Of Thawing Fire and Ice Inflamed...

[Malagen]

((Closed to Ira Shinkara. All bunnying approved by both parties.))

A man in black ascended the mountain slope and his female companion followed. The versant was steep and treacherous, its mangled ridges and nooks forcing them to use both hands and feet in their climb. But such difficulty was to be expected halfway up the Jagged Mountains whose craggy peaks loomed above like sentinels with heads up in the clouds. If there was ever a path cut into the mountainside, about a foot and a half of late autumn snow camouflaged it quite successfully, making every step chancy and every plateau a godsend. The wind was steady, invariant; it wasn’t whistling past their ears, it wasn’t throwing snow into their eyes. But it was cold, cold enough to pass through their clothes like a thousand needles, cold enough to make the insides of their thighs numb. There wasn’t a sound to be heard, none save the crunching of the snow and the grunting exhales that manifested themselves with each exertion, not even an occasional voiced thought. Why would it, when there was nothing to be said?

The climb was but the first step of the training that started some five days ago, when Malagen and Ira were still in the flatlands and the Jagged Mountains before them seemed endless, eternal. Unconquerable. The Fallien woman didn’t want to linger amidst the bed sheets for too long, regardless of the pleasures that the two shared. She wanted to better herself, to learn how to be a more formidable warrior, to be taught by the very man whose skills threatened her life not so long ago. Malagen didn’t reject her. This defiance and strength was the reason why he, for the first time in his life, saw a woman as more then just an object that was to be used and discarded. The only thing he demanded from her was commitment, and the climb was the initiation. And as all first tests, it was the hardest.

Ira wasn’t a creature wont to snow and low temperatures. One look at her sun-kissed tan discovered that her country of origin was somewhere far in the south, where they only saw ice when a mage conjured it and where people got sunburns instead of frostbites. But her origin and her lack of resilience bought her no lenience with the barbarian. His pace was constant, his face strict; he was a harsh teacher in a harsh environment, pushing her to the very limits. They slept on the cold snow and hard rock, sitting with their backs leaning against each other, tugging at their clothes to extract every bit of warmth from it. They survived on tough dry meats that made their jaws hurt from chewing. And they haven’t even reached the training grounds yet.

This was the only way Malagen knew how to teach, the way his own mentors forged him into what he was today. Only when Ira stumbled or slipped, she didn’t get whipped like the Dram whipped their trainees for every mistake, not by a leather whip anyways. Instead, his eyes clashed with hers, seeking surrender, but after five days of the rigorous ascent, he found none. There was anger and defiance and stubbornness and pride unlike any he saw in a woman, but never surrender. That was good, he knew; she would need that flare in the following weeks.

It wasn’t that Malagen ceased to care for the woman who managed to invade his personal equilibrium. No, there were still emotions raging inside of him now just as they were back in the New Leaf Inn, when they exchanged countless sizzling caresses and passionate kisses. But there was no room for them now, no room for intimacies and gentleness, not here on the mountain. Right now, they were a weakness. Strength and hardiness were required, and endurance even when your muscles made your grip weak and shaky, even when every breath felt like it was your last. Endurance when you knew you couldn’t go on any longer. Malagen knew how to remain focused on these aspects of himself and render all others irrelevant. He hoped that by the time they were done, Ira would be able to do the same.

Their ascent continued. Malagen didn’t know Jagged Mountains, but he knew his way around mountains; they were aplenty in the frozen northland of Ferioh and he crossed most of them before he came of age. And he knew that sooner or later, they were bound to reach a plateau or a valley that could accommodate their needs. Perhaps it would be today. Perhaps in another five days. Luckily for Ira, it turned out to be the former. The steep slope of mismatched steps that was cut naturally into the mountainside started to flatten gradually until it turned into a flat piece of snow-covered rock some hundred paces in length. To the right, a wall made of ice and snow and stone rocketed skywards almost vertically. On the opposite side, there was the vaguest of trails that narrowed until it was barely wide enough to walk on as it hugged the mountain and snaked its way up its side. There was an opening at the far end of the plateau, a crack in the rock looking more like a cranny then actual cave entrance.

“This looks usable,” Malagen commented, his words probably out of earshot of his companion who still struggled with the final few ridges. His senses did what they were trained to do, what they did best when his head was clear - ascertaining the surroundings. Ira joined him at his side, but there were no congratulations to be had here, no pats on the shoulder. There was no place for that here. She passed the initiation. Good. Now came the time for the first lesson.

“Tell me what you see,” the barbarian said, his voice cold, unwavering, the voice she fancied not.

[Iriah Caitrak]

Cold. It was the one constant in her mind. No matter how much she tried to think of something else it slowly seeped back into the forefront of her thoughts just as the cold itself cut through her clothing as if she wore none. At times she could barely think through it. All she could remember to do was put one leg in front of the other and keep going. One more breath, that felt like tiny shards of ice piercing down her throat and into her lungs. One more push up the side of an unforgiving mountain that cared less about how much she was pushing herself to succeed and even less about whether it killed her. There were a few times when she thought this training would be the death of her. She’d stumble and fall one more time and wouldn’t be able to get up, and Malagen would leave her there to freeze to death. But pushing herself passed limits was what Ira did best and she was doing right now.

Regret over asking Malagen to train her was unacceptable. This was what she wanted. To become a stronger warrior, a stronger person and if enduring the harsh cold was something she had to do she would, somehow. She’d already lasted for five days, but her body was protesting it couldn’t go on for another five. Not the constant climbing it was enduring right now. Her muscles were sluggish and her skin was numb, she’d lost feeling in her feet three days ago and hadn’t properly felt them since. It would be much worse if her companion hadn’t suggested she buy some warmer clothes. Instead of the thin material she normally worse Ira had on a pair of black leather pants, a thick black shirt and jacket and also a cloak, though that was packed into her rucksack. She was not used to wearing so much heavy material and it was at times a hindrance to her progress. Everything on this mountain was a hindrance to her progress, except Malagen. He challenged her every time she fell, every wrong step and every time she thought she could go no farther. Her will and his challenge kept her going.

Complaints were words that never left her mouth. Not once did she ever tell him when she went numb or when her lungs were burning with ice and felt like they could breathe no more. Complaining was a sign of weakness in Ira’s mind and though she didn’t share all of the beliefs Malagen did, weakness was not something she valued. She was a warrior after all and she’d gone through her own training in Fallien. Mountains were nothing new to her, she’d trained in them before but the snow and ice made her steps much more difficult. It had been a wonder to her the first time she’d seen it. The fluffy, white flakes gently falling from the sky and covering everything in a pristine, clean, white blanket. She hadn’t even had a name for it; she’d had to ask Malagen what it was called. It had been a wonder, but now she was tired of it. She wanted sand and she wanted sun. Most of all she wanted to feel warm again.

The path she was walking began to level. The muscles in her legs were aching and gave a silent thank you to Ira as the pain slowly subsided the flatter the ground became. Breathing rather heavily, she came up beside the barbarian. Every breath she released gave out a small puff of smoke into the air that dissipated after a few seconds.

“Snow.” She said sarcastically to him between gasps for air. She didn’t like it when he talked to her like that, but she supposed she was going to have to get used to it. His voice was much more enjoyable and human when filled with passion and desire for her. “Give me two kasana…”

Ira was a little bent over as she tried to catch her breath, her hands resting on her thighs and supporting her. Standing up straight, she took in a few deep breaths to help calm the fluttering beats of her heart as she eyes looked around the area. “There’s ahh… a wall, I do not think I have the proper word to describe that in Common.” She was pointing to the vertical rock and ice cliff. It would take a blind person to miss that thing and luckily for her, her eyes were still working, “And I think that crack over there in the stone might be a cave…or it could just be a crack in the stone.” She said as she then pointed towards the far end of the plateau where the long crack ran in the rock. The only reason she could see it rather clearly was because the darkness from the inside stuck out in the grey and white all around her.

Bringing her hands up to her mouth, Ira breathed on her fingers as she tried to elicit some kind of feeling back into them. She could barely move them. They could have fallen off a few hours ago and she wouldn’t have even noticed.

“Are we stopping here?”

If he said no she’d have to push herself to continue up the mountain and she would if he wished it, but that didn’t mean she wanted to. If this was the first part of their training, Ira really wasn’t doing that well and Malagen must already be regretting accepting her.

[Malagen]

“A blind man could see that,” Malagen retorted, unmoving next to the gasping woman. Even though his words might’ve given a different impression, he wasn’t condescending or chiding Ira. The barbarian didn’t play with such subtleties that could be read between the lines. He was merely stating the hard facts, lacking tact and consideration towards feelings of others as usual. Perhaps that made him more of a tyrant then a teacher, but that was the only way he knew to mentor - hammering out the faults and further meliorating the good aspects. Playing it to the bone. Right now, awareness was on the agenda and it was clear that Ira had a rather poor grasp on it. Malagen didn’t know what Astaka was like and what kind of training its denizens received, but it was obviously faulty at the very root. You had to see before you could even think about winning.

“Perception,” the Dram said, ignoring her question for the time being, his blue eyes diverted from the landscape and meeting Ira’s. “It’s the basis of combat. You have to be able to see everything - your opponents, your surroundings, your own weaknesses – and use that information. This is not something I can train unto you. This is something you must learn to do yourself. You have to practice it until it becomes a reflex. Make a game out of it if you will and compete with the natural ignorance of your mind. Reach out with all your senses.”

He knew Ira probably didn’t want to be lectured right now. She looked genuinely miserable, her hands shivering and begging for warmth in vain, her short purple locks turned into frosty spikes, her usually rosy lips almost transforming into an unhealthy shade of blue. It wasn’t a lesson that her body demanded, it was warmth and rejuvenation, an easy way out of this snowy hell. And Malagen had to admit that he was almost tempted to offer her that, and if not that, at least a short reprieve from the frigidity that seemed to gnaw at the very core of her being. It would’ve been a lie to say that he wasn’t cold and that he didn’t allow a thought or two about finding warmth in her touch. But once again, there was no concession in her eyes and Malagen could respect that. And respect was usually in short supply when it came to him.

“See if your opponent favors one of his hands...” he continued, turning away from her and proceeding farther down the plain, his worn leather boots plowing through the untouched ivory surface. “...is his grip on the weapon too tight, are his feet buried in the soil, is the soil soft, is it covered with dirt, is there overconfidence in his posture, is there fear. There are many signs all around you. And you have to be able to notice them before you can read them. If you had been able to do that a moment ago, you would’ve seen that there are animal tracks leading away from the cave entrance and that they are leading towards that narrow passage on the left. You would’ve noticed that the path is upwind from us and that the entire plateau has a slight inclination.”

Malagen spoke as they walked, his bulky leather coat unbuttoned and tousled by the breeze whose chill penetrated his short-sleeved undershirt as if it was made of the translucent silks that Ira liked to wear. But despite this coldness that made the muscles of his chest numb, despite the arctic climate that made even a northman such as himself feel half-frozen, the barbarian made no move to shield himself from the invading wind. This was as much of a training for him as it was for Ira. He had grown soft as he wandered in the amicable flatlands of Corone and Raiaera, and he had some overdue ‘steeling’ to catch up on.

“And most importantly, you would’ve noticed that nobody’s home,” Malagen concluded once they got to the far side, taking the light pack off his left shoulder and throwing it into the cave mouth. The crack in the stone was actually larger then it seemed from the other side of the plateau, opening up to a room-sized hollow space whose floor was covered with dry animal bones. “If the beast was home, it would’ve attacked us already.”

“Perception is something you’ll keep training throughout our stay here. Regardless of what we work on, all of your senses should be on a constant watch,” the Dram spoke, kneeling next to his knapsack and undoing the leather straps that held it closed. His hands moved through the contents, past the rations and the spare clothing, exploring it until he found a rusty piece of iron that might’ve been a hammerhead once upon a time. He offered it to Ira before he spoke again, commencing another lesson unceremoniously.

“Tie this to your left wrist. You duel-wield those curved weapons of yours, but your arms aren’t balanced,” Malagen said, leaving the cave entrance with nothing but his sheathed saber, not even waiting for her response. He proceeded to the rough center of the plateau, his feet crushing the snow mercilessly, tainting the smooth surface that only winds and beasts had access to up until now. “Your right is stronger and faster, but you put too much focus on it. That’s why your left is slow and sloppy. We need to equalize them if you want to wield a weapon in each hand. There’s no point in having two weapons if only one of them can do the job.”

“But first we need to make both of your hands steady. This is where we’ll stand,” the barbarian said as he came to a halt, planting his feet into the snow, protruding one before the other to stabilize himself against the steady wind that battered against his face. His left hand shot upwards, bringing the sheathed blade in a horizontal position before his face. Lined up with his azure eyes, the saber was motionless. “And we’ll stand until you succeed in keeping your weapons calm.”

[Iriah Caitrak]

“A blind man could see your arrogance from a mile away…” Ira said under her breath, knowing Malagen would not be able to hear it over the wind.

She shouldn’t be mad at him. He was only doing what she wanted him to, train her and if that included picking out faults than so be it, she would just have to deal with it. If this had been the desert and the snow sand there was no way she would have missed those small nuisances. But this wasn’t the desert and the snow was snow and not sand. She had to accept that she was out of her element. Perhaps one day the tables would be turned.

Her anger was stamped down into a smouldering pile of embers that were slowly losing all their fuel. She knew had to keep her anger and frustration under control, all of her negative emotions had to be in check, balanced and mastered, but that wasn’t an easy concept for Ira. She was too used to just letting her emotions show and even at times letting out her furry at the world when she needed to. But the Calerian could no longer do that, not since the Festival of the Dead and she found she needed constant reminders. Perhaps Malagen could help her, he had forsaken emotion. Maybe he could teach her to control the necessary ones. There was a lot that the man before her could teach her and help her refine, Ira only hoped that she could teach him something in return.

The lecture she took in stride. She listened and she filed it all away within the depths of her mind but she knew that she had perception; only she was trained much differently than Malagen was. He was talking about human perception and she was trained in recognizing the dead. She didn’t tell him this though, there was no point. Not only wouldn’t he be able to understand but he would just see it as an excuse for her not recognizing the subtle signs around her. It wasn’t, she wished it was, but he was right in that she hadn’t noticed much of anything about the plateau they were now on. Then again, if the beast he was referring to had been home she would have sensed the creature more than seen it.

Slipping her rucksack from her sore shoulders, Ira tossed it into the cave after Malagen’s, grateful to be free of the weight. Her eyes gave the inside a quick scan, noting how much it opened beyond the crack and how indeed, there were bones and fur from various animals scattered across the floor. When he offered the clump of iron to her, she accepted it and did as he told her to by tying it to her left wrist. She didn’t need his explanation to understand where he was going with it. Her right hand was naturally her dominant and thus was stronger than her left; he was trying to make them equal.

Following him out of the cave entrance, Ira arched her brow as he stopped in the centre of the plateau. She was lagging behind him a little bit, her feet slipping on the rock and ice under the layers of snow but it didn’t take her long to catch up. She couldn’t believe he actually wanted her to hold out her weapons until her hands remained steady and calm and she was rather certain the look on her face stated exactly that. She couldn’t even keep her hands calm and steady right now and she wasn’t even holding anything. The cold made her shiver and shake, there was no way she could face the wind and even hope to succeed in this…whatever this was supposed to be.

Sighing, the Calerian stood beside Malagen, matching her stance with his. Bringing her arms up level with her shoulders, Ira called upon her Half Swallows. The curved weapons formed within her fingers, their metallic bodies looking just as real as Malagen’s weapon, but unlike his hers were shaking just as she knew they would. She couldn’t help it. Her hands were ice cold; she could barely feel the shaft of the weapons her fingers were wrapped around. And the muscles in her arms were tired and sore from the five-day hike up here. They protested against this, especially her left with the now added weight, but she pushed it aside. The more time passed and the less she improved, the more foolish she began to feel.

She felt so foolish. Below her the streets of Irrakam moved with the constant stream of people that travelled from shop to shop gathering the things they needed and the things they didn’t. The sounds of their conversation rose in a mangle mesh of noise that no one could hope to interpret, not that she cared to know what they were talking about.

“What do you see?”

She sighed, “People…”

The voice beside her grew a little frustrated, “This isn’t a game, Ira.”

Cold silver eyes moved from the crowd below her to the face of Markesh, her trainer for the time being. His blue eyes clashed with her's, his face was a mask of annoyance and frustration

“Oh, I see one!”

Her eyes shifted to that of Uri, her arm outstretched and her hand pointing to a random location beneath them. Ira followed her finger, she tried to anyway, but she couldn’t see what she was looking at. All she saw were people, no spirits, not a one.

“Good job, Uriahd.”

Always a good job for Uriahd, never for her. She couldn’t ever do anything right. Turning away from her, she looked down at the people watching as merchants tried to convince any person that passed by their shop to buy their wares and not the man’s beside them. She was sick of Irrakam; she wanted to go back to Astaka.

A hand came down on her shoulder. Turning her head, Ira found herself starring into the golden eyes of Uriahd as she sat down beside her.

“Stop looking so hard, Ira.”

Easy for her to say, she had no problem spotting them.

“Close your eyes.”

She arched her brow, but when her friend urged her to again, she did. “Now, take a few deep breaths and clear your head. Don’t think about the people beneath you, don’t think about anything, just clear your head.” She did, or she tried to at least, concentrating on her breathing and the sound of Uri’s voice. “Reach out with your senses instead of looking. You can sense them can’t you? Ignore the life and concentrate on the emptiness, the feeling of death coming from the few.”

She did and then she felt it. The absence of life in the soul without a body. There were several in the area and she could feel each one of them as they left a void in the life all around them, an emptiness that pulled at her own heart and soul. Opening her eyes, Ira looked out over the area as she spotted each of them individually. Five in total. She pointed each of them out to Markesh, who seemed surprised by the sudden turn on things.

