The Damned and the Divine

[Witchblade]

Closed.

Witchblade stood in the shadow of Concordia forest. The thick canopy above her blocked out so much of the waning day's light that it turned the forest floor below nearly black, to human eyes at least. Hers pierced through that melancholic darkness easier than through the bright rays of sunlight that stung her night sensitive eyes. As the wind rustled the leaves high above her, it brought with it the stink of human. The stench was so thick and cloying it nearly choked her. Even feet away from the bustling, stone monstrosity before her, she could still smell it, as it clung to the very surroundings.

I may as well be trapped in the middle of Radasanth...

She stayed in Concordia for the solitude, and because it was the only place for a creature like her. Humanity and her did not mix. Certain instincts were getting harder and harder to control as of late, and she didn't need another warrant out for her head. Not right now. But when humanity came crawling out from behind their walls, and starting encroaching on her territory, well, no one could really blame her if a couple accidents happened then. After all, everyone has the right to protect their home.

The sun dipped a little lower on the horizon, Witchblade watched as it began to bathe the large, grey castle in orange. It looked ablaze. Every glass window facing the west reflected the light like fire. The humans that milled around like insects paid no heed to it. She's been watching them and this place for some time now. As night encroached, activity began to dwindle. More of the humans sought shelter in their stone fortress, fleeing the wilds of the forest. Men who looked like soldiers crossed the ramparts between the towers and prowled the lawn in front of the building.

Several carts drawn by tired old horses moved to the open portcullis. They were stopped. Words were exchanged between them, but with the wind, even her sensitive ears could strain to gather nothing more than the cadence of their voices. The carts were quickly moved inside.

What is this place?

Curiosity always did get the best of her.

Shifting, Witch began to move through the thick underbrush. Her feet travelled over leaves and logs, through ferns and flowers, while making only the barest whisper. With her dark clothes, she looked like nothing other than a shadow or wraith as she moved.

Coming around to the back of the castle, she found the remains of a ruined tower. Rubble littered the grass, crushing it underfoot. Some of the pieces appeared to be embedded deeply into the soft earth, giving evidence to the force with which they slammed into the ground. The place reeked of an old battle. Of blood and sweat and fear. Looking up along the castle, she could still see the partially collapsed rooms that once attached the tower to the other structure. They gaped open like screaming mouths and wide eyes, showing thick, broken beams of wood. And a single piece of torn and sun bleached cloth, trapped by rock, that flapped in the breeze.

Seeing no one else in the area, Witch stepped from the shadows and approached the crumpled tower. She stood out like a snake in a rabbit's den the moment she left the relative safety of the woods. As she drew closer, she could see signs that the humans were attempting to rebuild, even if slowly. A couple carts stood off to the side--hidden amongst the rubble from where she had stood--half filled with their heavy burden of stone. Their wheels were half sunk into a mess of turned up earth and mud. They must have been forced to stop from the recent rain.

She rounded the corner of the ruined tower and her sensitive ears picked up the sound of talking coming from behind her. Stiffling the growl that built within her throat, Witch ducked into the rubble. She found the deepest shadows that she could, twisting between boulders that were bigger than her and listening tot he tinkle of smaller rocks that moved out of her way.

"...hate being stuck on the night patrol."

The voice was male and sounded young to her.

She ducked down and wrapped the black cloak around her body as their smell wafted towards her on the win.

"I prefer it to the day shift." Another male, his voice much deeper and with a gravelly pitch to it that made it sound like rocks tumbling down a mountain. "Less people to deal with and you can usually get in a nip or two if no ones payin' 'tention."

As they talked, she could hear them getting closer. They appeared to just be making rounds. She could only hope they weren't going to stay.

The wind carried a snort to her. "Drinking on the job again?"

Movement suddenly caught the attention of her crimson eyes and she watched as two men rounded the rubble merely feet from her without even noticing. They didn't even glance in her general direction. Their clothes were plain, browns and greens and nothing that she recognized. One wore a sword strapped to his side and the other a spear strapped to his back. She couldn't see their faces too well and noticed no badges or insignia.

"Have to do somethin' to pass the time." Said the blonde man with a twerk of her mouth.

They kept moving passed her, eventually showing her their backs as they continued their conversation. It would be so easy for her to slip out now and kill them both, but she didn't. She resisted the urge that clawed it's way up from the pits of her stomach. Once they were out of sight, the feeling, the pressure within her, eased and she was able to swallow instinct.

Standing, Witch craned her neck to look at the ruined rooms, wondering just what she was doing here.

