Desire and Loss [Closed]

[Hysteria]

It had been nearly a year since Eiskalt. Regrets like flies had followed Talen ever since. It was these failures that had driven from the idle luxury of the Ixian Castle. He had entered into a search for something he couldn’t express, for a goal he didn’t understand. For months he had roamed the through Alerar, up into the mountains where the plague dragon had fallen, and down across the ocean to Scara Brae. He had only found death on his journey. No life, no joy; just death.

He was back in Radsanth now. The city of the Ixian Knights, which Talen had been dodging like scorned ex-lover for months. He had come because of the Citadel. The vast building, run by monks was one of the few places in the world where you were guaranteed not to be killed by whomever you were meeting. In this case it was Lye Ulroke, one of the masterminds behind the war in Eiskalt, but in the end one that had succumbed to the runaway destruction like everyone else.

If Talen had been honest with himself, then he knew very well that the assassin might not appear. The youth had to trust some rather tenuous links in the underworld in order to get a letter to him. There was a very good chance that it had been lost, or discarded, or even ignored by Lye himself. What Talen knew though is that he needed to try. If Lye discarded the message, then Talen would accept that eventuality.

The sun had peaked over the horizon some hours ago on the imaginary world the monks of the Citadel had crafted for Talen. The light came through the tree canopy and sent long shadows and dappled light across the grass below. The trees were huge, but spaced far apart. It was only their extended canopies that touched, while below short grass rippled beneath the wind’s light caress.

Talen was leaning against one of these giant trees and looking up towards the leaves high above. Talen was in his normal child form; a kid, no older than thirteen with short messy black hair and a slight look of indigence. His cloths were simple, a black button up shirt and similarly black pants. The colour scheme was suitably monochromatic for the youth, with only his blue eyes being any sort of colour.

The youth’s plan was about as complex as his age. He was going to beat the snot out of Lye, and then demand answers.

[Lye]

The past weeks would have broken kings, heroes, and saints. The assassin was none of these and perhaps his sanity maintained under the rouse he was never sane; something lost under the pitch black waters of his past. He lost his throne, his dignity, and had been reduced to a dog on a traitor's leash.

Lye gripped at the mangled scar which freshly resided over his heart. With each hate-filled beat, he felt Madison's Briar seeds constrict upon it as a constant reminder. Anywhere, at anytime, she could snap her fingers and drop him to a shallow grave. His teeth clenched at the thought of his new "master".

The assassin's fury was feral, relentless, and overpowering.

Her cage would not last.

For now, Lye valued the little freedoms for which we was permitted. Standing in Citadel's halls, breathing in the stagnant odor of fatigue, surrounded by loss, he understood and appreciated freedom. Were it not for her distractions in Slavar, Lye would still be locked within the four walls he had built with his own hands. Were it not for a letter delivered to him by one of his personal ravens, he would not be sitting in the Ai'Brone's play pen.

A well known figurehead of the Ixian forces, Talen Shadowalker invited him through great effort for a visit. He picked this time, and this location. After months of captivity, this boy invited the Phantom Tyrant to stretch his legs. It would not protect him from a caged animal's fury.

How foolish.

The monks worked their witchcraft. Lye's senses ebbed and flowed in the torrent of their masterful deception. Before long, he found himself among the grassy forest to which Talen had designed. As shapes and colors sharpened, Lye fell his verdant gaze upon the gothic teen. A twisted expression of amusement and anxiety disfigured Lye's features.

"I got your message," Lye spilled from bared teeth. His gloved hands drew the Four Horsemen's cursed blades of War.

"Let me say," he continued with a glint of otherworldly amusement, "I heard about your loss. Such a damned shame."

His posture dropped, the wind teased at the canopy, and the dog readied for playtime.

[Hysteria]

“Loss?” Talen’s eyes narrowed at the throw away words.

They were callous; smug even. The little warrior wanted to engage in a battle of words. He wanted to shout, to scream and even to cry. There was so much bubbling below the surface that he didn’t know where to start even if he was going to let lose. Instead he did what he had been doing ever since the war; he suppressed it. Every fleck of rage, ever scream of anger and fear, Talen pushed them down into the pit of his stomach. Talen was good as suppressing his emotions, so good that he sometimes forgot he had them. Instead of rage there was calm. Instead of words there was action. The consequences? Damn the consequences.

A small hand lifted out to the boy’s side and darkness dripped from its open palm. The prevalida of the blade that formed had been tainted black by the enchantments placed over it, but the Abysmal Cutter was every bit as strong as Talen needed. The dark metal suited him and the garish white hilt barely noted. The darkness hardened to metal, and rage to revenge.

“Do you need all your limbs to talk?” asked Talen, his tone cold and eyes narrowed, “Perhaps I could take one or two?”