Ira looked out at her shaking hands one last time. How strange that a decade had nearly passed since that day in Irrakam and she was still listening to the words of her friend, even though she was gone now. Closing her eyes Ira took in a few deep and calming breaths. She concentrated on nothing and let the meditation begin to work, clearing her mind of thought and of feeling. Forgetting about the cold all around her and instead thinking only of keeping her hands steady and calm. She could even feel the beating of Malagen’s soul next to hers, but that too she ignored until she found herself in that darkened space between her soul and her body where sensation still prevailed but just barely.

[Malagen]

There were moments in life when nothing needed to be said. Malagen could’ve lectured Ira. He could’ve barraged her with unkind words and relentless looks. He could’ve told her that she needed to isolate herself from everything – thoughts that whispered her that she couldn’t do it, muscles that screamed that they couldn’t hold on, fingers that begged her not to continue with this foolery. But this was a moment where nothing needed to be said. Ira knew what she needed to do. Perhaps she didn’t realize that yet, but on some instinctive level, her mind and her body knew and they strived to achieve that aplomb. So she closed her eyes and dug deep, searching for that one place where the wind wasn’t bombarding her body with cold punches, where her muscles had endless endurance and where she was free of the common nuisances. It took her a while to find that place, but once she was there, her hands grew calm.

Just like after the climb, there was no praise to be found in Malagen’s voice. The Dram watched her standing next to him, calm of body and tense of mind, and once his eyes were satisfied with the achieved serenity, his empty right hand moved. It struck Ira on the wrist, scrambling her stasis. “Again,” he said, accepting all the frustration and agitation that flared from her silver eyes with a callous expression. And once she did her focusing routine again, his hand interrupted it... “Again! Keep your eyes open.” He changed positions, walking in front of her and leveling his sheathed blade with his eyes again. She needed something else to focus on, something big and dark that looked like a real live foe that would stand before her in battles. And once her weapons were as steady as the eyes that drilled a hole through his sockets, he crushed her equilibrium with a slap of his saber.

“Again!”

The day went on, heedless of the two human figures that did the seemingly insane – standing on some perch high in the mountains, paused in a moment that looked like a standoff but really wasn’t. The wind’s constancy broke soon, introducing the growing coldness in gusts that seemed to bring the coldness of a grave. In lieu of the sun, it was the growing chill that served as the first sign that the long day was nearing its end. Then came the gradual darkening of the sky whose gray clouds were slowly being touched by a darker hue. Somewhere farther north, beyond the winding path that led from the plateau, a bestial howl could be heard, breaking through the whistles of the wind and descending from higher up the slopes.

The stationary twosome was growing weary. Though his exterior and his behavior refused to show it, Malagen was still only human and his muscles acted in accordance with this trait. Taut and hardened to the point where it seemed that they were in a constant cramp, they pulled at his tendons, reminding him that there was a limit to everything. But they were the lesser of his two worries. The second one lay beneath the mangled skin on his left shoulder. Ever since the time he encountered some slavers in Salvar and a gunshot nearly tore his arm off, the bones of his shoulder were awry. He had the dungeon keepers to thank for that, them and the utter lack of medical care for the prisoners that were on death row. With his bones mended the wrong way, he had to abandon dual wielding and come to terms with the fact that the exertion that his right could endure, his left couldn’t follow anymore. Like today.

“That’s enough,” the black-haired barbarian said, lowering his weapon. The peculiar shady twilight was upon them by then, dampening the pristine whiteness of the snow and wrapping everything in shades of gray. Before him, Ira looked visibly relieved to finally pry her fingers away from the weapons that seemed to grow into her palms. She deserved congratulations. She received none. The best that Malagen was able to come up with was: “We’ll sleep in the cave tonight. Tomorrow you’ll have to beat my right arm,” before he led the way back towards the cave mouth.

The cave itself was neither comfy nor warmer then the outside, but there was no draft running through it, so it managed to shield the two from the two elements that kept prodding them for days now. And with the snow and wind gone, and the two of them huddling close together, sharing a threadbare blanket, it almost became a bearable environment. That was the only improvement though. Their rations were still tough and bland and they had to cradle a cup of snow in their hands for almost half an hour before it turned into drinkable water so cold that it shot ice picks through their temples.

“Once we’re done with balancing your arms, we’ll work on how to efficiently kill a man,” Malagen spoke after what seemed like an eternity of silence and shuffling and munching and sighing. Since he was practically incapable of small-talk – especially initiating it – speaking of the reason why they were here seemed like a viable option. Tearing off half a strip of dry deer meet, he put it in his mouth and chewed it until the salt and the meaty juice finally made an appearance in his mouth before he swallowed it. “No point in swinging those weapons of yours if you don’t know to stab them where it hurts. What do you call those blades of yours anyways?”

[Iriah Caitrak]

She couldn’t hide the relief she felt when the training finally ended for the day. Malagen showed none. He must be tired, his muscles must have been screaming at him for a break, for a rest, anything, but he showed none of that and neither had she while she’d been training. But she didn’t want to keep that façade up now. She was tired, she was cold, her nose kept running and she found herself sniffling every ten seconds. She was hungry too, not that she was looking forward to eating the rations that Malagen had provided. It would be much better if she could just go off and hunt something, make a fire and cook it. Of course, there were a few problems with that. One, they were on a mountain and it was quite a trek in order to find a tree for wood and two. It was rather likely that they were the only living beings up here for quite a distance. If any kind of creature chose to live in this environment it truly was crazy.

As she lowered her arms from their constant outstretched position, Ira felt as the tension ebbed a bit, her muscles were so cramped she didn’t know how she was going to get through tomorrow. Her weapons she tossed aside. Seconds after they left her hand they disappeared, their energy returning to the world around them. She felt like curling up into a little ball and going to sleep right away, but she should eat something first.

In the cave, the Calerian cleared herself a small area and sat down beside Malagen. The animal bones and fur she pushed aside, not so much from it grossing her out as she did not feel comfortable sleeping on the remains of any creature, human, animal or otherwise. The meat was the same as it had been for the passed five days, tough deer meat, something she’d never eaten before and something her stomach rebelled against. She ate a lot of fruit from The Oasis in Astaka and her body was seemed weaker without it, but there was nothing she could do. It’s not like she could walk out of the cave and start picking some from an invisible tree.

Taking a long drink from her cup, Ira shivered as the ice-cold water made it’s way down, freezing her wherever it could. Using fingers that just barely had any feeling in them, she began pulling at the ties that held her jacket closed. Once she had it open, she slipped the jacket from her sore shoulders and cringed as the cold air slapped against her stomach and chest. The shirt she wore underneath helped keep her warm, but she could still feel the cold clawing through the material. Ignoring it, she began massaging her arms, starting at her shoulders and working her way down. She was working on her left arm when Malagen broke the comfortable silence of the cave and nearly made Ira choke on the air she was breathing with his words.

She was so shocked with what he said that as he continued to speak she couldn’t even find the words to stop him.

“Ah…they’re called Half Swallows, I created them myself and am the only one in the tribe to use them…” She began trailing off at the end as her eyes observed the barbarian of a man, “W-what? Wait a minute. You want to train me on how to better…kill a person?” She even had a hard time saying the word let along actually doing such a thing.

Malagen nodded his head, “Yes.”

Clearly he didn’t think there was anything wrong with killing people, something she already knew and had to remind herself of, but she certainly did and she wasn’t about to start doing it. In her twenty-two years of life she’d only killed one person and it was a moment she would never forget. The look on the woman’s face, the way her soul was ripped from her body as the last beat of her heart ended. Her screams and cries as she was taken to Abyss. It was a memory burned into the forefront of her mind and even as she thought about it Ira found herself absently running her fingers along the scar on her neck.

“I…I can’t kill anyone, Malagen.”

“That’s why I’m going to teach you.” He said, the whole point of what she was saying sailed right over his head unnoticed, “I’ll show you what areas of the body to strike to make a quick kill and which ones to hit that will eventually kill your opponent.”

“Stop!” Scrambling to her feet, Ira began pacing the cave wondering how she didn’t see this coming when she asked him to train her. “That is not… I just… What…” Taking a deep breath, she tried again, calming the storm of words all trying to get out at once. “Malagen I did not ask you to train me so you could show me how to kill people! It’s…it’s not what I do. I’m a Calerian, we don’t train to fight humans…” She didn’t know how to explain this to him. He’d seen Purgatory, he’d seen Fallen, but that was only a small aspect of what she did. There was of course one other reason why she couldn’t kill anyone besides her own conscious and guilt…but she couldn’t tell him that. She couldn’t tell anyone about that.

Abhrapatha…

Kneeling down beside Malagen, she tried again. “I took you to Purgatory once. You’ve seen the creatures in there. They’re called Fallen; they’re actually human souls corrupted by Purgatory itself. That is one aspect of what I do as a Calerian, the other is freeing souls trapped on the physical plane, the one we’re in right now. I can see the souls of those passed; most people tend to call them ghosts. I free them and send them to their rightful resting place. Could you imagine killing someone and then watching their soul being ripped from their body?”

She could and she wished she could erase the memory from her mind. She looked away from him as her hands curled into fists, she didn’t want to think about this, she didn’t want to keep reliving that fight.

Standing up, the Calerian quickly tied her jacket back up before she turned to leave. She needed some space for a moment; she needed to clear her head. At the mouth of the cave she turned her head back to him and threw him one last thought to chew over.

“Imagine if someone killed me just because they could…”

Malagen himself had almost done such a thing.

Stepping out of the cave, Ira ignored the cold wind that tore through her. Without the added warmth of the sun, it was freezing outside and she could already feel her body temperature beginning to drop, but she didn’t care. The moon was out and millions of stars forming different constellations than what she was used to danced in the night sky. They cast light on the world below, not a lot, but enough to make the pristine white snow glow a hint of blue. Trudging her way through that snow, Ira moved to the edge of the plateau and looked down over the endless distance they had conquered to get up this high. From all the way up here it did not look so bad, yet it had taken them days to reach this one spot. Tears formed and danced at the corners of her eyes, but they didn’t fall. Whether they were from the wind or something else was not known.

[Malagen]

Malagen chewed his meat with the usual irritating constancy, seemingly heedless towards Ira’s emotion-packed words. And when the dismayed woman walked out, he didn’t move to stop her, he didn’t follow her, he didn’t speak words that would claim he understood what she talked about. Primarily, this was because he truly failed to understand the point she tried to make with her speech. It just didn’t make sense to the barbarian. Ira asked him to train her, and yet she was aghast by the self-evident goal of that training. She wielded a pair of razor-sharp weapons, and yet she was reluctant – fearful even – to use them in the manner they ought to be used. It was like teaching a tree-hugger how to hunt; what good was the training and the knowledge when he fed on roots and fruits?

Pre-Ira Malagen would’ve left his cerebrations at that. He would deem the fickle woman weak and pitiful and unworthy, and be on the path down the mountain with the morning light. He’d probably kill her for good measure, just because she made him come all the way up here for a large portion of disappointment. But the ruthless Dram that would’ve done that without a moment worth of consideration wasn’t home anymore. He was beating at the door, demanding retribution, but the night of gentleness and kindness that Ira gifted Malagen back in Radasanth silenced that voice. Consequently, that meant that there were other thoughts running rampant through Malagen’s mind, thoughts that dwelled on the issue, dissected it, tried to get to the bottom of it. They were hapless attempts of a man who was unable to comprehend the chaotic array of human emotions yet, but they were there, tearing the calmness of his mind to shreds. There was one sentence in particular that cut like a finely honed blade, the last one before she walked out into the night with glassy eyes.

“Imagine if someone killed me just because they could...”

For somebody whose imagination was as sterile as that of an accountant, it was difficult for Malagen to reproduce such an event in his head. He approached the issue with the usual level-headed reserve, turned it this way and that in his mind like a puzzle, probed at it with a fairly long stick, and after a while something poked back. It was no shocking revelation, but the more he thought about it, the more Malagen realized that the hypothetical situation in which somebody murdered Ira made him feel. It didn’t matter what he felt – whether it was wrath towards the person who killed her or the queer regret of her not being around him anymore with her daring eyes and tempting looks – but rather the fact that he simply felt. And while it didn’t put the whole death thing in perspective for the Dram, it was on a good path to get there eventually.

Even though light was scarce in the cave when Ira returned, there were enough telltale signs on the woman that spoke of her thoughtful, almost sorrowful disposition. It was in the way she walked – bowed as if there was a world of trouble on her shoulders. It was in the bitter silence that followed her like a gray aura. It was even in the fact that she sat on the opposite side of their little mountain home, cradling herself in search of warmth. She needed an embrace right then and there, she needed words of reassuring and understanding. But Malagen was still inadequate when it came to such expressions of gentleness. For the longest time he just sat there, his azure eyes glaring into the blackness in the general direction of Ira’s sniffles. He wanted to tell her how foolish she was, how idiotic it was to wield weapons made for killing without an intent and will to actually do the bloody deed. But she wasn’t him. Unlike him, she still had a heart beating within her chest.

“Are all women from Astaka such a contradiction?” he asked, humanity seeping into his voice by means of slight uncertainty and a smirk that probably remained unseen in the darkness of the cave. “You wield murderous weapons, and yet you refuse to take a life. You deal with the dead, but not death. You exact kindness, and yet you socialize with murderers...”

The last bit stretched his smirk into a smile, but when he continued, his voice was back to full seriousness. “I don’t quite understand you yet, but I understand we’re not the same. We both have our ghosts. You just don’t want to face more then absolutely necessary. I hope that that reluctance won’t cost you your life one day.”

The silence lingered for several moments, a respectful homage to the words spoken, before Malagen got up and made the few steps that took him to the other side of the cave. He was an almost abysmal specter, made of shadows with a pale face, but when he towered over her, there was no malice on his face, no cold indifference. Instead there was a smirk that drifted between condescension and approval. He draped the blanket around her back before he squeezed her with, for him, uncanny gentleness.

“Rest. Tomorrow is going to be no easier then today.”

***

He was freezing. Only because he kept his jaws clenched as hard as he could his teeth didn’t chatter. But he refused to give in. He was a Dram, a northman. The chill of the Jagged Mountains was nothing, comparable to a mere breeze on a summer day back in Ferioh. That was why he stood here and now just as he did back in his homeland, shirtless, barefoot, alone under the starry sky on the benighted plain covered with snow. The snow... It bit at his toes, freezing his ankles, numbing his calves. The night wind... It wrapped itself around his naked torso like liquid ice, benumbing his muscles. The shivers ran though his entire body, but he fought them, kept them under control. They would go away once he warmed up, he knew. He hoped.

Unceremoniously, his right freed the saber of the heavy sheet, fingers eager to do something other then just waiting another brush of wind. The sword cut through the invisible enemies with a swishing sound, working in unison with stringent feet that plowed through the snow. The sequence went on, thrust, jab, upwards slice, backhand, turn, sweep. The frozen locks of his long hair followed the movement with a minute delay, slapping his face, his shoulders, his chest. His chest... that felt as if they were breathing it ice cubes instead of air. But he went on. Because this was the steeling, and it would either kill him or make him stronger.

[Iriah Caitrak]

She couldn’t sleep. No matter how much she tried to the fickle escape from reality kept eluding her. She couldn’t seem to stop the constant flow of thoughts and memories swimming around in her head. The battle against that woman—by Suravani she didn’t even know her name—kept repeating itself in her head over and over again. She felt the fangs in her neck and the beats of her heart slowing all over again as if it were actually happening to her right here in this frozen wilderness. But it wasn’t. It was only a memory, it couldn’t hurt her. She was the one that let it affect her so much. She was the one that wouldn’t let anyone near her neck now, she was the one that kept seeing her face over and over again and she was the one who dealt with the dead but not with death as Malagen had so poetically put it. No, not all women in Astaka were like her. If Uriahd were in her shoes right now she wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to learn what Malagen had to teach. She wouldn’t hesitate to kill and she probably wouldn’t feel the remorse the Ira did afterwards.

“We both have our ghosts. You just don’t want to face more then absolutely necessary. I hope that that reluctance won’t cost you your life one day.”

Would it? Would her inability to kill someday cost her, her life? She had ways of protecting herself, of disabling her enemies without actually killing them. But would that fine line be her undoing in the end? It was sadly not something hard for her to imagine. There were plenty of people in this world who never thought twice or even once about killing someone for their gain or even their own pleasure. Ira was not and could not be one of them. But could she kill to defend herself or to even defend others? She’d done it once, could she willing do it again? There were too many questions and too few answers, some of which she didn’t want to even know.

Sitting up, the Calerian hugged the threadbare blanket around her more tightly and looked out through the mouth of the cave. On the moonlit snow Malagen practised, while he thought she was sleeping, he practised, a pale and deadly spectre. His moves precise, his every strike meant to kill an opponent she could just barely see in her minds eye. One of those strikes had nearly cost her, her life.

He’d been out there for hours, exactly how many she wasn’t sure. But she could only imagine how cold he was with no shirt on and the cold and wind biting at his bare chest. She could not do that. The heat she could endure and the blistering sun and unimaginably scorching temperatures, but not the cold. When he finally finished his training, she laid back down and gave off the façade that she was sleeping, just as he had left her. Yet even after he dressed himself and carefully laid down behind her so as not to disturb her, she couldn’t sleep. Through the mouth of the cave she watched the sky and the stars and eventually she gave up on sleep for the night.