[Silence Sei]

The setting sun appeared as a magnificient collage of orange and reds in the otherwise blue and black sky. The owls started their serenade; some souht mates while others claimed territory. He could hear the guards change from the day shift to the night shift, which were merely two shifts in his established four shift system. Ixian Castle was attacked more often than a drunk in the Peaceful Promenade, or Jensen Ambrose relatively anywhere on Althanas. Yet tonight, there was a quiet peace within the dusk sky.

He sighed as the door to his quarters opened and slammed against the wall with a metallic tang sound. Sei Orlouge, former leader of the Ixian Knights, should have known better than to think such silence would last.

"Sir, there's been a---" the guard was a stocky fellow, with small hints of flesh that crept out of the armor he barely fit into. He was of averae size, and in desperate need of a hair cut, what with his golden bangs in front of his eyes. He had been stopped mid-sentence by the hand of Sei Orlouge, the latter never even turning around to acknowledge the man's presence.

" My girls are the leader of Ixian Castle now, Bellamy," the psychic made sure his internal 'tone' was direct. He hated the idea of still being called upon to lead when the position had been passed down to the renowned 'Daughters of the Dragon'. It was a simple four-person system, much like the shift work the Mystic had enabled to keep from any one group of guards from overexertion. Anita Orlouge handled the politics of leading the country, Kyla made battle decisions, Emma was responsible for defenses, and little Ella saw to the day-to-day duties of the castle's inhabitants. The fact that Bellamy, a guard known for being the last informed about anything, would come into his private room trying to give him intel did nothing short of irk the powerful wizard that was the Avatar of Alerar.

Bellamy tried to open his mouth again, only to once again be stopped, this time by a voice from behind him.

"I have sent Jones to take care of the situation. You really think Father would have left me in charge of the home front if I did not know how to do my own psychic scans?" The voice's mistress was a girl in her later teen years, raven hair flowing down to her back and swaying with each step she took. She wore bifocals much to small to be practical, but did well to illuminate her crystalline blue eyes. Her armor covered everything from the shoulders down, a step beyond what most of the 'battle hardened' females of Althanas seemed to don nowdays. She gently pushed Bellamy aside, and walked to her fathers side, joining him in facing her back towards the inept patrol.

Emma Orlouge was nothing if not efficient.