The little warrior thrust his free hand towards Lye. Darkness lifted out of the grass by Talen’s feet like a wave rising above the ocean. It twisted and fell around Talen to engulf him in its dark confines and so cloaked in darkness the boy charged forwards with hands clasp tightly around his blade. His hands ripped the sword through the air twice and each time the blade hummed with dark magic as it split ghostly versions of itself free. The dark blades, near perfect copies of their original twisted in an arch through the air towards their pale target. Talen doubted that they would strike him as they emerged from the darknes, but that didn’t matter. The game was afoot, and Talen followed the blade’s advance in a tide of shadows.

[Lye]

Take?

A low, guttural chuckle escaped Lye's pale lips. Talen's advance, swarming in his magics, reminded the assassin of something primal, something pure.

Anger.

Still, in the brief window the boy provided, Lye's mind fluttered a single phrase from his past. It was something that now, after losing everything, he understood.


"Only the rash gives in to emotion, the man who feels nothing gets far."

- Seth Dahlios

And the assassin didn't feel it. Not here at least. Not in this playground of illusions designed by old, decrepit men. Not as much as Talen Shadowalker.

This battle was nothing short of a joke, especially compared to the months of torture Lye sustained at the hands of Aurelianus Drak'Shal.

Talen's blades hissed through the chilled air. One of the many phantom blades split a platinum lock from Lye's head. The assassin's blade of war met another blow in a rain of sparks as prevalida bit into steel. Real from fake, Lye ducked, dodged and weaved. The boy's strength and speed boasted the brunt of his fury, but lacked the finesse for mortal wounds. Though several of the enchanted weapon's edges found their way into the assassin's flesh, the pain felt hollow.

With the back of his hand, he lashed out and caught the final blow of Talen's attack. He clenched his teeth as the high grade weapon bit deep into flesh and even the killer's steel strength bone. Through the pain, the dethroned king tensed and deflected the blow. It took a chunk of meat in tow.

Lye repelled from the last of the onslaught and willed his dark magics upon the underbrush at Talen's feet. Like something from a book, the leaves, dirt, and dust took to the air in a cloud of debris. Lye took the momentary cover to slip into the shadows of a nearby tree. Then, before the smoke screen cleared, the shadows swallowed him from sight.

He felt his heart beat with adrenaline. Fight or flight had taken hold and with each beat he felt Madison's presence. Each beat pumped a warmth that trailed from his gouged hand. In his cloak, Lye examined the wound and found it to be deep. He smiled.

"Interesting," Lye muttered to the boy. His voice did not emanate from his location, instead it was thrown to the trees and acted as a whisper upon the wind. "I thought you had questions, Talen."

As he spoke, the assassin took care to let his flowing vitae spill only upon the edge of his blades. Each viscous surge painted the steel briefly before the dagger drew it into itself. Doing so, the chips where prevalida met steel mended and the blade honed to a razor edge.

"If you really wanted to do me harm, you would have picked a more suitable location. Your threats mean nothing here."

He took another brief moment to sheath one of his two knives and uttered the word to evoke the curse of famine upon its edge. Meanwhile, he began to shift himself from shadow to shadow without a leaf rustled, twig broken, or waft of air. The assassin was on the move. He had knowledge of the boy's affinity to darkness, but the extent of which he aimed to test. As he moved, Lye softly laughed at Talen - provoked him.

He was everywhere and nowhere, a tactic bought time to see how much fun he could draw out of this meeting.

[Hysteria]

“Tsk…” the sharp exhale slipped from Talen’s mouth.

The sound was as much annoyance of the distraction Lye had used as his own failure to deal any real damage. He brushed a hand across his face to clear it of a few tangled leaves before lifting his blue eyes to the vacant spot his opponent had been a second before.

The darkness that had swallowed the boy to mask his fury of attacks sank into the ground to form a dark bubbling mire. It simmered just above the surface of the ground with the occasional bubble breaking away only to pop and fade in the light. Talen knew his attacks had struck, but the feeling of failure clung to the back of his mind. He was alone now, surrounded by trees and the nefarious Lichensith. The platinum haired assassin’s words rippled through the leaves like the wind and Talen didn’t bother to try and locate him.

“Was it worth it?” asked Talen, “…are you content?”

The youth’s sword puffed out of existence and in its place materialised his rifle. The dark metal clinked ominously as the youth gripped it with both hands and pointed it at his feet. A large pop emanated from the weapon, with a dull thud as the projectile struck the ground near his feet. Unseen energy emanated from the impact as it flowed around the youth. It completely engulfed Talen and continued further to create a dome around him. Talen closed his eyes and let the energy feed him information. Within its area he could feel everything.

“Would you do it again?”