*****

The cold wind was like a slap in the face. It buffeted against her, attempting to push her any way it wanted, but she wouldn’t let it. She was restless. A night without sleep had ended with her leaving the cave just before dawn crested a horizon she couldn’t see. Normally she would run when she felt like this. She’d feel the wind against her face and lose herself in that brief moment of freedom as she ran and ran until she couldn’t run anymore, then she’d continue until she collapsed. The feeling of freedom she got when she ran like that was immeasurable. But up here in this icy wasteland she couldn’t run. There was no flat ground to run upon and her footing was not sure enough. So instead she did the next best thing, she practised. That was what she came up here for, to train and to learn.

Her muscles were tired, stiff and sore but she didn’t care. Her head hurt from a lack of sleep but she ignored it. Her mind was in turmoil but she pushed it to the side and forgot about it. They were only distractions she didn’t need at the moment.

She started at the beginning. Her hand outstretched, she formed her Naginata. A weapon similar to a spear, only at the end was a long and slightly curved blade instead of the spear tip. Placing her hand about halfway down the length of the wooden pole, Ira held the weapon slightly behind her as she placed herself in what looked like a relaxed and perhaps lazy stance. Her feet about a foot apart from each other and sinking into the snow, her other hand resting against her side, her back straight and her muscles relaxed. In her head she pictured Fallen. Their grotesque figures slinking towards her from the abyss they spawned from. When one came close to her, she shifted her stance ever so slightly, her left foot pressing into the snow harder and shifting more to the left as she swung the weapon out from behind her. Her left hand joined her right on the shaft a few inches above it and helped guide the blade through the imaginary black hole in the chest of an imaginary enemy.

This she continued to do until she became surrounded by Fallen on all sides. Then the weapon changed and instead of one blade it became two with one on either end. This was her Swallow. It was much harder to use than the Naginata, but as long as someone had the balance of the weapon it was a deadly tool. Spinning the weapon around in front of her she took out a number of her enemies. Strike after strike she took them down, until once again she had to change her weapons. Moving her hands along the shaft a little bit, she broke the Swallow in half and formed her most used weapons, her Half Swallows. With these she was quicker, and more flexible being able to attack and defend herself at the same time.

When the sun passed the mountain and bathed Ira in a warm glow she could barely feel through the cold she continued until she saw Malagen come out from the cave. Then she stopped, her breathing laboured puffs of smoke that rose into the air and quickly disappeared. She stopped and let her weapons slip from her fingers and then disappear. Walking over to him, Ira took a few seconds to allow her heart to slow before she reached up and placed her cold hands on either side of Malagen’s face. For a moment she just stayed there like that, head tilted back as she silently looked up into his face and searched his eyes without saying a word. Then she raised herself to the tips of her toes and pulled his face down closer to hers so she could kiss him. She just needed that moment of closeness where she could kiss him like nothing else mattered but that. Eventually she pulled away from him even though she wanted to stay there longer, she pulled away.

“Teach me how to defend myself, Malagen… don’t teach me to kill, please don’t ask that of me. I take you as you are, I haven’t asked you to change, do not ask me to…”

[Malagen]

Though Malagen was never prone to wasting words on hollow ‘good mornings’ or ‘good evenings’ or ‘good anythings’ for that matter, even his censured self had to admit that Ira’s morning greeting wasn’t that pointless at all. She didn’t speak, didn’t don one of those courteous, disguising, defensive smiles that were as transparent as a really lousy mask. Instead she just walked up to him, reached for his face with her cold hands and made her broken, warm lips do the same after a glance. Her kiss was the sporadic expression of gentleness that the barbarian never quite experienced up until this point. Women were usually with him for one of the two reasons - because he forced them or because he paid them - and regardless of which of the two was in question, none were really keen on snuggling and smooching once the day broke. But Ira wasn’t a usual woman. Malagen had established that back in Radasanth, when he had found himself unable to slay somebody for the first time in his life. And it seemed that ever since then she made certain that he kept relearning that lesson every single day.

Her plea succeeded her tenderness. The Dram wasn’t sure what to make of it. Was she trying to soften him up with a kiss, butter him up and make him more pliable towards her irenic request? The voice in his head said that she did. The voice in his head claimed that Ira was weak and worthy only of a quick, merciful death. The voice in his head was full of horsedung for a while now. She wasn’t weak. A bit too mushy deep down in the middle maybe, but hardened around the edges. She wouldn’t be here if she wasn’t. There was no need for her plea, however; Malagen reached a definite conclusion on the matter yesterday, when she stormed out of the cave.

“Teaching someone unwilling to learn is time and effort wasted,” the barbarian spoke, sedate and deadly serious, the way he always was when the issue discussed was more then just trite chit-chat. His free right hand landed on her shoulder, his caress somewhere between firm and gentle. “If you don’t want to learn how to kill, then I won’t teach you. But I won’t teach you how to defend yourself either. You cannot win any battles by just defending yourself just as you can’t win any battles by just attacking. There are ways to bring a man to his knees without killing him.”

True, immobilization wasn’t his area of expertise, but it wasn’t exactly advanced science how to achieve the desired effect. Most critical parts of the human body which, when stricken, brought death to its owner could be used to cripple a man or render him unconscious. It was all about hitting the certain target with a certain amount of pressure on the weapon. However, such an approach to a battle situation required precision and balance, both traits that Ira was currently lacking severely. And Malagen wasn’t reluctant to make that point clear.

“But let us not get ahead of ourselves. We still have work to do on your firmness...” And then, without even a slightest hint that would announce his intentions, the fingers of his hand tightened their grasp on her shoulder before yanking it sideways. By doing that, he managed to throw Ira off balance just enough to make it impossible for her to dodge the sweep his right leg made. It plowed through the snow, knocking her feet sideways and sending the violet-haired woman on the snowy ground. Malagen’s unsmiling face peered from above, making it clear that the class was in session already. “...and your footing.”

For the purpose of both, Malagen led the way towards the area of the plateau where he had trained during the night. Hours of training had made his feet stomp the snow significantly, making the frozen earth below even more prominent with the white morning sun shining down on the world. The spot was like a dark wound on the otherwise ivory field, mangled by what looked like hundreds of footprints, introducing four particularities, all separated by about four feet of frozen earth. One was a stump of a tree that might’ve grown on this spot about a decade ago before something – probably an avalanche – tore it at the base, leaving a lifeless, uneven piece of wood behind whose roots were still too stubborn to let go. Other three were rocks, barely the size of a backpack, one of them jutting out of the ground as if it was a natural jagged formation, while the remaining two seemed out of place, as if somebody brought them here after trampling the snow. The first had a round, almost dome-like top, while the other one seemed as flat as a stone step. There was a frosty coat on all four of these items, its miniscule crystals glittering as if they were made of ground jewels, reminding a perceptive beholder to thread carefully should he or she decide to step on them.

“First, you will tell me what you see,” Malagen began the same way he did yesterday, giving Ira several seconds to ascertain this simple training grounds he set up for the day’s exercise. “Then we’re going to do the same thing we did yesterday, only once you step on one of these four, your feet must not touch the ground. Every time your hand shakes, you jump to the next vacant foothold. Now, if you’re ready, choose one and let us begin.”

[Iriah Caitrak]

He never showed affection. Even after a good morrow greeting as she’d given him, the only thing she received was a hand on her shoulder, not even a caressing touch. It was just there. She didn’t know why she bothered, in a way she should have known better but she couldn’t help it. After all, she was only human and humans craved touch. Yet here she stood in front of a man so cold and distant she wondered where the attraction towards him came from. There was barely any gentleness in him, yet when he made love to her, he had been nothing but gentle. She just wished she could see it on his face from time to time and hear it in his voice. She didn’t expect him to open up to her, not yet, maybe some day. Right now, she just wanted a little of the rough barbarian to be chipped away at so she could get to what was underneath. She wanted him to be a little more human. In time he might, but right now it was asking for too much and she knew as she had stated before she needed to take him as he was.

His words took her from her reverie and the Calerian felt her heart skip a beat when he said he wouldn’t train her to defend herself. It was what she wanted. The whole reason she had allowed him to drag her all the way up here was because she needed to know how to defend herself. But she didn’t interject, she continued to listen as he explained what he would teach her and she found herself satisfied with that. When she would have responded to him, Malagen tightened his grip on her shoulder and Ira’s world suddenly took a little turn as he jerked her to the side. Then her feet went out from under her and the next thing she knew she was suspended in the air for that brief second when gravity had yet to kick in. It didn’t last long though. She plummeted to the packed snow beneath her, landing with an audible umph that escaped her parted lips.

Rolling over onto her back, Ira looked up at Malagen, whose impassive face and eyes glared down towards her.

Definitely could be a little softer. Why do I attract the weird and abusive?

Swearing at him in Fallien only to realize it didn’t have the same affect when he couldn’t understand her, Ira pulled herself to her feet. Her lesson had begun. He couldn’t have made it anymore clear were he to try and kill her again. Thankfully, at least his sword was still in its sheath and she wasn’t missing a foot, or a leg. No, she was just missing some of her pride, a thing she’d lost a lot of around him. It was like he allowed her to build it up, only to knock it away.

Following Malagen into the clearing, Ira did the exact same thing she’d done yesterday; she surveyed her surroundings. Her eyes swept over the area quickly, trying to ascertain all that she could.

“Well, you’ve crushed the ground down and there are four things sticking out of the snow. Three of them look like rocks and one might be a tree.” She’d seen more trees in Corone than her entire lifetime in Fallien, “Also, it’s going to rain.” There were things you just knew from living in the desert and when it was going to rain was certainly one of them.

The sky had been clear before, bright and blue, but as the sun rose over the horizon clouds had started to sweep in. By now--though she hadn’t noticed it before so engrossed in her practice--the sun was completely covered. And those simple grey clouds had become ominous and black. They threatened fury at any moment, and as if on cue from her warning, a deep rumble sounded from above and reverberated through her heart. It was definitely going to rain…or snow.

After listening to Malagen’s instructions, Ira summoned her half swallows to her hands and picked the first of the four objects, the wooden stump. She didn’t trust rocks, in the sand they were unsteady, especially the small ones. But the stump wasn’t very good for balance either. The snow made it slippery and though her boots had deep treads that cut into the fluffy white stuff, they couldn’t get a proper grip. After about twenty seconds or so, the Calerian found her footing and extended her arms to shoulder length before her. Malagen trained with her, his right arm this time, raising it as she brought up hers. The moment the tiniest quiver went through her weapons though, her barbarian lover yelled for her to jump to the next foothold, and she did.

Each standing provided its own problem and as she’d suspected the rocks were the worst. The smooth one was slippery, the flat wobbly and the jagged…well it was jagged. Standing on a jagged rock was never easy. To make matters worse, her prediction proved correct. Soon after they began, the sky broke open and something not quite rain and not quite snow began to fall. It was cold and wet and was beginning to soak through her pathetic layers of clothing.

The weight Malagen had given her had not been taken off once. Though she could have removed it yesterday after the training, she’d forgotten about it and now it weighed down her arm. Her left kept slipping lower than her right. Often she would have to remind herself to pick it back up, but the muscles were sore and protesting. Call her weak if he wanted to, but will or not she couldn’t keep this up for a whole day. Not with the wind and the wet snow battering against her and the cold draining heat and energy from her. Her feet were frozen. After hours of standing a throb had begun on her soles, but now she couldn’t feel it. Heck, she couldn’t even feel where her feet were. Her jacket was soaked; her hair was clinging in frozen tendrils around her face and every now and again a cold drop of water wormed down her spine. Ira couldn’t see her face, but she was sure the cold had sapped much of the colour from it. A runny nose continuously plagued her and sneezes wrecked her balance when they felt like it.

Eventually, her fingers rebelled against her. Long frozen, her right hand lost its grip on her half swallow and Ira’s slowed reactions couldn’t catch it in time. The sudden action of trying knocked her from her perch on the flat rock and her feet sunk into the slushy mess below. Malagen didn’t say anything to her. Instead, his icy blue eyes bore into her silvery gaze and Ira found herself getting up onto the next rock, though she didn’t think she could. It didn’t take long for the same thing to befall her again. Unable to feel her slick weapons, she couldn’t tell when her grip slackened. The second time frustration began to set in. Her body was shutting down against the cold. She could feel it. Uncontrollable shivers wracked her and it was almost impossible to keep her weapons steady.

Ira lowered her arms to her sides and allowed her other half swallow to slip from her left hand.

“What are you doing?”

“I can’t do it anymore…”

His eyes continued to challenge her but she had nothing left to give him. The cold took all she had and more, and the lack of sleep from last night coupled with the hours of training she’d already done left her drained. Even though the look on his face clearly showed his contempt for her weakness, Ira had nothing left to fight back against it with.

“Yes you can.”

Malagen never stopped looking at her and Ira felt her frustration beginning to mount. She’d had enough of snow and ice, six days and she didn’t want anymore. She wanted to feel warm again. The darkness within her began to stir. Fed by her frustration, it spurred her to lash out at the barbarian. Her legs tensed and without warning she leapt at him, knocking him onto his back and into the mess of water and snow that made up the ground. She landed on top of him roughly, her thighs wrapping around his hips and pinning him there. When her head rose, her eyes glared back at him from a face that was twisted into something not entirely human, not entirely Ira.

“Enough!” She growled the word through clenched teeth at him.

It tickled her sore throat and Ira found herself in a small coughing fit, one that seemed to abolish whatever had overcome her. She bowed her head and covered her mouth with her hand, trying to stifle the noise, but the action of the rough coughs tore through her body. Once it passed, she collapsed against Malagen’s chest.

[Malagen]

Malagen knew it was only a matter of time before Ira would explode at him like a firecracker she truly was. In fact, he was counting on her agitation to reach the inevitable boiling point much sooner, somewhere during the relentless climb. She was a headstrong woman, not proud to a fault, but proud enough to consider herself dominant in certain aspects of her life. Such women not only disliked taking orders and being demeaned, but they were unafraid to shove their discontent right into someone’s face. That cocky stubbornness was the prime reason why the barbarian didn’t walk out on her when every fiber of his being told him he should. On the contrary, he welcomed it back in Radasanth, when they danced a murderous dance of blades, and he welcomed it even now, when she pinned him to the freezing mud. It was a clear statement that she was alive, kicking and wouldn’t be pushed around.

However, before Malagen could respond to her enraged insistence, strength abandoned Ira, making her sapped body crumble on top of him. It was her last hurrah that threw them both onto the ground, that final ounce of energy she drew somewhere from the depths of her gut. For a couple of moments the pair just lay there in the brownish bed made of snow and mire, assailed by barrage after barrage of precipitation that couldn’t decide between being rain or snow. They were both drenched and half frozen, with hypothermia creeping around the corner, ready to hit them over the head and make them fall into their last slumber. Ira seemed to be on a good route to getting there, her stiff body sustaining waves of shivers. He had pushed her too far, the barbarian realized then, and he risked losing her if he stuck to his usual idiosyncrasy.

A thought of abandoning her right then and there crossed his mind, a stubborn remnant of a more unforgiving mind. But instead of leaving Ira behind as he usually would’ve, Malagen pushed her off of himself only to pick her body up as soon as he regained his stability. The forecast above them was grim, ominous, locking the day in a constant state of grayish twilight which shed little light into the cavern they called home for the past few days. Once again, the rock protected them from the elements, but once again, it offered as much warmth as bare rock usually did. It became blatantly clear that, without some warmth, that unhealthy bluish coloration of Ira’s lips would turn into a terminal condition. And with the only flammable tinder being about two days worth of walking downhill, there was really only one thing he could do to make her warm.

His fingers – immune to the direness of the issue at hand – calmly started working on unbuttoning her jacket that seemed twice as heavy with all the rain it accumulated. This situation was much too dire for him to allow petty emotions from hindering his actions. Besides, he had done this once before, only last time it was the blood loss that was slowly murdering her. And like that time, the threat came as a direct consequence of his harshness. Though conscious – if only barely – Ira seemed to have either no objections or no strength to object to what he was doing. So, off came her boots, her trousers, her clingy blouse that he had to peel off almost like second skin, leaving the woman in the nude.

Not for long though. As magnificent as the sight of her naked body was – and it was, and tempting even for a blockhead such as him – there was no time to spare on sightseeing. Picking up the rather unsightly blanket they both shared up until this point, Malagen wrapped it around her, making a tight, olive-green cocoon out of it that left only her head sticking out. He fished another mantle from his pack, the one he stashed away all the way on the bottom, and a bottle of sickly green liquid that rested within its folds. It was his ‘in case of emergencies’ package, the one he assembled while Ira was making her purchases back in Radasanth. Without much pause, he proceeded to unclothe himself, settling each piece of clothing on a separate spot in the cave just like he did with hers. Once he was au naturel just like she was, he pulled the blanket around his body before lying next to Ira. With his arms and the considerably thicker piece of wooly textile, Malagen embraced the woman, encompassing her completely in what warmth was left in his body.

He told himself he was going through all of this trouble just because he owed her something. He told himself that there were no emotions involved. He lied. Feeling her frozen body next to her, shivering, lost in some snowy nightmare made a disquieting storm pass through his gut. It made him feel that same annoying regret again that warned him that she wasn’t a toy, that she wasn’t a machine he made himself to be. She wasn’t ready for all of this. Hell, he was barely able to keep up with the tempo he insisted on. He simply pushed the envelope too far.

After several minutes during which his hands rubbed against the coarse fabric of the blanket, warming the body it encompassed, Ira seemed to be thawing. Her eyes blinked in a sluggish manner, then seemed surprised as they realized they were staring at Malagen’s face that was inches away from her own. The realization brought a content smirk on her face, the kind he wanted to kiss. He didn’t, though. Instead, one of his hands escaped the warmth of the blanket and ventured into the surrounding chill, retrieving a translucent bottle that rested next to their makeshift bedroll.