However, commanding the attention of 'Jones' had piqued Sei's interest. The Mystic raised an eyebrow and shifted his eyes towards his daughter, who returned the inquisitive look. "Tell me what exactly he's taking care of..."

~~~~~~

A ood twenty feet behind Witch, crouched in the shadows of Concordia Forrest, stood a man in a long brown trenchcoat. In each of his hands were six-shooter revolvers, the steel clean and immaculate, almost glimmering the encroaching moons light off of the weaponry. His eyesight had not been with him since birth, which was just as well since his other senses were heightened to the point where he could literally hear heartbeats from long distances. His white hair danced in the wind as thunder struck from out one of his guns, the bullet screaming through the air as it approached the back of the stranger who dared try to infiltrate Ixian Castle. Not one to be sparse with his bullet usage, the infamous Oreo Jones, second-in-command of the Ixian Knights Mercenary Division blasted another shot of calamity, also aimed towards her back. He ended the symphony of gunfire with a final bullet, an exclamation point meant for the back of the girl's head.

"If that don't put 'er down," Jones' thick southern accent came through as he whispered, "it'll sure as hell leave 'er hurtin'."

[Witchblade]

She picked her way up the side of the rubble. The path of her worn leather boots pushed aside smell pebbles and stones, that clattered against their larger brethren in a cacophony of sound as loud as thunder to her sensitive ears. She stopped and paused every few feet, allowing the small avalanche to subside and the relative quiet to resume, but each time she did, she heard not even a whisper of someone near her. The presence of life surrounded this place so much, she could never hope to feel anyone coming up on her. So Witch had to rely upon her other senses, though the twilight always played havoc upon her eyes. Neither dark nor bright, they had a hard time finding the perfect adjustment.

Glancing up at the stone ledge merely a few feet from her head, Witchblade tensed her legs and jumped, her fingers catching the rough surface and easily holding her meagre weight. Below her, rocks tumbled and shifted and ground against each other. With a simple tug she pulled herself up and found herself standing in what might once have been a nice room. There were remnants of what had once occupied it strew about the floor. Some kind of torn and coloured tapestry and bits of wood so splintered and smashed she could no longer recognize what they had once been shaped into. But at the far end, wedged into the only corner left, was a simple wooden door that still remained, despite all the chaos and ruin.

Witch stepped towards it right as something slammed into her back a second before the sound of thunder split the air. She stumbled. Before she could even turn around another one slammed into her. Already off balance, she fell to one knee and heard a third whistle by above her head, exploding into the stone some feet away from her.

Bullets?

Confusion was quickly followed by pain.

Looking down, she saw blood the colour of the deepest ocean pouring out of her chest in two places. The skin was torn and ragged, as was her shirt, already nearly soaked straight down the front and clinging to her deathly pale skin.

Realizing the shots had gone through her back, Witch felt her face drain of what little colour it possessed and quickly took off her rucksack, ignoring the spikes of pain that sent shock waves through her chest and back. Practically ripping the straps open in her haste, she reached in only to find a white dragon head popping out and butting her in the nose. Ignoring his playfulness, she practically dumped him onto the stone floor and examined him from head to toe, well tail, to determine that neither of the bullets had hit him.

A line of red welled across his side from where one of them had grazed him.

Growling low in her throat, Witch dropped the bag. Still crouched, she turned towards the forest and reached out with every sense that she had. Her mind stretched and pulled and eventually, she felt the presence of a human hiding among the branches and leaves.

Oblivious to the steady flow of blood still pumping out of her chest, Witch burst from the room at top speed. She traversed the open ground between the castle and Concordia in mere seconds. Her ears picked up that sound of thunder against over the whistling of the wind, but his aim must have been off from her sudden burst.

Breaking through the treeline in a crash of branches and shower of leaves, Witchblade jumped at the nearest tree. Her claws dug into the bark and wood and she pulled herself up onto the thick and sturdy limb.

She paused here, as the darkness of Concordia fell over her and her eyes quickly adjusted, allowing her to see even better than in the day light. A couple yards up, she heard the rustling of dry leaves as someone shifted their feet restlessly on the ground. She smirked and jumped off the branch. The wood creaked and then exploded as another bullet meant for her slammed into it. As she landed on the next branch, she instinctively jumped down to the forest floor right as a shower of splinters rained down upon her.

Realizing speed would be her asset, Witch ran the moment her feet touched the ground. She twisted and turned through the trees, jumping over logs, and skirting ditches. It took her only a few seconds to see the long trench coat of her quarry. But the moment she laid eyes on him, all she saw was the glimmer of metal in the last rays of the sun.

Witch drove to the side as another two bullets went whizzing by her. She heard them thunk into soft, wet wood as her hands tore up the earth and she pushed herself forward. Once in her sights, Witchblade shot out a telekinetic blast at the man as she pushed the last few feet between them. It slammed into his shoulder and he twisted and turned, taking a single step back from the force of it.

He turned back just as she came up on him. His reflexes were good, and the only thing that saved him from a sure goring. Instead, her claws caught coat and the barest hint of the soft, pink flesh along his stomach. She felt it part and smelt the sweet tang of his blood. A grunt escaped his lips as the pain registered. He twisted back as she brought her other hand around in a sweeping arc towards his neck. His right hand came up, her nails gauged along his forearm as he knocked her attack away.

His movements were lightning quick and Witch did not notice her own were slowing. As he blocked with his right, his left raised the gun in his hand. Thunder rent the air as metal tore through her stomach. He pulled the trigger again. This time the bullet tore through her hip and Witch felt her left leg buckle. She switched her weight to her right and threw herself at the man, catching him off guard. They both went tumbling to the forest floor in a mess of limbs and snapping branches.

She landed with a jarring thud on top of her quarry. Pain ripped through the multiple wounds amassing on her body. She ignored it. Before he could completely recover, Witch straddled him, pinning the human to the uneven forest floor as she wrapped her fingers around his throat. Her claws broke skin and a crimson river began to flow down his neck as she squeezed. His eyes bulged. His hand came up to her right. With her free hand, she grabbed his wrist and twisted until bones snapped and broke and he dropped his gun. His mouth opened in a silent scream and she felt the ecstasy of battle overcome her, and the anticipation of taking his life.

His face began to turn a lovely shade of purple.

A grin broke across her face, the stitches holding her lips closed twisting it into something even more macabre and disturbing. Then she felt cool metal pressed against the side of her head. Her eyes glance toward the gun. She blinked. Her nails tore deeper into his throat as he pulled the trigger. Bone and brain and blood exploded out the side of her head.

[Silence Sei]

The sound of bullets leaving the dual chambers sent birds who had decided to rest in the trees flying in every direction. Sei and Emma both looked out the window to fatherly Mystic's quarters, unmoved by the sudden departure of fowl. Bellamy on the other hand, hit his but hard on the redwood flooring. The Orlouges had spared no expense to make sure that Ixian Castle was lavish with the finer things, and that included hardwood floors. Sei's eyes shifted over to Emma, who was already awaiting her father's look with her own. The two, at exactly the same time said "Thayne damnit Jones."

