rage in his heart. Rage at the fact that the narrow-minded man had made his decision. There will be blood. Elthas thought to himself and turned towards Lichensith. "So be it." Elthas suddenly said.

And he attacked...

Never one to waste needless words, the wraith understood that there would be no more words exchanged with the dangerous man before him. Elthas was on the move, best speed, he had summoned the dark power from within. He knew the battle would be ugly, there was nothing heroic about what was about to happen. But it had become a necessary evil. The glaring sun over head, was barely visible through the thick layer of debris and hot winds. The very ground itself was ablaze with a constantly glowing inferno. The wraith readied his spectral daggers and prepared them for their greatest challenge yet. Elthas moved into a tight combat stance, his eyes focused on the task of defeating the man before him. He observed that the man's own blades were made of titanium...or at least he guessed that was their metallurgic composition.

Stay focused. Elthas gathered his speed and would move at best speed throughout the remainder of the battle. There was no need to hold back. With his eyes narrowed, Elthas moved quickly, and at supernatural speeds. His body had a glow of rippling darkness about it as he moved on the assault. He hoped it would be enough to land the first strike. Elthas slashed at the middle of Licihensith's body. He was attempting a twin-pronged cleaving style maneuver. His spectral blades had a shadowy aura that were accented by the inferno swirling around him. He attempted to cleave in a downward motion, putting his best speed and might in the attack. It was a long shot, but he was hoping to catch Lichensith off guard.

As he slashed he thought of many matters. The battle with Lichensith reminded him of his battle against his other enemy, Yosef Terrentius. There were similar circumstances. As he slashed he summoned up all his anger, and hatred for Lichensith. The man had made Amari suffer tenfold, and for such a deed, Elthas would make him pay. His body moved as a blur as he attacked, and set the stage for the battle that would occur without hesitation. The time for words was over, now was the time for action.

The inferno blazed on eternally around him as he prepared to fight his enemy.

Elthas' final words proved all the provocation needed to announce his intentions. The elf moved with a haze of fervor and his already translucent limbs lashed out like wisps of wind. Blades, spectral and smoky like glass threatened blood but Lye violently denied his foe's inhuman agility with that of his own. Steel, enchanted by the curse of the horsemen of the apocalypse, met ghostly blades. The clash of ethereal and physical rang out in a haunting toll unheard in the mortal coil. Feet firmly rooted, Lye blunted the blow, and forced the onslaught away from him.

As Elthas' weapons left contact, a chip of steel followed suit. Likewise, a mark from the curse of famine left its haunting touch on the specter's tools. The assassin buckled at the knees, dropped, and rappelled away from his assailant. As he skid to a stop in the snows of ash, Lye snapped his fingers to evoke the wrath of his forgotten powers upon Elthas. The ground in which the elf prepared his next assault began to cool and crackle. The embers of the Antifirmament faded and hissed, preparing to unleash an unholy flame to rival the one which consumed the forest around them.

Brow low and eyes narrow, Lye bore his teeth to Elthas. Though ghosts may not bleed, the assassin resolved to see Elthas suffer.

The clang of the two weapons temporarily joined, clashed and sent sparks of energy everywhere. Elthas noticed that his spectral blade glowed with a dark energy that swelled off the man's own weapon and into his own. Elthas grinned at that point, he was not afraid. He knew that his opponent would be strong, so he readied himself for the journey that would occur. As the blades collided, Elthas readied himself. He saw his opponent bound off, Elthas's own eyes were quick. He was able to map the trajectory of his foe in his mind and made a point to cross reference the man's combat style.

Elthas was a fast study.

He saw the ethereal energies that swirled through the air from Lichensith's body. Energy that swirled from Lichensith flowed towards Elthas and he observed. He kept that dangerous smile on his face. Again, Elthas was not afraid of his enemy. His eyes were narrowed and he prepared to react. For a moment, he wanted to simply will himself out of the way. But another thought passed through his mind. No. I must overwhelm him. The fires of the inferno around him blinked for a moment as a new power was released from Lichensith. The scorched earth beneath ELthas did crackle and break at the weight of the man's assault.

And yet, Elthas smiled.

Used to pain and suffering, there was little that Lichensith could do that would marr Elthas. Elthas considered the glowing taint on his spectral blades as he felt the release of the man's power. At that point, right when the blast was about to erupt all around him...Elthas acted. Power coursed and burned through the wraith as he was assaulted by Lichensith, but Elthas was a crafty one. He moved at top speed, and then, as the energies burned through the air and broke the very earth beneath him, Elthas acted. Summoning one of his blink spells, he powered through the skilled attack. Elthas moved as a blur might appear. He didn't avoid the attack...instead he took it dead on.

Though he didn't have any kind of enhanced endurance, he was still capable of survival. And survive he did. The wraith moved forward, and covered the ground between himself and Lichensith knowing full well he had used one of his three available blinks. Energy that had been summoned by Lichensith burned and swirled around Elthas but he simply found the pain delicious. His eyes were narrowed as he looked at Lichensith. The smile, still on Elthas's face. "You don't know the meaning of pain." Elthas taunted and began to prepare his spectral daggers once more. He did not swing just yet...he merely floated there in front of Lichensith, as if daring him to act.