“Drink this. It will help you against the cold,” the barbarian said, both his tone and his touch almost human. It seemed - though he still had trouble admitting it - that the more intimate he was with Ira, the more of her goodness invaded his system. This time, it made him open the bottle and near it to her mouth. As he tipped it, the sludgy contents slowly oozed past her lips. The substance was the blood of a catlike creature that lived in Berevar, something the natives called Guhan’nar. Malagen had no idea what the name meant, but the liquid acted like hot coal when it entered the body, heating it from the inside.

“Tomorrow we’re heading back down. It was wrong of me to bring you here. It’s too much for you,” he stated as she drank, making it sound as if the decision was final and she had no say in it.

[Iriah Caitrak]

All she really felt was the cold. She was stuck somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness where she could hear and feel, but she couldn’t really think too well or comprehend much of anything. The urge to sleep was strong, one she couldn’t resist and she found herself in momentary lapses of blackness for what could only be seconds. She felt her clothes come away, piece by piece; removed by hands she couldn’t seem to focus on. It must be Malagen…but why? She had just proven to him yet again how weak she was, why was he helping her? Why wasn’t he just abandoning her to the elements as his cold self would dictate?

The thoughts and images slipped away as she passed into the blackness again. When she came too she was staring into Malagen’s face. His eyes showed concern and the harsh lines he usually bore were replaced with lines of worry. It made her smile. This was the kind of look she wished he wore more often, maybe without the tinge of worry lining it though. Why did he look so worried any way? She was fine, a little cold, but other than that she was completely…naked. Why was she naked and where exactly were her clothes? It felt like there was something coarse rubbing against her bare skin and she didn’t really like the feel of it.

Her thoughts were torn away as Malagen began talking, offering her something to drink and saying it would help against the cold. He even brought it up her lips for her. When it hit her tongue she almost gagged on the horrid, sour and rotten taste. He didn’t stop tipping the bottle though, so until he removed it from her lips she drank it. When he began talking of heading back down the mountain, Ira only nodded her head to him. It sounded like a good idea to her. She could get away from the cold and take an extremely long, hot bath—hopefully one with company—and then snuggle down under layers of blankets. Oh, yeah getting off the mountain sounded like a really good idea to her.

He finally moved the bottle away from her lips and Ira choked down the last of it, wishing she had water to wash away the taste. But already the effects were beginning. She could feel it deep within her stomach, the warmth that was quickly spreading. It was like she had swallowed fire and it was slowly warming her from the inside. Her muscles began to relax and her shivers slowed until they were none existent. Sleep began to cloud over her thoughts again, a much more comfortable sleep. Not one of the cold but one of exhaustion. Wriggling in her cocoon, the Calerian loosened the blanket enough to pull one of her arms free. Smiling, she laid her hand on Malagen’s cheek, his skin cold to her touch for a change.

“If this is all it takes to get you to look at me like that, I’m going to succumb to the cold more often…”

She gave him another drowsy eyed smile, yawned and then curled in closer to him.

~~~~~~

Ira woke hours later. She didn’t know how many but it must be the next day for though it was dreary looking outside there was light and not darkness. She felt warmer now then she had since they’d left on this journey and she quickly realized why. Malagen had her back tucked up against his front with his one arm wrapping around her stomach and holding her in position. It wasn’t a bad position to be in at all, one that made a few…interesting thoughts pass through her mind. Of course she quickly realized why they were like this and what her barbarian had said before she’d passed out. He wanted to take her back down the mountain and end her training and even though a part of her would be very happy to be rid of this place, she couldn’t. Not until her training was complete. She had to push the setbacks aside and continue forward otherwise she was never going to get better. But Malagen had already made his decision and the man could be as stubborn as the desert sun, there would be no budging him with simple words. Ira needed to prove she could handle this through action, which was no problem with her.

Not wishing to wake him, she began to carefully wriggle around in her blanket cocoon. Nudging Malagen at just the right place on his hip awarded her with the slightest moan and him shifting his position away from her slightly. Smiling, she loosened the blanket from around her and then crawled up and out of it, Malagen’s arm being cushioned by the material. In his sleep, he would still think he was holding her while she was out training.

Leaving the warmth of their bed had seemed like a good idea at first, until the cold air touched Ira’s skin. Hundreds of goose pimples broke out along her arms, legs, and stomach. Everywhere they could, they did and those damn shivers began racing down her spine. It was almost enough for her to crawl right back into where she came from, but instead she shivered and tip toed her feet across the ice-cold stones to her rucksack. Rummaging around inside—as quietly as she could—she pulled out a second pair of travelling clothes and slipped into them. The material was just as cold as the air but quickly warmed up with her body heat. She didn’t have a second jacket though and the one from yesterday was still wet. Putting it on would be worse than just training as she was, but she wouldn’t be able to train for long in these clothes without taking a break. She couldn’t stay warm in them. Luckily, glancing outside, she could see that it was no longer raining, yet the entire ground looked like glass. It was rather remarkable. Even on this dreary and cloud covered day she could see the slightest reflection of light in it.

Slipping her still slightly damp boots on last, the Calerian left the cave. Her first step onto the crystalline surface turned her world upside down. The treads on her boots slipped right across the glass and her feet came out from under her for the second time in two days. She landed on the ground roughly. Her butt hitting the ice first, then her elbows and hands which tried to cushion the fall and did not succeed in stopping the back of her skull from slamming into it. Groaning and whimpering at the same time, Ira carefully picked herself back up and looked down at the surface. Her reflection stared back up at her with a clear amount of discomfort and pain present on her face. It must be ice. She’d heard of it before. When the temperatures got really cold the water turned into it but she didn’t know it could be so slippery. This was going to make her training a lot harder.

She carefully began making her way over to the training ground. Somehow managing to fall only two more times on the way there, neither of them hurt as much as the first. She had no doubt by the end of today she was going to be covered in bruises. Summoning her weapons to her hands. The Calerian carefully stepped up onto the first of the four obstacles and began her training all over again. When she would jump to the next obstacle, more often than not the ice would knock her flat on her ass and leave her with another sore and tender area to deal with.

[Malagen]

Ira was foolish if she thought that she could sneak away undetected. When awareness was trained into you from the moment you could hold a blade, some of it inevitably seeped into your subconsciousness. It thinned your sleep to the point where it was like glass and even the slightest disturbance could shatter it to pieces. Sometimes it was a gift that kept you alive. Most of the time, however, it robbed a person of good night’s slumber. In this particular instance, it alerted Malagen to the fact that Ira had awoken. At first, he made nothing of it, assuming she was just answering the call of nature and didn’t want to disturb him. However, when he cracked his eyes open just enough to see her nakedness disappearing beneath layers of cloth, it became obvious that she had no intention of returning to his embrace. He remained motionless, though, playing dead and waiting to see what exactly went through that pretty head of hers.

It soon became clear that his assumption – like so many regarding Ira – was completely wrong. Yesterday the Calerian had thrown in the towel, exasperated and fatigued to the point of collapsing. Today her tenacity was back, rejuvenated and eager to continue the work that had been cut short yesterday. The ice was unforgiving, an element she knew nothing about, but every time its slippery surface threw her down, she got up, frowning, determined to do better. Malagen, who was never adept in the art of comprehending what wasn’t spoken, understood the message her actions were sending. She wasn’t a quitter. Perhaps she couldn’t be as callous and as resilient as him, but she wanted to stay, to learn. It was something he should’ve realized weeks ago, when instead of fleeing away from him, she chose not to forfeit on him. He acknowledged it now, though, and it was something even his emotionally hardened mind had to respect.

He followed her example several minutes later, sans all the falling. Unlike Ira, Malagen walked on the ice-caked plain with his usual solidity. The only thing that seemed different was the length of his strides as he stepped out of the cave, clothed only in his pants and shirt. He kept them short, but quickened which made his waddle almost comical. However, it kept him erect whereas his female companion kept introducing her backside to the icy soil.

“When you are forced to deal with ice, keep your steps short,” was his morning greeting he had for her, another lesson the Dram dictated as he stepped onto the curvy stone, establishing his balance almost momentarily. “Keep the muscles of your legs flexed, especially the ones in your thighs. If your legs are firm, your feet will seldom slip from under you or slide where you don’t want them to.”

And just like that, the training continued. Malagen wasn’t about to pamper her, tell her how glad he was that she opted to continue with her training and how sorry he was for pushing her beyond her limits. Such civility was deemed redundant by his mind. But if he dug deeper below the ice crust that surrounded his blackened heart, the ruthless swordsman would have to admit that he was glad and that he was sorry. He just didn’t know the correct way to show that. However, right now there was no time for introspectives.

***

Cold days came and went with harrowing slowness that came as a direct result of a rather monotonous training. They weren’t enjoying their time on the mountain. They didn’t come here to enjoy each other’s company and make silly small-talks. However, there were times when the atmosphere around the pair wasn’t as grim as if the forecast announced a precipitation made of cats and dogs for the next day. There were smiles to be found during those precious moments, caresses unfit for the rigorous training they were supposed to be going through. It was during one of these moments of reprieve – when the day was done, allowing the pair to seek comfort in each other’s arms – that Malagen decided it was time for Ira’s training to ascend to the next level.

“You did well so far,” he spoke, lying on his side next to her and looking into her oddly colored eyes. Most men would’ve been enchanted by her gaze, but the barbarian was almost immune to such charm. Almost. “Tomorrow we’ll start to work on your weapon skills. We’ll be done when you successfully defeat me. But before you strike, you have to know where to strike.”

He shifted a little bit, propping himself up to his elbow so as to have a better view before he continued. “Head is the most critical point on a human body, but it is also the most common misconception. Greenhorns usually go directly for the head, forgetting that the target area is about as large as an open hand. Which is not easy to hit.” He demonstrated with opening up his large hand and moving it around a bit, as if he was waving.

“You said you don’t want to learn how to kill. It’s a shame, but regardless, there are ways to hit the man in the head which can only incapacitate him. Nose is the most obvious target.” His finger touched her perky little nose, but there was little affection in his touch. As his words continued, so did his fingers roamed. “You hit somebody in the nose, their eyes water up whether they want it or not. Arcades are also good targets. Once they start bleeding, they fill the eyes with blood. But the best way to successfully cripple a man is a good punch in the chin. The jaw conveys the pressure of the hit to the person’s center for balance, stunning him momentarily.”

He paused for a few seconds, his fingers lingering on the smooth skin of her face longer then absolutely necessary, brushing lightly against her lips. He smirked and continued.

“The front of the neck is also a good area to strike if you can get to it. A firm punch in the throat disrupts the air flow...” But he never got a chance to finish. Once his fingers made their way past the line of her jaw and down to the silky skin of her neck, Ira recoiled just as she did back in Radasanth. A disquieted expression overtook her face, making her look almost fearful of something. The inquiry that was about to follow was inevitable.

“Why to do you recoil when I touch you there?”

[Iriah Caitrak]

These were the moments she loved and treasured. When the training was done for the day and they were able to sit—or lay—with one another and talk, even if it was inconsequential stuff neither of them would remember in the morning. Tonight the conversation was a little different. Tonight Malagen surprised her by actually complimenting on her progress thus far. From someone else the words wouldn’t have meant much at all, but coming from him she couldn’t help but feel like she was actually progressing. He wouldn’t have said so if she wasn’t, in fact he would have told her if she wasn’t. He didn’t beat around the proverbial sand dune. He just came out and said whatever was on his mind and whatever was the truth. Sometimes she liked that about him, sometimes she wished he would keep his mouth shut. For those with more emotions, words did hurt from time to time.

The compliment was quickly followed by him explaining the next stage of her training. Weapons handling and Ira couldn’t help but feel the flutter of excitement bloom in her stomach. This was what she had been waiting for. Now that she could keep her weapons steady and her balance in rather tough situations they were finally moving on to the meat of this whole training experience.

Listening intently, the Calerian kept silent as he demonstrated areas of the body for her to attack. The head was a target she knew of, but all her training as a Calerian had dictated she go for the chest. It was the only way to release a soul after all. This wasn’t new to her, but she didn’t know of the weak points on the head to attack like Malagen did. She didn’t even mind when his fingers demonstrated just where they were, in fact she welcomed the touch. He hadn’t really touched her since Radasanth, there was the time he’d kept her alive with his body heat, but that didn’t really count in her mind. When his fingers lingered on her face, she couldn’t help but smile. However, the moment he brushed against the skin on her neck that smile faded and she shifted away from him, recoiling as fast as she could.

The question that followed was something she thought he would have asked much sooner than this, yet at the same time she was not looking forward to giving him the answer. He would probably laugh at her and think her weak for such a thing. He wouldn’t understand. He was born and bred to kill and she wasn’t. There was no way he could understand.

“I…”

Ira took a deep breath and broke her gaze away from his face and the questioning look present there. She stared at the worn threads of the blanket beneath them instead and the small hole where she could see the rock beneath. Her hand unconsciously rose to her neck, her fingers moving passed her shirt and to the bare skin below. They rubbed over the horrid scar that was her reminding. White against her dark skin.

“You’re not the first person who’s tried to kill me…” She looked back into his eyes, a cold smile planted across her face. Moving her hand away from her neck, Ira shifted her position and propped herself up with her one arm. “It was the night before civil war broke out in Fallien. I’d just travelled all the way from Astaka to Irrakam in two days without any sleep, which is not exactly an easy thing to accomplish. The journey usually takes three days.

“After being told what was going on by Jya and a woman named Bryn, I retired to my room for the night by Jya’s orders. She wanted me well and rested for the following day.” Even though Ira was looking at Malagen her eyes had that faraway expression. She was picturing what had happened that night as she explained it to him. “In the middle of the night, an assassin hired by The Cult of Mitra snuck into The Keep to dispatch of a few high ranking military generals and anyone else she could get her hands upon. She ended up killing two people before she came into my chambers. I didn’t even wake up at first…” That cynical, cold smile passed across her face again, the one that said in a way she hated herself for what happened. If only she’d been stronger, faster, if only a lot of things. “I was so exhausted I didn’t even notice her until she was in my bed…” Ready to sink her teeth into Ira’s neck. “She…she looked like she was going to bite my neck, fangs and everything.”

Reliving this was the last thing Ira wanted to do. But somehow telling Malagen about it was easier than constantly seeing it flash in her mind. The feelings were all the same, but she was telling someone for a change instead of being trapped alone in her head with it.

“I think the fact that I woke up stunned her for a moment, I rolled out of the bed and we began fighting. She was faster and stronger than anything I’ve ever faced before, even you.” She hadn’t realized it then, but the woman had strength and speed that no normal human should have, then again Ira was rather certain she was no human. Her soul might have been at one point in time but it was twisted into something else when Ira sensed it. “The battle lasted for a while but every time I wounded her she just healed! My blade tore into her shoulder and in a matter of a few minutes the wound was gone and the only trace it had been there was blood. She never slowed down; she never grew tired, she just kept coming at me.

“When I managed to pierce her in the shoulder, she grabbed the shaft of Uriahd and drew the blade in deeper, threw her shoulder against my chest and…bit down on my neck. I…could feel her drinking my blood. I tried to get her off me but I couldn’t until something went wrong and she loosened her own grip. We fought more but the open wound in my neck was quickly weakening me. At one point during the fight I thought I’d knocked her unconscious so I went to get one of the guards…I didn’t make it far. She punched me so hard in the side as I was trying to get away that she dented my armour.” Ira well remembered how it felt to have the hard metal pressing against the already sore area of her side.

“I couldn’t fight anymore though, I was too weak from blood loss, but I bluffed. At one point during the fight I’d lost my Half Swallows, so after knocking the woman to her knees I formed a short sword and pointed it at her chest. I just wanted her to stop, I didn’t want to kill her.”

“Why won’t you just die!”

Her side was throbbing, the indented metal from her armour constantly pushing against the already sore area. With a quick thought she reshaped her armour and kicked out at the woman’s kneecap, watching her crumble to the ground with a quick cry.

“I think the better question is why won’t you stop trying to kill me!”

Her body was ready to give in and collapse. The only thing that kept her going was her own stubborn will to live.

“Just give up, I don’t want to kill you!”

One moment her hands were empty and in the next she was holding a short sword. The tip of the blade was pointed straight towards the woman’s heart and in a simple movement she could end her life. But Ira didn’t want to. Whether the woman noticed or cared was beyond her, she lunged at Ira, rage filling her violet eyes. The blade passed through her chest and right into her heart just as the woman grabbed Ira shoulder and once again sunk her teeth into her neck. This time ripping and rending flesh so she could drink her fill. It took the siahd a few seconds to realize what had happened though when she’d lunged at the Calerian. The shock and disbelief so evident on her face as she died, her body turning to nothing more than a pile of dust and her soul being dragged down to the Abyss.

“After she died, I couldn’t even find the strength to move. I ended up having to call out for help. Izvilvin found me and brought me to a healer just in time. That woman was not human…but whatever she was I still don’t know.” Ira didn’t even know her name, not that it would make a difference. "Now, whenever someone touches me there all I can see is that battle and all I can feel is her teeth sinking into my neck and the feeling of my life slowly slipping away..."

It was the past and even though Ira could tell herself over and over again that killing her was the right thing to do it didn’t sit well in her stomach and the images in her mind never changed.

[Malagen]

To feel remorse for taking a life... It was something that Malagen had not felt for so long that even a memory of past regrets seemed ancient, faded, bleached by time and death. He could hear the echoes of it in Ira’s words, feel a portion of these haunting emotions that were so very vivid within her and so very dead in his decrepit soul. It was like a voice crossing a great distance, getting distorted and weakened along the way, registering in his mind as a mere whisper from a life he never got to live. The barbarian felt inadequate. There was nothing he could offer her, no advice on how to overcome this irrational dread that attacked her every time she was touched in that particular place. His training suggested that she should walk it off, get with the program, kill enough people to make their screaming faces so repetitive that they blended into the background, becoming irrelevant. But that wasn’t something he wanted to teach her. That wasn’t something she wanted to be taught.

“All scars have stories to tell,” Malagen said once she was done and their eyes fought with the enigma of the tense, expectant silence. His tone offered little in means of compassion, but the eyes that had been watching the Calerian woman through the entire confession lost a fair share of their stoic coldness. “And they are seldom stories people like to recall. That’s what makes them human.”

Them, not him. The ruthless barbarian knew each and every story that his assortment of scars spoke in unison, and they were just words on pages in a book that was deemed redundant in his mind. There was blood and sweat and tears and pain and anguish and anger in that forgotten tome, a lifetime comprised of these moments and feelings that meant so much to so many and so little to Malagen. What she went through every time somebody touched her neck was the sensation that was dead and buried in him, bringing the calm he prided himself with. There was no sympathy in him, no reflection of this remorse Ira couldn’t release from her system. There was nothing Malagen regretted.

But then her hand found its way to his, her lips offered a shadow of a real smile and the Dram wasn’t so certain anymore. A graveyard flashed in his mind, a cold, morbid place where death was so tangible he could smell it in the mossy, damp air. He was its harbinger, a black bugbear out to destroy lives, weighing and measuring Ira’s as if it was a bazaar good. Back then it was just everyday business. Today, as Malagen lay so close to her that he could smell the day’s worth of sweat on her body, he realized that there were probably plenty of things he should regret doing. He just didn’t know what they were yet.

“It will diminish, this rotten feeling in your gut,” he continued. “It will never go away, but time will weaken it, make it more bearable. The fact that the thing you fought was probably some sort of a vampire should help too. Nightstalkers are bloodthirsty creatures, no more then beasts once the thirst gets to them. Shed no tears for their accursed kind.”

It wouldn’t be easy for Ira, he knew. The Fallien was too emotional about everything, too susceptible to getting wounded by words and reconsiderations. But she had to acquire armor against that on her own. All Malagen could do was shield her from what he could fight.

“But let us continue,” the barbarian, his voice donning the robes of a teacher again as he resumed his lesson. It was almost disconcerting how easily his mind could jump from one topic to the next one, almost as if everything Ira just said had no weight whatsoever. It wasn’t the truth, though; indifference was simply Malagen’s suit of armor. “Joints on a human body are extremely vulnerable. Any joints. Wrists, elbows, shoulders, knees, ankles... If you can dislocate or break one of these, you’ll bring the battle to a close soon enough. Cutting them is also effective. Joints are covered with tendons that are in turn connected with muscles. If you sever the link between the two, limbs become useless. And it doesn’t kill a person. Good when you need to interrogate people... or just keep them alive, I guess. Wrists and elbows are the easiest target in a swordfight. You just let your blade slide down the one of your opponent, get around the armguard and...”

Malagen finished with his forefinger tapping against her wrist, supporting the point he tried to make before it continued to climb up the length of her arm to locate the tendons on her elbow. His touch was firm, but not careless, proceeding over the texture of her shirt to her armpit and pointing out another weak spot. Instead of tracing its way down the length or her collarbone and up her neck, his fingers ventured south. They paused just above her rising and falling mounds.

“A firm hit in the chest can knock some air out of the lungs, but only if you catch your foe by surprise. Or if you can put some serious power behind the strike. Otherwise the muscles flex, creating quite a barrier. It’s easier to go for the liver if you have a chance...” His hand brushed against her right breast not completely involuntarily, continuing to feel the ribcage at her side. Once his fingers passed the ribs, Malagen stopped again. “If you hit a man here strong enough, you’ll have him rolling in pain soon enough. Of course, not as much as when you hit him in the crotch, but that’s a target which men like to keep well protected at all times. Overprotected more often then not.”

His hand was on her stomach, edging closer to the very spot he was talking about. And suddenly the cold cavern wasn’t so cold anymore and the lesson wasn’t only about teaching.

[Iriah Caitrak]

This was one of those times when words would mean a lot. When a few chosen phrases of compassion could somehow just help, make her feel better and lighten that burden on her conscious. But that was not what Malagen could give her. She wanted it, part of her just craved those comforting words and another part of her scoffed it off, told her to suck it up and get on with her life. That part of her was the one she wanted to listen to, oh how she wished she could, but her emotions were too strong. She wore her feelings on her sleeve as the saying went. Anyone looking into her face could easily be able to see the multitude of emotions pass through her. And the only kind of comfort her barbarian could give her was ‘it will diminish with time. Never really go away, but it’ll become more bearable’.

She didn’t want more bearable, she didn’t want it to diminish, she wanted it gone, forever, tucked away in some area of her soul she’d never see again. The problem was she didn’t think it would ease. She was not him. One screaming face did not look like any other. The face of that woman was scorched into her soul. The one thing he could give her though, was a possibility of what was that woman was, a vampire, some kind of Nightstalker, a bloodthirsty creature that he did not seem fond of himself. Malagen telling her that she should feel no regret over killing such a thing almost meant nothing to her coming from someone who had killed so many, almost. Then the look in his eyes registered and she realized the coldness he used as a shield was gone. The barrier he kept around himself was down. Right now he had that completely human look she wanted him to wear all the time. In the short time she had known him, Malagen never spoke or said anything inconsequential or false, so she had no reason to doubt him now.

Ira wanted to ask him more about it, about these Nightstalkers, her natural curiosity brimming below the surface. But before she could he switched the subject and brought it back around to her training. Disappointment was a hard thing to mask, yet she was certain the look of indifference she plastered on her face would be enough to fool him. Malagen had a hard enough time reading emotions when they were slapping him in the face, Ira suspected it would be much harder were she to hide them.

So once again he resumed his lesson and Ira listened. The fact that he kept touching her made her mind wander to other thoughts that most assuredly had nothing to do with pressure points and immobilizing her enemy. She could tell exactly when the lesson became something more for Malagen as well. His touch was no longer just about demonstrating, it was actually about touching her and feeling her body. And it changed as his hand ventured from her underarm, across her chest and then down her ribs to her stomach where it still rested right now, slowly creeping lower and lower. Ira found Malagen’s sharp blue eyes searching hers, as if waiting to see if she would reject or accept his touch.

His touch was something she had been waiting for, for days now. Wondering if what had happened to them back in Radasanth meant anything to him, or if it was just sex. Wondering if it meant anything to her…

Now that she had her answer, she couldn’t help the smile that tugged at her lips and the slight blush that coloured her cheeks.

“I know of a few areas myself that can knock a man off balance.” Her tongue darted out to moisten her lips as Ira felt the inevitable flutter of excitement and nervousness. Wrapping her fingers around Malagen’s wrist, she began to lead it across her stomach to her side and then further to the small of her back. “Kicking a man in his lower back is rather effective.” She continued to lower his hand even more, until he was firmly gripping her behind. “This area works too, though it’s much more enjoyable for a different kind of touch.”

Her words sounded a little breathless at the end.

Ira was bold in life, but she didn’t exactly have a lot of experience when it came to this, after all, Malagen was the first man she’d ever slept with. So being bold in this sense left her blushing and uncertain, even a little uncomfortable. She liked the dominant side of her barbarian, the rough that he portrayed, she just had to figure out a way to bring that out in him sexually. Gentleness was nice, but that wasn’t what she wanted right now.

“I also know about another area…” She shifted her position slightly, sitting up a little higher as she let go of his wrist, leaving his hand right where she wanted it. Hopefully before he could suspect anything, Ira bent her leg up and shoved her knee into Malagen’s hip, right where it joined with his thigh. With him being on his side, he easily lost his balance and rolled over onto his back, Ira following right after him and pinning him to the hard ground by planting her thighs on either side of his hips.

Biting down on her lower lip, the Calerian enjoyed the feel of having him beneath her for a few seconds before she pushed aside his jacket, then leaned down and kissed him. Teasing him by nibbling on his lower lip and pulling away when he tried to intensify the kiss. Smirking, she formed a small dagger in her right hand. Placing the blade at the neck of his shirt, Ira sliced through the material easily and all the way to the bottom. Tossing the dagger away, she pushed the remnants of his shirt aside and allowed her fingers to freely run across the contours of his stomach and chest. Feeling every muscle as they tensed and flexed under her cool touch.

Leaning forward once more, Ira whispered into Malagen’s ear, “How easily subdued you are, my barbarian.” It was probably a good thing he couldn’t see her face right at that moment, for she could feel the heat of her blush all along her cheeks. Trying to push her own shyness aside, she began nibbling down his neck.

[Malagen]

As the night continued, so did this emotional tour that made them visit all the sights and experience all the specific sensations. They started off with the usual, with the reason why they were cold and jaded and sitting in some hole in the mountain, but somewhere along the way they took a detour that took them in an entirely different direction. Instructions led to questions, questions led to remorseful answers, and answers in turn led to an emotional bomb that detonated somewhere in the midst of all the words and meaningful glances and twofold caresses. And before long, effective ways to incapacitate a man took the hand of past regrets, and together the two marched out of the cave. Only the desire remained, renewed, reconciling, reminding the pair that they were more then just a mentor and an apprentice.

Malagen purposefully evaded these moments of intimacy ever since they left Radasanth, quenching the fire every time Ira tried to rekindle it. Passion weakened both the body and the mind; after a night of pleasure, it became harder to regain the stringency necessary for proper training. But even the adamant defense of his poised mind started to fall apart before her assault. She guided his hand to her luscious posterior with hands and words and daring smirks, goading him with gentleness before she utilized the force. Not that much force was needed to get them in a rather compromising position; Malagen had neither the opportunity nor the will to defend against her ‘attack’. So in a matter of seconds, the lesson was over and Ira was sitting on top of him, sporting a tantalizing conqueror’s smile. Another one of his shirts fell victim to her summoned weapons, but the chill of the night that swept over his torso was soon countered by the touch of her fingers. Ira thought she owned him at that point; the woman made it clear with her words and her commanding position. The barbarian let her play with the illusion for a while. Despite what his pride avowed, it wasn’t such a bad thing to be subdued.

“Sometimes you need to lose in order to win.” His whisper could barely be considered a whisper – with nothing alive for miles in all directions, Malagen saw no reason to lower his voice too much. It also stated something that usually wasn’t the truth, but right now it sure as hell felt so for the Dram. This wasn’t Radasanth. They both smelled the way people did after weeks of training without a proper bath, the way a blacksmith’s glove smelled after years of usage. And they were both cold; the night was a frigid bitch as usual and the prospect of getting rid of some of their clothes brought a promise of frostbite and shivers. And yet all the downsides failed to stop the desire they kept repressed.

His hands and lips refused to be indebted to Ira’s, so they replied to every touch, every kiss. They explored her body, groping her buttocks and pulling her so near her body pressed against his before they continued upwards. His fingers found a way through the layers of her clothes, reaching the warm satin of her tanned torso and proceeding to climb. As they ascended, they brought her shirt up in tow, ruffling it up until his hands were at her shoulder blades and most of her upper body was unraveled. Despite the chill, the Calerian broke the tantalizing touches of her lips just for a moment, just to allow him to slip the shirt over her head. But when the piece of cloth reached her head, Malagen stopped. It was time to break her illusion.

With her eyes and most of her visage wrapped in the shirt and her arms restrained above her head by both the fabric of her attire and his grasp, the barbarian forced them both up in a sitting position. His lips caught hers unprepared, kissing them deeply, almost roughly, seeking satisfaction for the teasing she put him through moments earlier. Malagen didn’t stop only at that, though. In her defenseless position, Ira was unable to stop him from kissing his way down her neck, more gently this time, careful as he ventured to this place that was a taboo for her. The Fallien woman shivered at the touch – was it from the coldness or the reappearing images of the past, Malagen couldn’t tell – but before long his lips were at her shoulder, continuing to the more pleasurable spots of her magnificent body. It was his turn to tease, his tongue brushing against her nipple, his teeth merely grazing against the sensitive piece of skin. He tasted her sweat over and over again, eliciting mellisonant sighs from the woman that could only be interpreted as approving.

For minutes this game continued, even after Ira’s shirt was finally discarded and her fingers wrapped themselves around the locks of his long hair. But as pleasurable as it was, teasing and fondling could do only so much for a pair overtaken by heat of passion, so soon enough Malagen lowered Ira on the blanket they used as a cot. His hands didn’t stop there. Firm and almost hasty, they turned the woman around with ease, bringing her to her hands and knees before then unbuckled the belt of her pants. His body leant against hers from behind, his lips exploring the skin of her sculptured back and the elaborate tattoo that decorated it. But tattoos didn’t matter. The cold didn’t matter. The rocks prodding at his knees didn’t matter. As his arms embraced her from behind, pulling her body against his, all that mattered was Ira and everything they’ve both been missing all these hard days of training. At that moment, Malagen cast away his usual reserve. At that moment, he was just a man madly in love with a woman.

[Iriah Caitrak]

She finally got to see and feel the rough side of him that she wanted. His hands taking control of her and doing with her body as he pleased and it brought a new thrill of excitement into her. Each touch and caress, each kiss, nibble and bite eliciting a soft moan or breathless whimper. With him behind her, she couldn’t see what he was doing, she could only feel him, feel as his lips kissed along the intertwining lines of Abhrapatha’s mark on her back. As rough hands from years of welding a weapon slid across her smooth skin, wrapped around her and then pulled her up against Malagen’s front. Her pants fell down to her knees and stayed there. Neither of them interested or bothering to take them off further. Questing hands moved down along her bare stomach and lower still, lightly brushing against her centre before moving along to inner thighs and then back around to her behind.

They left her for only a moment, just long enough for her to hear the buckle of Malagen’s pants as he hastily stripped them away. She would have done it herself, but her barbarian seemed content and enjoying the position he had her in right now and she couldn’t do much of anything from it. Then his hands were back on her body and he was pulling her back against him once again. Thought fled her mind and the only thing that mattered was his touch.