~~~~~

He was alive, barely, the sack of meat that was the intruder now atop him like a lion on a gazelle. His whole body throbbed with pain, is left hand limp upon the ground. He slowly started to move his good hand to try and pry the corpse off of him when his ears picked up something; a hearbeat. It was slow, much slower than that of a normal humans. In fact, if Oreo Jones had not been prone on the ground with the heartbeat in question on top of him, he would have figured the owner of said heart was dead or dying.

"This girl's resilient as all fuck," Jones mumbled as he shoved the injured body of Witchblade off of himself. He thought about putting the rest of his bullets in her head, and making sure she actually stayed dead. However, Ixian Knight policy, as well as Jones own moral code, prevented him from ending the life of the woman right then and there. What fun was the hunt if your prey was already knocked out?

Emma, we got a situation here. The intruder is still alive. Awaiting orders on what to do next. Jones's thoughts were transferred quickly on the hollowed ground that was Ixian Castle. It was a perk of living with some of the strongest telepaths in the world; communication without having to blab your plans to the enemy.

"Take her to the dungeon. While you two were busy having fun, Tobias found her belongings. We're going to investigate them before we interrogate her. I'm sending Laconic to help." Emma Orlouge was always so matter-of-fact with the way she talked. Jones could imagine the irl pushing her glasses up between sentences as she 'spoke' to him. He sighed and awaited his backup, his mind constantly trailing back to how his wrist hurt like a mother--


~~~~

It was over twelve hours with no new information coming from anybody. Though Sei loved the sudden quiet in his castle, curiosity got the better of the silent warrior. As a result, he decided to check in on their newest prisoner, and perhaps see how the medical staff had tended to her wounds. He walked out of his quarters straight to a small room, where a man in full plate armor greeted him with a salute. "Where to, sir?"

"The dungeon, Kristoph," Sei's response caused the man working the elevator to freeze for a minute. When he looked at the orange haired warrior and saw that he was indeed serious, he grabbed onto a rope, and slowly fed it upwards into a hole at the top of the room. As he pushed more and more rope into the hole, the room the two men were in lowered dramatically, passing several floors of barracks and other quarters until finally they arrived at the dungeon.

Emma had done her best to make the cells more accommodating; Sei had given each prisoner the luxury of a bathroom, separated by four walls for privacy. The dungeon doubled as the quarters for most members of the Reformation Squad. He walked past the cells of Lorenor and Dan, each 'cell' door open and filled with trophies from their latest escapades. The more Reformation members worked towards their freedom, the more stuff they were allowed in their cells, and the more leeway they were allowed on the castle grounds. It had been a good setup that had yet to fail, but occasionally Sei would hear complaints about sticking Reformation members with the other prisoners, such as their new guest.

He approached the cell, the suns rays beaming in from the bars on the ceiling. Emma had gotten the maintenance staff to make the dank prison smell more like a real home, complete with baked goods wafting in from the castle's kitchen. It did wonders for the morale of those stuck here, though it did occasionally attract rats. Sei's eyes shifted downwards to the floor, where a small pool of blood had dried underneath the body. He looked at the blood red pupils of the woman, observed her stitched up mouth and raven hair. Why did she seem so familiar.

"Oh hell..." Sei 'spoke' to the body, hoping he could warrant a response that did not involve having to see his own larynx, "....Witchblade?"

[Witchblade]

She drifted in and out of consciousness.

Moments of lucidity came in hard fought fits as she clawed her way out of the soupy darkness that clogged her mind. Yet every time she broke the surface, she felt her head forced right back under against her own powerful will. She contemplated sinking into the deep fog and letting it wash over her, consume her, but hiding deep inside of that tempting oblivion, she felt The Malice patiently waiting for her to give in. Patiently waiting to take over and wreak the havoc it so craved.

So she fought, with everything she had.

Eventually the fog burned off. It was such a subtle and slow process that she barely noticed it until Witch found herself laying on something hard and staring up at a grey, stone ceiling. She didn't recognize it. Not a single crack or cobweb.

For a time, she just laid there without moving. She could feel the walls around her even without seeing them. She could sense each brick and each stone closing in on her and threatening to crush her. Immediately panic began to well within the dark depths of her mind. Long forgotten memories of being confined, experimented on, tortured and left to see if she would live or die began to resurface. She tried to swallow them. They stuck in her throat like bread and her without anything to drink. Her lungs felt restricted and tight and no matter how many deep breaths of air she drew in, it wasn't enough. Just when she thought she couldn't handle it anymore, she felt something shift around her.