A blossom of azure flame erupted from the desolate earth where Elthas stood. Lye did not hear screams nor did he see the telltale struggle to fight off impending death. Instead, the blur of speed and trailing wisps of chilling flame shot from the frigid pyroclasm. As flickers of blue flame peppered his ghastly presence, Lye noticed a single eerie detail amidst the flurry of his opponent's agility.

A smile.

The assassin's lip flared and teeth clenched. The weight of this place hung heavy in his mind, forcing him to maintain a delicate balance between two planes while Elthas existed in only one. Here, the elven wraith did not fear death, nor pain, nor fatigue. For what Lye thought as a fight between them, Elthas merely smiled and stood defiant. This dawning reality sent a chill down the hardened assassin's spine. Lye knew his time here was indeed, "borrowed".

As his foe glided effortlessly in front of him, Lye felt a pang of doubt. Elthas readied his knives, a threat Lye feared from the spirit realm and one he aimed to avoid.

The assassin recoiled like twilight shadows from the flicker of a candle. He placed a fair space between his opponent and felt the heel of his boot press against the gnarled roots of a scorched Concordian tree. The gears of his mind spun with options to combat this ethereal threat. Something in the Antifirmament, in Elthas' world, had to be of use.

Lye's glance trailed to the statuesque figures of his fallen comrades, then to the swirling pyre of frosty blue and blazing red, and finally to the grimacing specter which wore Lye's flames with a jeering pride. A plot brewed and thickened in his mind. Lye readied to act.

"Pain," Lye scoffed. "What does a dead man know of pain."

The assassin pressed his weight into the charred trunk of the tree. He lunged headlong at Elthas with cursed blades in his wake. Lye's enchanted steel sped its needle points for Elthas' sternum. From the wake of Lye's flowing silver locks, his left hand arched wide and made ready to render the elf's head from his neck.

With the frost-fire still burning Elthas even as he moved forward, in his blinking maneuver, the Wraith waited.

His eyes were quick and he saw the man's counter preparation. As Lichensith struck back, Elthas moved against the fellow's forward momentum. Stopping his blink movement in a moment, Elthas saw the attack towards his chest first. He figured another attack would come, so he risked something. With the smile still on his face, at the pain he was feeling, Elthas let Lichensith's taunts hang in the air for a moment. Elthas suddenly dashed forward [i]and into Lichensith's attack. Elthas knew what and who he was.

He doubted any normal combatant would have tried something that crazy, that suicidal.

But Elthas was not a normal combatant. He was there to prove a point...he had a lot on the line with that battle. As he moved forward he stopped directly in front of Lichensith. The man's attack did puncture his chest, but it had a different reaction. Because of Elthas's wraith-like nature there were no organs to pierce. Instead, the cursed blades struck his spectral body. Elthas could feel the negative effect of Lichensith's weapons playing on his mind and soul. Dangerous.

He knew his actions were risky, but fortune favoured the bold.

When the second portion of the attack came, Elthas continued at that point.

He decided to duck, with the man's weapon still in his chest. He didn't know how or why, maybe luck? But he ducked. The man's second hand strike sliced a few strands of Elthas's hair that burned into ash in turn. Elthas kept the smile on his face the whole time. He had taken a considerable amount of damage, and was taking a considerable amount of damage from those accursed weapons his foe wielded.

Now, as Elthas was directly in front of Lichensith, he acted.

"Time to return the favour." He said with that eternally taunting smile. He was trying to get under Lichensith's skin, mess with the man's fragile mind. He would make the man pay for everything he had done to Amari. And planned to do. "From Hell's heart, I stab at thee." Elthas said, and at that close proximity, Elthas acted. Moving with his own forward momentum, Elthas attempted to stab at the man's oblique section with his left arm. He would make sure his spectral weapon feasted adequately that day.

Ghosts were like memories - real but an illusion of what once was. Once physical and now a haunting remainder of shade, spirits to not obey the laws of man. As Elthas fell upon his enchanted blade, designed to combat such a threat, Lye cursed his nativity. Feet planted from the blow, he could only watch on as the viper's bite of Elthas' dagger fell into him. Trapped between realms, subject to both physical and corporeal, Lye's unusually hardened body failed to resist his foe's curved weapon. It sank deep and pain fired through his body like blaze upon tinder. The dull thud of Elthas' hand crudely informed Lye that the blade penetrated to its hilt.

Eyes wide and lungs expelled of breath, the assassin twisted and tore his tanto from the flaming spirit. He jerked his body away into a forced roll. Every torn muscle and rendered bit of flesh screamed out in Lye's mind. His foe's blade left his side, but the damage remained. Scalding ash and ember clung to Lye's leather carapace and singed his canvas leggings. Pain shot through the wound as it too rolled against the scorched earth and sent the assassin sprawling.

"Gyak-- Damn it," he cursed. Lye recovered a knelt stance, hand pressed against his sides where spectral steel drank of his blood. Smatterings of scarlet fell to the colorless soil, hissed, and charred to blackness. He pulled his hand away, confirming his wound visually as crimson ichor shimmered in the eerie light of the Antifirmament.

Past his hand, the glow of heated steel caught his eye as well as two statuesque columns of human coal. Theo's axe and Earlwin's longsword.