~~~~~~~~~

Morning was upon her. Light was flooding in from the mouth of the cave, illuminating as much as it could and leaving the rest in broken shadows from jagged rocks. The world was grey. She was beginning to miss colour, even the sand dunes of her home had colour to them, though brown and red they may be. She didn’t want to get up. Despite the cold she could feel trying to seep through the thin layer of her blanket, she just wanted to continue to lie exactly where she was. No more training, no more snow, no more nothing. Just her and Malagen, a man she was beginning to feel for. A man she should feel nothing for, a man who had tried to kill her but was now teaching her how to stay alive. It made her realize that there was another man in her life that she felt for, someone she knew she loved and who most likely loved her back. Yet here she was in a cave, deep in the mountains of Corone with someone else, instead of the sand swept lands of Fallien doing what she was trained to do.

In Fallien women could do as they please. They were not tied down to having one partner, nor did they have to stay with that one partner. Yet things always changed when there were feelings involved. Whatever Malagen felt for her she didn’t know, she could guess that there was something beneath the cold surface of his eyes but it was hard to say. He had an almost impregnable fortress around his emotions that she had only recently began to chip away at, leaving him vulnerable to the world around him. It was true, their encounter had changed them both in subtle ways, turning him a little softer and making her a little harder. But was it for the better? When she up and left Corone, because there was no doubt in her mind she would and possibly soon at that, what would he do? She could not take him with her, a stranger to her lands, a stranger in her tribe, Gereint might not allow someone like him in their home. And then there were the Fallen. Ira could not fight them with Malagen around; he would only get in the way. Yet she was just distracting herself and trying to come up with excuses because she was beginning to feel something for him and she didn’t know what to do with it.

The last time Ira had been enveloped in Malagen’s embrace like this—with his arms around her and their legs so intimately intertwined—she had been close to dying from the cold and he had cared enough to save her. Now it was from something far more pleasurable, something that left her sated and weak and sore in all the right places. Something she’d only ever experienced with him, by her own choice. Ira had never been interested in sex before. Her only interest had been fighting Fallen and making herself stronger so she could protect those she cared about and help those that needed it. How sad that coming to this strange land had shown her just how weak she was.

Carefully shifting her position, the Calerian slowly untangled their legs and turned herself around in Malagen’s embrace. He always looked so peaceful in sleep. It was like everything he was and everything he had done washed away from his features, leaving him looking human and almost vulnerable. She didn’t know what she liked better. The distant look he had on his face or the one he wore while sleeping. Both were him and yet one could quite possibly never be him. Reaching out, Ira ran her hand across his cheek, giving a sad smile.

“What if I told you I have feelings for you, my barbarian, what would you say then?” Whispered words that were barely audible, that she almost wished he could hear, that she wish she’d never spoken. “What would you do… or would you even care?”

Planting a soft kiss of his lips, Ira rested her head on his arm. She was content to not move for a little while longer. Just to be held in his embrace.

[Malagen]

“What if I told you I have feelings for you?”

These words, uttered in a demure whisper, were not the wake up call that Malagen was ready for. Not that her voice actually awoke him. Her tossing and turning did that quite effectively; the question was just the pail of cold water that chased away the last remnants of his sleep. And then his instincts almost took over, nearly making him push her and her questions away, reestablishing the safe zone within which he was untouchable. But then Ira’s lips met his and her head landed back on his shoulder, and the barbarian found himself unable to be ruthless. Not towards her, not after last night, not over this particular issue. Ira was just being Ira, mellow, emotional, sentimental... Everything he wasn’t.

There were no answers to her questions. She brought up one of those predicaments that never had a clear-cut answer, but rather raised a number of other questions and maybes that in turn made your head spin while you chased your own tail. What was he supposed to offer her as a reply? Was there truly something within him, a spark that she struck in that cold, desolate place where his soul used to be? Perhaps. But was it just wishful thinking, just some make-believe that he faked just to indulge her? If it was, could she handle the truth? And if it wasn’t, could he handle the truth? These and a myriad of other thoughts overtook his mind as he lay motionless next to her, feeling the warmth of her every breath defying the chill that the morning wrapped around him like second skin. Eventually, Malagen decided to postpone resolving the predicament by doing what he did best - remaining calm and seemingly unfazed by her words.