Turning her head slightly, Witchblade looked across her cell and watched a man appear before the bars that held her. He appeared only slightly taller than her, though from her prone position it was hard to tell. His blue eyes locked gazes with hers as he looked at her with curiosity and than incredulity. The most prevalent thing about him though, was the mop of bright orange hair sitting stop his head, strands of it falling onto his bland face. A face perhaps she should have recognized, but didn't, for he seemed to know who she was. The voice within her head barely made her flinch, she merely raised her mental guards a little higher in case he had the capabilities to go snooping.

She said nothing to him. Slowly, Witch rolled onto her stomach, feeling the dry crust of ocean blue blood around her cracking and releasing her from it's macabre embrace. Her clothes were caked in it and felt irritating against her skin, scratching along the surface as she moved.

Pulling herself up onto her hands and knees, Witch locked eyes with the stranger beyond her cage, then launched herself at the bars. In the span of a heartbeat her body slammed into the metal as she reached through to grasp at him. The metal vibrated from the hard impact as her hand shot out, but the redheaded human was far more nimble than she anticipated and he jumped back just out of her grasp.

She growled in frustration and wrapped her fingers around the thick pieces of metal, oblivious to the still healing wounds in her back and chest and head that were re-opening and allowing a fresh torrent of blood to leak out. Flexing, Witchblade pulled on the bars. The muscles in her arms bulged and protested, but so did the metal. She felt it begin to give and groan as she pulled it apart.

"LET ME OUT OF HERE!!!" She screamed at him. She didn't even bother using her telepathy, the words filled the prison as the stitches holding her lips together pulled and ripped into flesh.

The bars cried out more and then stopped moving, the space between them several inches bigger but still not enough to let her through. Breathing heavily, she released the bars and then threw herself at them again. And again. And again. Bones cracked and broke and still she continued.

"Stop it."

She ignored him and threw herself against the bars again, feeling ribs in her chest crack and break. Each time she did it, she grew weaker and weaker as the blood flowed from her body and her formidable healing abilities were unable to keep up with the myriad of wounds.

"Stop it!"

"RELEASE ME!"

She threw herself at the stretched bars trying to squeeze herself through to escape.

"Dammit, Witchblade! Stop!"

Her head began to swim and her vision darkened at the edges and slowly spread inward. Shaking her head to clear it, Witch reached out towards the blurry looking human, her chest heaving with her desperate attempt to draw in air. Realizing she would be unable to fit through, Witchblade let out an anguished cry and reached out. A telekinetic forced wrapped around the human's neck and began to squeeze. Even through the growing darkness of her vision she could see his eyes widen in surprise, fingers instinctively rising to grasp at nothing.

She tightened the hold as her vision blackened. When it cleared, she found herself slumped against the bars.

”Witchblade...”

Witch raised her head and glared at the man in front of her. Shifting her weight, the whole room spun uncontrollably. The orange haired man went from the ground to the ceiling and then back again. She reached for the bars to steady herself, only they weren't there anymore. Unable to catch her balance, she fell to her knees with a jarring crack. The vibration travelling through her whole body, but the pain doing little to clear her mind. As the darkness crept up on her vision again, she felt herself fall to the side, but lost consciousness before her body hit the floor.

[Silence Sei]

Sei stood idle as one of his former allies literally tore herself apart in the name of no longer being caged. With each sickening crunch of bones, the Mystic could see the droplets of blood that shot out of the cell and before his feet. Each attempt made the girl weaker and weaker, and Sei soon began to question his daughter’s decision to lock the intruder up. After all, if Witchblade had been so determined to become free here, what lengths could she go to in order to escape the confines that was Ixian Castle?

Still, Sei could sense a darkness in the woman, a malicious presence not her own. He could not just walk away from a person he once called friend, especially one who had made such an obvious cry for help. Witchblade and Sei had once called one another friend, trained under the same cruel sensei to learn the ways of ninjitsu. Sei had not given his martial arts training thought in many months, and he wondered if his fellow student had forgotten her teachings as well.

He reached into the pockets of his pants and withdrew a small set of keys. While no longer in charge of the Castle, many still trusted the former Lord enough to have his own set for situations such as this. Sei’s judgement on such things was just as valuable to the men and women of Ixian Castle as those of the sisters themselves. After finding the proper key, he quickly found it placed into the keyhole, and turned it with a click sound that echoed through the desolate cells of the Ixian dungeon.

He grabbed one of his blood soaked bars, his hands slick on the metal surface, and pulled the gate forward. Sei then took several steps backwards and sat down. The damage Witchblade had done to her body had been nowhere near as severe as what Oreo Jones had done to it, so Sei figured the vicious woman would be up in a matter of hours. He would simply meditate while he waited for her to recover. He had to talk to her.

Just as he had figured, several hours passed before he heard a long moan come from the crumpled pile that was known as Witchblade. She slowly staggered her way up, her eyes locked on Sei as her prey once more. He opened his eyes and watched as her claws twitched, as if she needed to decide whether or not to sodomize him at this point. Her eyes shifted from Sei to the exit of the dungeons several times before she finally rested them on the Mystic, as though she expected some sort of trap.

“I apologize for the army’s hasty decision making, Witchblade,” Sei spoke with the same zen-like ‘tone’ that he had become known for, “I had no idea that you felt so strongly about being imprisoned. We were merely doing it for your own safety. I hope you understand. As a token of good faith, you are free to leave the castle, and I once again apologize.”

Witchblade looked back towards the exit, the distrust of Sei still in her mind. She finally walked past the meditating Mystic and down the hall. She did not even take a second to look back at her altruistic captor. She took one step on the stairs leading to her freedom when Sei began to speak once more.

“However,” he said, his calm ‘voice’ still in check, “the dragon we found with you had been injured. We can not in good conscience let him go out into the wild given his current state. If you leave us, you leave him. This is something I will not back down from Witchblade. I hope you understand.” Sei knew the impact that his words very well might carry with the girl, but he did not care. The dragon was a youngling, not fit yet to survive the terrors of a Concordia night while hurt. He hoped his words would convince the woman to stay, but he steeled himself just in case it had an adverse effect.

[Witchblade]

Witchblade stopped dead in her tracks. Freedom lay just in front of her. She could practically smell it as the air that drifted down the twisting stone staircase, but she could not reach for it. Her heart, the useless organ that it was, began to beat a frantic rhythm inside of her chest. It slammed against her battered ribcage, aching with every shallow breath she drew in through her lungs. She felt none of that pain though. All she could think about was Daegun, her dragon, and the wound that human piece of trash had inflicted upon him for no reason. Now this man stood between her and the only thing she cared about in this world.

Anger coursed through her veins like fire, fed from the dark recesses of her mind. Somewhere, a logical voice told her to calm down, told her The Malice was leaking out and taking over. But it was such a paltry and pathetic thing, and she barely heard it's annoying chattering.

With clenched fists, Witch turned back towards the orange haired man. He looked at her with a calm certainty she did not share. Her crimson eyes burned with fury, and it took every ounce of what little will she had left to stay still.

"Give. Him. Back to me." Her words were careful and measure, and sounded much too calm.

A silence stretched between them as they stared at one another, the bright blue of his eyes clashing with hers, as he stared as if he could look into her very soul. The multiple wounds afflicting her body were healing, slower than normal. Though she showed no outward sign of it, she was tired, and the itch and burn of skin knitting itself back together was as annoying as the ache of bones sliding back into place.

"No." Came his equally calm response.

She snapped.

She threw herself at him with every bit of strength and energy she had left in her body. They'd taken all of her weapons from her, but despite the man knowing her name, he forgot one very important detail; she was the real weapon. Not the pieces of sharpened metal she carried with her.

In the span of a heartbeat Witchblade vaulted the distance between them. Her nails grew out and hardened into razor sharp talons, and she raked them across the space he used to be. More spry than she anticipated, he dodged her attack by stepping back and to the left. Her eyes focused on him and him alone, while her mind thought only of Daegun. Once he was eliminated, she could get him back. She could leave this place and be rid of these humans.

Shifting her weight, and twisting her body, Witch slashed at him again, but once more he stayed just out of reach. Her claws caught nothing but the cool, dungeon air. On the third try, as he moved to back away from her, Witch lashed out with telekinetic energy. She sent a wave of it straight for his legs, hoping to knock him off balance just enough to let her in close that small distance between them, so she could rip his throat out and feel his warm blood flood across her skin.