Minutes that passed in this feigned slumber seemed to drag on forever and Ira wasn’t making it easy for him not to think of the question she dropped into his lap. Her arms held him in a subtle embrace, her fingers restless as they caressed his skin with barely noticeable touches. And it only got worse once he opened his eyes. Though her short, purplish hair was a spiky mess and her eyes were still a bit crusty, the content serenity on the woman’s face was endearing even to a bastard such as him. And when she smiled and stretched her limbs and let out a sweet moan filled with both pleasurable tiredness and refreshment, Malagen was at the verge of the same admission she made moments ago. A part of him wanted nothing else but to wake up to her sweet yawns every single morning. Another, much more stringent and still much more predominant part had other, less placating ideas.

“We should rise. There is work to be done today,” he said, his shield of callousness up as he untangled himself from her embrace. He couldn’t afford to become soft, not only for the sake of the training, but for his own sake. He wasn’t a hero and they weren’t living in a fable where they fall madly in love with each other and settle down and raise children and grow old together. No, there were too many shadows stalking him, ghosts from a gory past. What Ira desired - this soft, juicy core radiating with romance and tenderness and emotions – Malagen didn’t have. The most he could offer to her now were occasional glimpses of a different self, distorted reflections that presented some sporadic goodwill.

They dressed in silence and they broke their fast in silence, acting almost like strangers when compared to the yesterday’s intimacy. Even though he didn’t explicitly say it, the message was quite clear: there is no room for softness in his training regime. They came to train, not to fornicate and explore some long lost emotions, and training was what Malagen intended to do.

It was just another day on the mountain outside, presenting them with the landscape that etched itself into their brains by now. By the time they stepped outside their extremely humble abode, the pale clouded sun ate up most of the frost that the night brought, leaving the soft snow as the only obstacle for their feet. Today, Malagen didn’t lead the way to their little training ground on the south side of the plain, though. Instead he traversed the plateau until he reached the rough center and waited for Ira to join him. Once she did, the lesson started with the cold indifference that was an old hat for both of them.

“The only way to truly learn how to win battles is by trial and error,” the barbarian started, stone cold and as static as the mountain that loomed above him. He was scarcely different then Malagen from Radasanth’s graveyard, where he came to murder her. It was as if he was trying to prove something, as if he was countering all the sentiments from her little morning query and proving that there were none in him. It was that stubborn part of him surfacing, refusing to give up on the twenty years of callousness, afraid of being effaced completely.

“There is no ultimate sword-fighting technique, no one move that can take down every opponent. It’s all situational; you have to be able to see your opponent’s weaknesses and respond to it. However, there are several ground rules, so to speak. The first one is...” Malagen made a rapid move towards her and she was clearly unprepared. His body span, his leg sweeping her feet from beneath her, and when she was in midair, the hilt of his sheathed blade struck her stomach, sending her into the snow with forceful firmness. He took two steps back and reassumed his stationary posture before he continued.

“...always move with a purpose. Don’t go wasting your attacks, hoping that one of them would connect. Plan the attack pattern in your head and predict how your opponent will react. In this case, I planned to send you to the ground and I predicted that you would be unprepared. The result is quite obvious. Now you try.”

[Iriah Caitrak]

Would you mind if I hurt you?
Understand that I need to
Wish that I had other choices
Than to harm the one I love

What have you done now?

Within Temptation - What have you done?

She’d like to shove his unprepared up his ass and see how fast he moved then.
By Suravani her stomach was sore now. She didn’t want him to see that but there wasn’t much she could do about it. He’s shoved the hilt of his sword right into her gut for crying out loud, which thankfully she hadn’t done. A small squeak may have escaped her lips when he’d kicked her legs out from under her, but she’d be surprised if he’d heard it. Honestly though, Ira was growing weary of ending up flat on her ass so much around him, but the only way she could change that was by getting better. Fighting him seemed to be the solution. The problem was she didn’t feel the confidence she normally did entering a battle. Yet this wasn’t really a battle. It was training.

This is just training.

The cold look on Malagen’s face and the distant wall in his eyes said otherwise though. This was the look that made her blood run cold and her heart skip a beat. The same look he had given her back in the graveyard when he’d tried to kill her. How could he look at her like that after last night? There truly wasn’t anything behind his cold gaze…was there? Ira was only fooling herself thinking that such a man could feel, let alone feel anything for her. This is just training to him, training and sex. Nothing more. She was stupid to think anything otherwise. Juvenile, stupid, and naïve. All those things wrapped into a little gullible package ripe for the taking.

If that was all he wanted, then fine. She could be just as distant as him, just as cold and uncaring as the best of them. Though her hands were clenched into tight fists, her face was a mask. She cleared it of whatever emotions had been flickering across its surface before. Could she really keep up a mask of cold indifference forever though?

Reminding herself that she was supposed to be attacking him and a few seconds had already gone by without her doing anything, Ira turned away from Malagen. The cold from the snow beneath her was also starting to seep through her layers of clothing, making areas of her skin begin to numb, including her fingers. Sitting up she formed her half swallows in her hands. They looked the same as they always did, but the blades were blunt and there would be no danger for Malagen. Not that he was probably worried about her. Just as the cool metal touched her palms, Ira shifted her position onto her side and kicked out at Malagen’s legs.

There was a brief moment where she actually thought the attack was going to connect. Then his legs were gone. Her foot hit nothing but air. His foot came down on her ankle. Stopping it in its place and bending it into a painful position.
She grimaced and tried to pill her ankle away, but he just pushed down harder on it almost causing her to whimper.

“Too slow, you wasted your time thinking about what you were going to do for far too long. You should be able to process your attacks faster.”

Ira glared defiantly up at him from the ground, but Malagen only looked down at her with the same look on his face. She hadn’t been thinking about her attack, she’d been thinking about him! She wasn’t going to tell him that. He didn’t care, he didn’t feel anything, why would be want to hear it? Using her other leg, she kicked out at him, which once again did not connect. However, it did exactly what she wanted it to, it removed his foot from her ankle and allowed her to roll off to the side and quickly get to her feet. Whether Malagen was going to say something or not about her last attack she’ll never know, because she didn’t give him the chance. Just as her feet landed on steady ground she was digging her boots into the snow and propelling herself towards him. The half swallow in her right hand came in for a quick horizontal slash at his stomach. He stepped to the side of it and hit the back of her hand with the sheath of his sabre.

“Predictable.”

The jolt of him hitting her hand almost caused her to drop her weapon. Perhaps if not for the week or more of training she’d already received she would have. Still, it wasn’t helping her hit him, nothing was. He wasn’t a Fallen. She needed to stop thinking like a Calerian so much. Malagen was a trained warrior, he wasn’t a corrupted soul. When was she going to learn that?

Anger and frustration were beginning to war over all emotions in her head and no matter how hard she tried to smother them, they wouldn’t go away. How could he be so much better than her? She’d gone through years of training too. No one may have dropped her into an ice lake tied to another person, but her training hadn’t been easy either. Did Calerian training rely too much on teaching the person about Fallen, Purgatory and defeating souls? Was there too much focus on the soul and not enough on the body? What did it matter? Calerian training was just as good as the training Malagen went through, more humane as well. She’d show him when she had him flat on his back for a change.

Turning her body to the right to face Malagen, Ira did a quick upwards-diagonal slash to his chest. As she suspected, he stepped away and to the left of the attack. Quickly, Ira followed through with a thrust towards his lower abdomen. His sheathed blade interrupted her attack though, sending it off course and narrowly missing his hip. But he didn’t end there. He stepped further to the left of her and whacked her hard in her now unprotected side. As she recoiled from the blow, Malagen kicked out her legs from underneath her once again. Ira landed hard on the soft snow that did little to lesson the impact. Air was nearly driven from her lungs. But she was more interested in her ribs and the pain they were in after the recent blow.

“Don’t overextend yourself to try and take down your opponent. Never leave yourself open to such an attack.”

The pain was beginning to be overshadowed by her growing anger.

[Malagen]

The morning was cold, but the weather had little to do with the dense chill in the air. They were both so used to the mountain and its elements that they scarcely even noticed how cold and wet the snow was, or how annoying and bone-chilling the touch of the wind was, or even how bleak the sky was so high in the north. No, a different kind of frigidity came to play that morning, reborn and manifesting itself in both of them. Both Ira’s and Malagen’s eyes were ice daggers, slicing at the other, uncaring, only his were as smooth as death and hers were jagged with anger. The tactless barbarian didn’t particularly concern himself with the reasons of her agitation. It could’ve been simply his strictness or it could’ve been the disappointment after she posed her question this morning. Whatever it was, he was about to teach the Fallien woman that anger was an unwelcome emotion on the field of battle.

Ira wasn’t necessarily an inept fighter; she wasn’t one when he first encountered her and she only got better on the mountain. She was a stubborn wench, though, and one who let emotions overtake her reason when they shouldn’t. It turned her every attack into a defiant manifest, a curse unspoken by her tongue but uttered by every other part of her. Her eyes spat the curses at him, her hands desperately shoved them at him, wishing nothing more then to see him on his back, wishing to see him defeated, wishing to sate her pride. Wishing... and falling short every time. Her fierceness gave her away, announced every attack she planned to make, making her a mere step or two up the ladder above a raging bull that just came at you with those dual horns of his. Malagen saw it all, his uncanny perception registering every motion, his mind anticipating, wheeling away, parrying and bringing forth bludgeoning pain.

“Have you learned nothing the past few days?” he asked her, casting a serene glance from above as she once again found herself off her feet and in the bed of tussled snow and mud. The blunt sheathe of his saber was pointing at Ira’s face and the irritated grimace she made. “You need not only calm your body, but your mind as well. Perhaps you’re angry. Perhaps you want nothing more then bash my skull in. Perhaps you want to crawl back to Astaka. Perish such thoughts! Emotions are not relevant in the battle. They are the mist that clouds your mind.”

He took the usual two steps back, waited for Ira to consolidate herself, and then he came at her as swift as a viper. He moved his sheathed saber singlehandedly, only instead of taking a shot at her body he attacked her blades instead. Metal sang against metal, his saber swatting first the right blade, then the left one, leaving her middle exposed. His blade – which was more of a steel stick when kept in its sheathe – moved for her chest, but it was a feint and an effective one too. Ira brought her blades back to her front almost instinctively in defense, but by then Malagen was pivoting around her and landing a kick at the small of her back. The attack made the woman stumble forward and on her knees.

“It seems you were right,” the dark swordsman said, reinstating the distance and waiting patiently for her to recover. There was a hint of a smirk on his lips, but it was gone by the time she turned around to stab at him again with the swords in her silvery eyes. “That is a good place to strike.”

Ira tried to take heed of his words, tried to give out an impression of a woman with a cool head and a steady hand, but she was breaking by the seams. Her eyes went rogue on her, betraying her inner state, her fingers clenched on her weapons just a tad harder, her nostrils flaring just enough for him to read the anger manifested in these subtle details. She came at him hard again, throwing a shallow diagonal cut with her right before she brought the left with the spin of her body. The first strike was supposed to make Malagen take a step back, right into the path of her follow up, but even though it was a clever attack, it wasn’t clever enough. Instead of taking a step back, the barbarian took two forward, positioning himself behind her swiping left arm which he caught with his vacant left. And before Ira got a chance to squirm out of his grasp, his right reached from behind and pressed the crude, dented metal of his black scabbard against the front of her neck.

“Never take your eyes off your opponent,” Malagen spoke, a pale wraith standing so close behind her that he could almost taste the frozen sweat on her scruff. For the briefest of moments he felt tempted to do just that, to touch that forbidden place that haunted her so, but Ira’s defiance didn’t grant him a lengthy victory celebration. One of her legs twisted behind his own, her body shoving backwards as the free right brought her elbow and her blade in a blind backhanded arc. The dull metal of her blade merely passed through Malagen’s long hair as he somersaulted backwards, through the snow and back on his feet. Despite his formidable size, he was almost as dexterous as an acrobat. The frozen locks of his abundant jet hair followed with a slight delay, tapping against the leather of his cloak as they settled back in their natural place.

The training continued. In the eerily silence of the snow-white mountain the clangor of their clashing blades was an inharmonic crescendo, a rhythm of a drunken drummer that went on and on with no specific pattern. Sometimes their blades rang hard from the force between the blows, sometimes the beat was silent and repetitive, interrupted only here and there by the mismatched lyrics that were supposed to be the lessons Malagen spoke and Ira ignored more often then she acknowledged them. It was steeling time, and both were up to the task.

[Iriah Caitrak]

It went on for days. Each one filled with the same routine, the same thing that caused them to blur together into a uniform succession of days she could no longer tell apart. Every one of them held the same kind of prospective than the one before it. Making it impossible to tell when one ended and the other began. It was just a never-ending cycle of training, bitter words, bruises and anger. The anger was her own. It was festering within her like an infected wound that only grew stronger with each passing moment. Malagen had already taken notice of her emotions and commented several times on many different days to bury it within her. She couldn’t fight with her emotions after all. But that was who she was and that was exactly what she did, fight with her emotions. To ask her not to would be asking her to change herself.

Nights were spent in silence. Ira refused to talk to Malagen, and he not being one to make idle conversation—or being very good at it—was more than content to not have to talk to her. In the single morning that her training in physical combat had begun, the entire atmosphere around them had changed. Neither of them seemed too keen to take it back. Their entire relationship seemed to change. It was slowly spiralling downward and neither of them was attempting to pick the pieces back up.

Ira was beginning to wonder if there was even a point in trying. Malagen was who he was. A cold, emotionless bastard whom she’d met in The Citadel and fought with. That was what he was good at. Fighting. He was never going to change. She would never ask him to change. People should always like each other for how they are, not what they could be. She had thought she had liked him just as he was, but his recent change in attitude had well, changed her mind. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, it hurt when he was so cold and distant to her. She couldn’t have uncaring eyes as cold as the snow beneath her feet staring her down, especially by a person she thought she cared about.

Today was just another day of training to Malagen. But to Ira, she felt she could take no more.

The Calerian ducked low from a blow meant to catch her in the shoulder. The hard sheath of Malagen’s weapon passing within a fraction of her skull, ruffling the short and frozen tendrils of her hair as it whipped passed. From her crouched position, she arched the dull blade of her half swallow towards what should have been Malagen’s exposed side. But it wasn’t. It was like he could see every move she was going to make before she even thought about it. He used the momentum of his swing to carry his body around in a circle and narrowly missing her blade. Instead, it brushed against the side of his billowing coat. When he came around to complete the circle, his sword was at the ready.

With a twist of his wrist, he came in for a quick attack to the shaft of her weapon. Not having enough time to defend other than just taking the blow, the Calerian released her weapon. When he otherwise would have struck the metal shaft of her half swallow and the plateau would have been filled with the sounds of impacting metal once more. Malagen hit nothing but air. With her left hand still clutching it’s weapon, Ira thrust it towards him. She turned the blade slightly, hoping to catch Malagen somewhere in the side of his head with the flat of her blade. By this time, she wasn’t too concerned over whether or not she hurt him. She already had her fair share of bruises, all of which were inflicted by him.

He dug the soles of his boots into the hard packed snow and managed to twist his body back enough to avoid the blade. Her weapon passed within a centimetre of his skin. It left him in a slightly arched position, one that looked extremely vulnerable to her, and possibly to him as well. Trying to catch him before he recovered, Ira quickly drew the blade in her left hand back at the same time she reformed the one in her right. Stepping towards him while doing this, she arched her blade in a horizontal slash towards his lower abdomen. She realized just a fraction of a second too late that she overstepped herself. Malagen was not in the best of positions to take advantage of that though.

Like every time before, the attack didn’t land. Though they’re fighting had turned into a more fluid dance that certainly lasted longer than in the beginning. Ira had yet to remove Malagen from his footing and this time was no exception. He avoided her attack by falling onto his back, which crunched the no longer fluffy and soft snowflakes. He was a black abnormality in the pristine, white plateau. From that vantage he kicked out at her knee and she had no time react. The hard sole of his boot hit the side of her knee and sent her crumbling down onto one leg. Just as she looked up and over to him, she caught the sight of his sheath coming towards her from the corner of her eyes.

Ira moved to duck from the blow even as her mind screamed she should have raised her arms in protection. The sheath caught her in the temple and spent her sprawling into the snow on her side.

Pain exploded across her eye socket and the world around her blurred. A haze overcame her mind that muddled her thoughts and made it nearly impossible for her to concentrate around. Still, her anger and frustration pushed her back up into a sitting position. Her hands balled into tight fists around her weapons and her knuckles turned white. Defiant eyes glared in Malagen’s direction, even though she couldn’t completely focus on him. The rage kept the pain at bay, the rage helped. And for once she didn’t fight it. She didn’t hold it back. Instead she let it wash over her. That little barrier in her mind that kept the corruption at bay came crumbling down with it.

Outwardly her Irenian crystal turned red and her eyes glazed over, showing no signs of recollection or response. For a second or two she stayed like that, frozen in her sitting position. Then, emanating from her Irenian crystal, a burst of brilliantly blinding light exploded across the plateau. When it subsided, something that was entirely not Ira was left in her place.

Ira’s naturally dark and tanned skin was replaced with something grey. It resembled the colour of rotting flesh left exposed for many days. Her eyes were crimson and her hair, though the same length was pure white like the snow around her. Instead of the clothes she normally wore her body was covered in armour. Her torso, shins, left upper arm and right lower arm were all covered in ornate armour, carved with the shape of many feathers. Though it was beautiful, it looked worn and dull. Underneath the armour she wore a sleeveless, light purple dress of sorts that had slits all the way up her thighs to allow for easy movement. The most notable of the changes was the addition of wings to her back.

Raising her left hand from the ground, Abhrapatha looked down at the clawed and mangled mess of her hand that had torn through flesh and bone alike. Smirking and allowing just the slightest glimpse at sharp fangs, she cocked her head to the side and pierced Malagen with her unwavering stare.

Without saying a word, her grin turned into a monstrous and devilish smile as she pulled herself onto her feet. Then quickly launched herself towards the human. Bare feet crunched down on harsh snow, barely even noting the cold as it seeped through her flesh. She was free. What did she care of a little cold?

[Malagen]

For the briefest of moments Malagen felt a twinge of regret for landing the last hit. And then, Ira changed. And suddenly regret was the last thing on his mind.

The metamorphosis was instantaneous. An explosion of light erased the plateau, so bright that even the snow looked gray when compared to it; so sharp Malagen had to shield his eyes lest he’d go blind. And once the uncanny illumination withdrew, it left behind an uncanny sight. Where Ira sat moments ago – dazed and aching and wrestling her wrath, a wounded, frail woman – a winged creature stood. Red of hair and red of eyes, the harpy was everything Ira wasn’t; an unattractive, bestial thing with carnage and vibrant confidence in its eyes. The sickly gray flesh was covered in majestic armor, enameled and decorated as if some lordling was supposed to wear it. Instead of hands, this new Ira had claws; sharp, ominous things made for bringing gory death. All details considered, it was an impressive sight... if one was apt to fall under impressions. Malagen wasn’t.

“Another one of your illusions?” he queried, lifting himself from the snowy ground. But even before he regained his footing, the wordless response came. The transformed Ira charged at him yet again, weaponless save for her clawed appendages. But it wasn’t the claws that have taken him aback, but rather the speed with which she approached. So far, despite his bulkier constitution, he had the upper hand when it came to the agility. No longer, it seemed. The only thing that saved him from winding up at the sharp end of her claws was a roll to the side, a hasty, almost sloppy maneuver that sent him over his shoulder into a sideways flip. Instead of tearing a chunk of his face, the downward attack sliced through his coat, tearing a handful of leathery strips of black leather.

“No, not an illusion.” Illusions operated differently. They clouded your eyes, presenting something that wasn’t there. This thing was very here, however. Malagen was pretty certain that if he hadn’t thrown himself away from her path, Ira would’ve given him more then just a bruise. He fetched himself from the snow as the winged beast shook the snow and mud from its claws and set its crosshairs on the barbarian anew.

“This change... It’s quite unbecoming to you,” the swordsman spoke, flicking the white stuff off of his coat with his trademark serenity. The firestorm that gazed back at him was tenfold stronger then anything he ever saw in Ira, an unearthly wrath embodied in every move the creature made. There was different kind of death to be found in those red eyes, untamed and messy whereas the one in Malagen’s was usually cold and clean. However, this was still training and the relentless barbarian didn’t don his look of death. It was more then it could be said for Ira who looked to be out for more then just blood and bruises. Ira’s wings flapped once, twice, lifting her dominant figure several inches above the soiled snow. The claw was as threatening as ever, lifted at her side almost as a harbinger of pain that was about to come. Malagen merely lifted his sheathed blade, holding it horizontally as if they were still in training. It took more then wings and claws to shake his stability.

Ira – if there was in fact any Ira left in the creature – seemed to know as much, so she decided to shake him with blows and cuts. Her wings moved vigorously, propelling the body made of deathly flesh and glittering armor at her dark opponent. Once again she moved in a straight line, once again predictable, thoughtless... Or so it seemed. An eye-blink before the collision, the forward movement changed to a vertical one, taking Ira skywards before she plummeted at him like a hawk out for its prey. But Malagen was ready. Flight was a serious advantage, but flying foes seldom had the dexterity the footed ones had. Air currents utilized by the leathery wings were inert things, offering very little when it came to changing directions. All he had to do was wait for the last moment and sidestep accordingly.

The foot aimed to crush his skull crushed a pile of snow instead, burying itself into the frozen, umber mud below. The swipe of the claws that was meant as a follow-up passed threateningly close to his face as he ducked, slicing off several locks of his hair. It was a small price to pay for the advantage he gained, however; ducking beneath her attacking hand left her side wide open. Not sparing the steel rod, he swung it at her abdomen hard, just below the line that designated the end of her armor. The hit connected with a muffled, fleshy thud. It was a solid attack, the kind that sent Ira staggering away several times before. This time, however, it produced no such effect.

The beast that was once Ira didn’t even feel the blunt strike, and if she did, her body failed to make mention of it. Instead, her clawed hand came at him in a form of a backhanded arc, colliding with his face and swatting him away. For a moment Malagen lost his footing, the sheer power of the impact sending him rolling through the snow. “She nearly tore my jaw off,” he thought once his body came to a full stop and he managed to push himself to one knee. There was liquid in his mouth that wasn’t his saliva, an iron-tasting thing that washed over his teeth. When he spat it out, it dyed the snow crimson. It was the first blood drawn on this plateau. There was pain throughout their training, the bludgeoning kind that left the body covered with rosy and blue and black bruises. But this was the first time either of them bled. And the fact that he was the one bleeding wasn’t something Malagen could make peace with.

When he got up again, he uttered no words. Instead, his left took a hold of the saber sheathe, holding it for his right as it pulled the weapon out with a prolonged shink. This new Ira was quick, even faster then he was, and a sheathed blade was slow and clumsy. This new Ira also played for blood and he was always fond of repaying the debts. And this new Ira still had things to learn too. And he was about to teach her. There was a smirk on his face, the cocky, content thing that taunted without the usage of words. He wondered when she would finally force him to draw his blade.

[Iriah Caitrak]

It was suffocating. Everything was closing in around her. Pressing against her and crushing her. She couldn’t see anything but the darkness. She couldn’t feel anything. She couldn’t even hear the sound of her own heart beating. She was rather certain she was running; she was trying to run. But she couldn’t tell. Nothing changed, nothing moved and with every step she thought she took it became harder to breathe. She was drowning. And every part of her felt too weak to do anything about it.

So he was finally beginning to take this serious. That little bitch of a weakling he had been fighting with before was gone. Now he faced her and as he had quickly realized she didn’t play for fun. She didn’t play for bruises. She wanted the ultimate price. A person’s life was always what she played for and the pathetic little human male in front of her was finally beginning to see that. Then again, pathetic he was in some ways but how deliciously wonderful was his soul, tainted and corrupted by so much death. If she could kill him and absorb all of that corruption…she shivered just thinking about it. It was wasted on him. He didn’t know how to use it, but she did. And she would gladly take it off his hands.

“Has the little human finally decided to stop playing?” It was a voice that sounded nothing like Ira’s. In fact, it didn’t even sound human. It was as if there was more than one person speaking and though they were all saying the same thing, they still overlapped and created something that was just plain creepy.

He taunted her with a smirk, instead of words. But she wasn’t perturbed by it. He was arrogant and cocky. Yes, he had skill but he underestimated just how much skill she had. She may be stuck in the body of one Ira Shinkara, but that didn’t mean she fought like her, or acted like her or did anything she could have. Abhrapatha was her own entity and she existed as she wanted to. The human should have been more careful around the pitiful Calerian. After all, if he hadn’t angered her to the point where she lost control of her emotions than this wouldn’t have happened. Then again, she wasn’t going to complain about that. She was free after all and it was all thanks to him. Perhaps she should give him a thank you for that, a quick death with little pain. It was the only gift she was going to grant him. His corruption was going to make a fine addition to her strength though.

Smirking, Abhrapatha flexed the fingers of her left and mangled hand. Quickly she called forth the dark magic within her, allowing it to spread into the very claws that protruded from the tips of her fingers. And there it would stay until she pierced his flesh. Then it would travel into his system, poisoning him from within until he could resist it no longer. Darkness truly was a poison to the heart and soul. This one was going to learn that much more than most humans.

With her wings still keeping her above the snow, Abhrapatha slowly lowered herself onto the icy and cold ground. The moment her bare feet safely touched the ground though, she was off. With a quick tensing of her muscles, she pushed off from her right leg and propelled herself towards the human male. Her speed quickened even more by the wings at her back. They allowed her to close the gap between her and the human in a single second. He played with sabres and the problem with them was once your enemy was an inch in front of your face they didn’t work too well.

So that’s what she did. Abhrapatha closed the gap between them, her body coming so close to Malagen’s that maybe two or three inches was all between them. When he moved his right hand in for a strike at her arm, she out manoeuvred him and quickly avoided it. She sunk her left foot into the unforgiving snow and pushed herself off to the right. His sword passed through nothing but thin air, though she did admit it narrowly missed her arm. Perhaps if he had been a bit faster…but this wasn’t a game of perhaps.

As his sword passed through empty space, Abhrapatha touched her foot down once more and pushed herself up. She arched her back and rotated her body into a kind of backwards handspring, only she didn’t need to touch the ground. Her torso was away from Malagen but the spin was flipping her legs and feet up. It was hard to aim properly when she could no longer see him from this position, but he wasn’t exactly in the best position to block anything at the moment with his one arm extended. The top of her foot smacked into the underside of the humans jaw. The connection even caused her a bit of discomfort, but she ignored it. Pain was only a weakness of the mind and there was no room for weakness within Abhrapatha.

Continuing to flip her body around fully, the corruption came to rest a foot or two away from the human, still facing him. He quickly recovered from her blow as if it had never been dealt, but she got the feeling he was not enjoying this sudden change of pace. Up until now he had been the dominant one on the battlefield with Ira, but thanks to his own actions that had eventually changed. It was a shame the woman had not just called her out earlier. Even if she remained in control of her, Ira could have easily beaten the human while fused with her.

The human did not just stand idly by and defend himself against her either. Once he had recovered from her little tap, his feet were moving. For someone his size, he was quite agile and fast, but she was still faster. His feet kicked up the hard packed snow, crushing it beneath him as he moved towards her. Even though her body looked lax, her defences were up and ready for whatever he threw at him. With the sabre held in his right hand, the human swiped low towards the bottom of her torso where her armour ended. Or perhaps it was towards her unprotected thighs, she wasn’t too sure. She pushed herself off to the side, avoiding the attack but he quickly followed through.

The blade coming across in a continuous arch, taking the speed and strength from his previous attack with it as he slashed towards her arm. She turned her body to the side and the sharpened metal narrowly missed her flesh. He truly did have some skill. No wonder Ira was training with him. As she was about to counter him, the human surprised her. Without even completely stopping the swing of his blade, he turned its direction and brought it down towards one of her wings.

She lashed out. Her arm reaching outwards and stopping the blow in its tracks as the metal of his sabre sunk into the exposed flesh of her upper arm. Crimson blood welled and dripped down her arm from the wound. Pain was more accurate to her than any human and it laced through her arm and almost caused her to immediately pull it away, but she didn’t. It had been a long time since someone had wounded her. Before he could move away from her or strike her again, Abhrapatha grabbed a hold of the blade with her right hand. The blade bit through the flesh of her fingers and palm causing more blood to well and drip down into the snow below. With a quick jerk, she pulled the blade and Malagen forward at the same time she swung towards his right arm and shoulder with her claws.

[Malagen]

Monster was a definition that Malagen heard a myriad of times when folk referred to him. He neither cared nor minded; truth be told, it was a fair definition. There was an apparent lack of consideration within the barbarian, something cold and awry where other people kept their humanity. But today, as he skirmished with Ira’s dark side, he exchanged blows with what looked and acted like a real monster. The winged beast that Ira called forth seemed rabid, desire for carnage following her like an aura, like an addiction you can never quite get rid of. Twice now she came close to sating that hunger, landing blows that damn near tore his head right off his shoulders. Something like that would’ve shaken most men. Something like that would’ve made them agitated. And when Ira came at him for the third time, most men would’ve feared that the third could be the charm. But Malagen was forged out of sterner stuff.

With his blade trapped and the range point-blank, it seemed inevitable for her blackened claw to dig into his flesh. But the relentless swordsman was never prone to fighting himself into a blind alley. That was why the steel sheathe of his blade was still in his left hand, cleverly kept dormant, waiting for the time to be utilized. It was on the move now with both smoothness and speed, out of its spot on his flank and into the path of the incoming blow. Ira’s clawed hand trapped it just as its counterpart did his blade, leaving the pair in a standstill. The transformed woman pushed at him, trying to force him backwards, but Malagen was still stronger then she was. His feet were as unmoving as his eyes.

“And here I thought this training would be rather dull,” he said, his contemptuous smirk on despite the ache in his jaw as they stood in this momentary reprieve. And then the fight continued. The barbarian read the intent in her eyes to move first, but he intercepted it. With a flick of the wrist he twisted his blade, freeing it enough to pry it out of her hand and make a deep cut on her palm. His body followed the motion of his withdrawing hand, making Malagen spin away from the weapon lock. But once again he wasn’t fast enough. The pain didn’t unnerve this new Ira. She took the new wound on her hand in stride, released the hold on his metal sheathe and swung her healthy claw at his back. The enchanted claws ate through leather and linen just as easily as they sliced through the skin and flesh of his back. It was a lengthy gash, starting at his shoulder blades and continuing almost to his waist.

“You ruined my coat,” Malagen said matter-o-factly, reestablishing the distance between them with the serenity of a man that was neither concerned about his clothing nor the bleeding flesh beneath it. However, not even his perfectly placid mind couldn’t deny the fact that something was amiss. The pain and the blood loss were minor irritation, the wound she inflicted neither life-threatening nor constricting. But there was something else, something that slithered through his system like snakes. Malagen, always aware of everything, his own state included, could feel the strength being sapped from his appendages, his muscles rebelling against an intrusive, mysterious force. Though not the sharpest tool in the shed, the barbarian had enough wits about him to connect the dots that led him to the dark mist that enveloped her claw.

“More magic.” It was poison, he knew. Only poisons destroyed a person from within. The weaker ones weakened you to the point where your only desire became to sit back and wave the white flag. The stronger ones ate through your organs, making you literally puke your own guts. Luckily, it seemed Ira’s wasn’t the latter. It was still a hindrance, though, which made one thing certain: Malagen had to finish this battle quickly, before the full effects struck him.

But Ira didn’t allow him to set the pace of the battle. She attacked again, covering the distance he set in a pair of strides before she fired a mid-kick. Malagen jerked his torso back, drawing his right shoulder back and away from the blow. Without dropping her leg down, the winged monster followed it up with another, this time aiming it at his face. Another step back took his mug out of range. His blade countered. Slicing upwards, it went for her knee, but by then Ira drew her leg back and brought her bloody claw instead. Malagen ducked, pivoted, his every move meaningful, preparing everything for the strike that was bound to hurt. But the poison was taking its toll, eating away his dexterity gradually, like a black tide that abraded the shore. He tried to back away again, but a snap kick sent him into an evading roll instead. It was still a painful maneuver, partially because the muscles of his back flexed and bled and partially because his head struck one of the stones of their training grounds.

And just like that, a plan was born in his head.

Before she came at him again, Malagen was back on his feet, standing on a round, slippery rock. She attacked, all power and no tactic, bringing those dismal claws of her. But the swordsman jumped back and away, his left foot finding support in a jagged rock. No sooner then his foot touched the stone and Ira came after him, it pushed against it, sending the man jumping sideways. His right landed on a slanted stump, his knee bent, and then his leg straightened and he was flying towards his opponent. So fast were his movements that he caught the winged demon almost unaware, making her bring her armored hand in defense. But Malagen wasn’t aiming for her body this time. Instead, his blade sliced at her back as he flew past her, lopping off half of her left wing.

He landed as gracefully as ever... and then his knee gave in, making him crumble. The shabby breakfast came rushing up his gullet, forcing the man to vomit the contents of his stomach. Poisons were wicked things; the more you strained your body, the stronger their clutch on the system became. And that little flying stunt pushed Malagen to his limits.

“It seems I trained you the wrong way, Ira,” the barbarian said, wiping the bile off his lips with the hard leather of his sleeve. His eyesight was still functional, but his head was floating several paces above him, as light as a balloon filled with hot air. He took his stance again, one foot before the other, blade diagonal at his flank. His left was tucked behind his back, still holding to the steel sheathe. Style wasn’t the reason why he moved it out of sight, though; the damn thing was shaking from weakness. His face was as confident as ever, though, concealing the physical strain. “You fight better with your emotions overwhelming you.”

Malagen was ready. He was ready for another wave of attacks, but that was nothing new. He was always ready, always perceptive, always calculative, always aware of all the angles. What he got ready for now was the fact that there is a good possibility that he’d lose this fight. She was bleeding profusely, but the poison was sapping the strength from him every passing second as well. The sand of their hourglasses was pouring fast. The only question was who had more grains left. The fact that there was a possibility that he would die on the mountain today didn’t faze Malagen much.

Everybody died eventually.

[Iriah Caitrak]

The pain lancing through her wing and into her back was relentless. The strangled cry that would have erupted from her mouth was kept tightly locked within her throat. It was pointless to allow him to see how much that truly hurt her. She cursed the fact that she felt and sensed things more acutely than others at times like these, but there was nothing she could do about it. It had its advantages; right now just wasn’t one of them. Right now was the time for her to finish this.

With most of her left wing gone, she could no longer sustain a stable flight. Her body wanting to turn to the right and she found it hard to keep her altitude. She was needlessly wasting energy trying to keep herself afloat when she could just as easily finish this human off on the ground. So she tucked her wings up against her back and allowed her feet to sink into the cold snow. Snow that was stained crimson with her blood as well as his. She could feel it dripping down her back and sapping her energy with every second that passed her by. There was even blood dripping from her hand and the gash in her palm. But the human was also feeling some weakness. Whether or not he showed it to her, she knew it was there.

Her claws had dug into his flesh and the blood covering them was evidence of that. The dark magic was already in his system, eating away at his energy. To prove her point, the human vomited the contents of his stomach onto the snow, leaving a putrid and disgusting scent in the air. Shame that that alone would not kill him. Then again, she would lose out on watching the life fade from his eyes inches from her face.

The darkness from her claws was dispelled. There was no point in keeping it around any longer. It was already within him.

“I thought you would have figured it out by now, human. I am not Ira. She has been locked away inside her soul and I don’t plan on letting her out anytime soon.”

As much as Abhrapatha told herself she would stay like this, Ira retaking control of her own body was almost inevitable. The Calerian had an extremely strong will, one that had already beaten her previously. It was only a matter of time before she regained herself and began battling for control. If she were stupid and naive she would think herself capable of being like this forever. But Abhrapatha was neither of those. As much as she wished to continue to be free from her cage, it was never going to completely happen, not until Ira herself died. So she might as well enjoy it while she could, which included killing the little Calerian bitch’s boyfriend. Might as well make her hurt and suffer where it counted.

Not wasting anymore of her time, the corruption sped off towards Malagen. Her feet digging into the hard packed snow which threatened to numb her deathly grey skin. Once again she closed the gap between them, trying to leave the human with little room to manoeuvre his weapons. Once she was close enough to smell the sweat on his skin, she faked out and off to her right. His left arm was tucked behind his body, while his right was still ready for a strike. That told her there was something wrong with his left, whether he was slower with it, or something else she didn’t know, nor did she care.

Abhrapatha attacked with her clawed hand. The swipe coming in from her left towards his upper arm and shoulder, but the human quickly stepped back and away from it. He countered her, bringing his blade towards her extended arm and the unprotected portion of her lower arm in particular. Right then her eyes widened and her entire body froze. A cold fist clutched itself around her heart and pulled at her soul, trying to force it back into the cage she so desperately wanted free from.

No! Ira, you bitch!

Her mind snapped back to reality and the battle when the blade of Malagen’s sabre sliced through the flesh of her arm. She felt it hit the bone. Pulling her arm away, the corruption snarled at both herself and the human for allowing such an attack in. She should have been able to block it, if her mind hadn’t been occupied with something else.

Using her feet, Abhrapatha distracted the human by kicking up a large clump of snow from the ground and into his face. Instincts were a hard thing to battle against and like she thought he immediately attempted to clear the snow from his eyes. She used the few brief seconds to charge her magic. The air around her hand began to change slightly and distort into swirling patterns of wind. It turned at such high speeds they were strong enough to slice through skin and cloth. She created five of these small and crescent shaped blades and them quickly launched then towards the human.

He turned to her just in time to catch this. But they travelled at such a high speed that they could barely be noticeable. Yet still he tried to defend himself. One of the wind blades impacted along his sword, dissipating upon contact with the metal as he brought it in front of himself. Another one missed him. The other three hit their mark though. One sliced through his leather jacket and into the flesh below on his left shoulder. The second sliced into his left leg and the last one the right side of his torso. The pain he tried to hide by keeping his face stoic and emotionless, but she could tell it was there. His body flinched, the muscles tensed and the corners of his lips turned down into a frown that was rather unbecoming of him.

She didn’t want to give him time to recover. The poison should really be dulling his senses by now anyway; just as the blood dripping from her various wounds was making her feel slightly sluggish. With that weakening her, she could feel Ira pulling more and more to regain control of her body, so she had to act quickly. Once again she advanced towards him. Instead of just straight on attacking him, Abhrapatha lowered her stance and slammed her shoulder into the centre of his chest. She heard the air leave his lungs in one big whoosh as both he and she hit the ground. Luckily for her, his body had been a good enough cushion.

Sitting up, she looked down at the man and realized he was unconscious. Raising her brow she saw the rock beneath his head and the blood slowly dripping into the snow beneath him. But even after such a head injury he continued to breathe. Smirking, she raised her hand and rested one of her claws at the base of his neck.

“Not so confident now, are y—?”

Her words were cut short as that same sharp and cold pain lanced through her heart once more. Only this time she could feel her control waning and the world around her begin to darken. Panic started setting into her mind. She wasn’t done yet. She’d only had a short time out, how could the bitch have recovered so quickly? Abhrapatha clutched her head with one hand as dizziness began to overcome her senses. It felt like everything was spinning even though her body was completely stationary. She couldn’t properly see the human anymore, but she could still feel him beneath her. Growling and fighting back as much as she could, she tensed her hand and sunk her claws into flesh, feeling the blood flow over her fingers. Then all feeling left her. A bright light encased her figure and where the corruption of Abhrapatha once stood, Ira was in her place. Her body was covered in the same wounds Abhrapatha had bore, yet she barely registered them as she looked down at the prone figure beneth her.

“What have I done…Malagen…?”

[Malagen]

***

In his dream, Malagen was standing on an island, solemn on the crest of the hill surrounded by a black sea. Above him there was no sky, just the darkness so empty that he was certain he stared at some all-encompassing chasm that offered a glimpse into nowhere. The ground below him was like quicksand, swallowing his legs up to the knee in a mush that was bloody red. When he tried to move his legs, he realized that he couldn’t. And when he tried to do the same with his hands, they hung limply at his sides. His enemies were coming, all claw and tooth and wings, all Ira in her transformed form. They infringed his hill like highwater, making the crimson disappear under their gray onslaught. There was a saber in the barbarian’s hand, but when he tried to move it, it fell out of his grasp and sunk into the mushy molasses below.

For some reason, instead of fighting these multiplied incarnations of Ira, Malagen wanted nothing more then to lie down and sleep. It was almost as if the slumber was in the blackness around him, soothing him, crawling into him like a spider. But there was a voice present as well. It came from everywhere and nowhere; it came from the inside of his head; it came from the mouths of his enemies and the boggy dirt beneath him. It was telling him to endure, to keep fighting, pleading him not to give up, ordering him to survive. It was his own voice, the swordsman initially assumed, his own rebellious reason dictating the orders as it always did. But at moments the voice was so clear that he was certain it wasn’t his. Instead it sounded less familiar but familiar nonetheless, as if it belonged to the woman he cared for so much that the possible attachment struck fear into him, made him run away again. At moments that voice sounded so near that he could almost smell the same scent he woke up to every day for the past several weeks. At moments that voice was all that kept him going, reminding him of the smile on the face before he decided to extinguish it just to feel safe.

And in this delirious state, in this place that could be in no world save the world of his fantasies, Malagen was somehow able to think more clearly then when he was awake. In here he wasn’t afraid to admit that Ira wasn’t just a bedmate. In here he was sorry for keeping silent that morning and for hoisting up his walls after it. In here he regretted, he felt, free of all the constraints of his training. In here, he was free to admit the things he feared.

With these emotions carrying him, he kept standing, looking into the eyes of the enemies that always seemed to advance towards him, yet never quite reaching him. He would sustain their attack. He had business to take care of afterwards.

***

Malagen woke up almost in a startle, sitting up and taking in a breath as hastily as if he never breathed before. His head shrieked with ache and the rest of his body joined in this irritating chorus, reminding him of all the wounds that covered his body. They were all bandaged now, and when his vision cleared, he found that he could barely remember how he got half of them. Then, with a pulse of ache, his brain made an effort and recollected everything that happened after his flying maneuver. He remembered inflicting one wound and getting three in return. He remembered Ira saying something he should’ve realized on his own – that she wasn’t Ira at all. And he remembered the move he should’ve evaded, that he would’ve evaded if his body wasn’t as sluggish as if he was moving through water. After that, there was nothing but the dream of being motionless and at the mercy of Ira’s transformations.

His eyes inspected the surroundings as if they saw it for the first time. The mouth of the cave was the first to be noticed, the round hole in the rock casting a view of the grayish, snowy plain. The flakes were falling once again, as serene as the feathers falling from the angels themselves, with no wind to disturb their descent and throw them this way and that. Closer to him, the cavern was as he remembered it; some of his clothes were folded next to his cot next to his pack and his sheathed saber. Both blankets were pooled around his waist where they fell after his abrupt awakening. There was an empty bottle here, a piece of bloodied cloth there, but not the one thing that Malagen wanted to see most.

“Ira?” he called out, his voice so hoarse and dry that even the utterance of her name made him cough like an old man. He waited for the fit to end, then called out again, scouring the rest of the cave. “Ira!” It hurt to speak, but not half as much as it did to move, but the barbarian did both and at the same time. He needed to find her. He needed to find her and tell her... Well, tell her something – anything – that wasn’t just silence followed by harsh treatment. He wasn’t certain which part of him hurt most, but he ignored the pain as he did a number of times before, pushing himself up with both arms and legs. His torso was bare save for the layers upon layers of makeshift bandages, his pants were torn where one of her tricky blades caught her during their battle, but his boots were still on. So he walked.

Malagen moved like a man who was dead but didn’t quite know it yet, pressing his arm against his flank and footslogging through the freshly fallen snow. “IRA!” he cried out again, as loud as his lungs and his throat allowed, looking around for any trace of her. He forced his eyes and his mind into his perceptive mode, trying to find any trace of the Calerian woman, but the snow was falling in sheets and covered even a hint of footmarks. Still, the barbarian persisted in his search, walking over the plateau like a wounded beast. Some of his wounds started to bleed again; he could feel the warmth of his blood against the chill of the snow that licked his skin. And when enough of it oozed out and he could shout no more, Malagen fell on his hands and knees, heaving for air. And there was a bitter smile on his face.

“Fool,” he told himself, allowing his mind’s voice to break the silence that usually reigned in his head. “Of course she left after the way you treated her. She did her part, paid her dues and kept you alive. There is nothing keeping you together anymore. So quit your slobbering and get back to bed.”

For some reason his own words made him feel even worse, made him sick to the stomach even though he felt no need to retch. Most likely it was because there was something that could’ve kept them together, and it was Malagen’s fault for walling it up inside of him until it looked like there was nothing but coldness and rejection to be seen. And because of that Ira was gone.

[Iriah Caitrak]

She was growing more accustomed to the cold. The weeks spent in this harsh environment were gradually making her a little more used to it with each passing day. She felt the bite of the wind a little less, barely noticed any numbing effects and hardly ever shivered anymore. There was no changing the fact that she was and always will be a desert wanderer. No matter how little the cold affected her, she still yearned for the unrelenting sun above her and the fire hot sand below her. That was the way it would always be. If only she could hurry up and get off this mountain.

Her feet mechanically moved and dragged her forward, down rough terrain that had seemed so much harder to walk up. She was tired though, her body was exhausted and all she wanted to do was go lay down somewhere and not wake up for a few hours. Were she to do something like that in this climate, she’d probably never wake up again. Besides, she had a long distance to travel and she’d only left a few hours ago. It would be many more hours still before Malagen awoke. His wounds were rather severe, especially the one at the base of his neck. He’d lost a lot of blood and it was going to take him time to recover the strength he coveted so much.

Blood…

Her blood, mixed with his blood, mixed with her blood.

Ira remembered well the way Malagen had looked when she’d finally regained control of herself. The way he had seemed beneath her, almost lifeless. Her fingers had been resting against a deep gash at the base of his neck, right around his collarbone. They were ice cold and frozen save for where his blood, hot, wet and sticky was flowing over them. There had been other wounds upon his person as well, not as serious, but still worrying. And then there was how pale he had looked; her cold barbarian who was naturally so pale had almost been the colour of the snow all around him. She had done that to him. No, that wasn’t entirely true. Abhrapatha had done that to him, but Ira was the one who’d lost control and let her in. It was still her fault! Malagen had nearly died because she couldn’t control her emotions. Had he even fought back? He must have. The wounds upon her body were proof of that.

The slice on her palm was the most annoying. She was naturally right handed and as the wound was on that hand it made most tasks rather difficult. It was true that one did not notice how much they used a certain part of their body until they could no longer use it to the full capacity. She constantly kept reopening the wound by attempting the most simple of things, like gripping and holding something. The cut on her arm was the worst of them all though. It was clean, but straight to the bone. After taking care of Malagen’s wounds, she’d stitched it up herself. It was an experience she would rather not repeat. It was one thing to ignore pain inflicted upon you, but completely different to inflict that pain yourself. The one thing that bothered her the most, was she couldn’t remember how she’d received that wound, or any of the others. Not even the ones inflicted upon Malagen. The entire fight was black in her mind, all she could remember doing was clawing at darkness.

*******

Her boots sunk into the steadily growing mounds of snow. She no longer slipped and lost her balance on the icy rocks. Instead she had grown used to walking upon them, she could thank Malagen for that. Just one of the many things he had taught her up here. She was a better warrior now because of him. She could never be completely like him. No, it took a certain lack of emotion to fight the way he did and she just couldn’t do it. Ira had her own way of fighting and Malagen had his, each with different strengths and weaknesses. She had come away from this training having learned a lot, and not just about fighting either. But had Malagen come away with anything? No, he hadn’t, he was probably still as cold and distant as the day she’d met him and that was never going to change.

It was a sad realization. She really didn’t belong out here, she really should return to Fallien the next chance she got. At least it was a place she understood, with people who understood her and who shared the same ideals.

The muscles in her legs protested with every step she took. Her shoulders were sore from the weight of her rucksack and her coat and hair was covered in a layer of snow. She’d stopped bothering to brush it off a few hours ago. When she’d left the cave it had been night and though it must be close to sunrise, the sky was still as grey and dreary as when she left. The thick clouds above her were keeping the gentle rays of the sun at bay. With every breath she took a large puff of smoke escaped her lips and dissipated into the air.

Trudging up the last few rocky steps to the plateau, Ira took a few deep breaths and stopped for a second or two to relax her body. As her eyes scanned the area she had trained and fought in, they caught sight of an anomaly. It was hard to make out through the falling snow, but the moment she took a few steps towards it, it came into view.

It can’t be…Malagen?

“Malagen!”

Her heart jumped into her throat and lodged itself there, wildly beating against the sides and trying to choke her. Of their own accord, her feet took a few clumsy steps towards him before she broke into a full run. Skidding to a halt beside him, Ira dropped down onto her knees and reached for him. The furry and long eared animal she had caught earlier slipped from her cold hands as she touched his skin. He was as cold as ice; just how long had he been outside the cave?

“Malagen, what are you doing outside the cave? You’re going to kill yourself! You should be inside resting… and you’ve reopened your wounds.”

It took him a moment, but he finally lifted his head and looked at her and the expression he wore stilled her heart. There was anguish in his eyes, anguish and pain but most of all relief. Why? Why was he feeling these things?

“Why…? Had you thought…I’d left you here? Had you really thought that!?” She didn’t really know why, but she suddenly couldn’t hold back her emotions anymore. The entire time she had been tending his wounds in the cave he had been unconscious and every few minutes she’d found herself watching the rise and fall of his chest. “I thought…when I finally regained control, I thought. I thought I’d killed you! I really thought I had…”

Her throat was becoming clogged again making it hard to swallow and hard to breathe. There were tears in her eyes blurring her vision as they fell down her already wet cheeks.

“That’s why… the next time if that ever happens.” That was the scary part, it could happen anytime she lost control of herself. “You have to do what’s necessary.” She couldn’t look him in the face anymore. She bowed her head as the sobs racked her body. Her hands falling from his arm and shoulder and sinking into the cold snow. “You have to kill me next time…I don’t want to ever hurt you like that again. Please…you have to.”

She knew he was going to push her away. She knew this was the end of their relationship. Ira had just shown weakness in front of him. She had made herself vulnerable and she hated it and he was probably going to hurt her because of it.





((SPOILS:

Steady Hand Steady Mind: The days of training with Malagen to steady her body and calm her mind have paid off. Ira is now much more focused in battle. She can look at things in a new way and calculate her moves and the possible response of her enemy even before she takes a single step. She is also much more steady in battle and attacks that would normally throw her off have little effect. She still needs some work to steady her emotions though.

Cold Resistance: Naturally being from an extremely hot climate, Ira never had much resistance to the cold. Spending a few weeks on an extremely harsh mountain has changed that. Though she still hates the cold, she can endure through the harsh temperatures without her body shutting down. Her resistance would be similar to someone who was naturally born and used to a colder and harsher environment.))

[Malagen]

Malagen was just about ready to give in to the impeding weakness and keel over when he heard the distinctive crunch of the snow being crushed underfoot. He wanted to lift his head, assess the situation, but every part of his body – head included – felt as heavy as if it was made of lead. He listened, though, hoping beyond hope that he would hear the one voice he wanted to hear right now. His mind warned him in the calculated manner it always did, reminding him that the last time he saw her, Ira was a winged monster with a sole intention to obliterate him. It reminded him that there was a good chance that Ira he used to know was no more. But for once the barbarian severed himself from the trademark rationality and sensibility, and hoped for something better then he deserved. And for once Hope wasn’t a bitch.

A familiar voice – the voice that led him through his nightmare – cried out his name, footsteps became a frantic dash, and then she was next to him, panicky, flustered. Emotional as usual. When he finally summoned enough strength to look up, her expression was one of concern and her eyes were watery, filled to the brim with tears. And then, as she spoke and offered him some support with her cold hands, guilt swept over her bonny visage like a shadow and she could hold the tears back no more. Conquered by these emotions that Malagen tried so hard to weed out of her, Ira spoke through sobs, dropped her head in defeat and spoke of things that seemed almost silly to the barbarian. They started their relationship with death – not so long ago, he was the one who strived to make her dead. And now destiny pulled a trick on them, reversing the situation, making Ira ask for her own death and Malagen unwilling to deliver it.

Sitting back on his haunches, Malagen reached out towards the crying woman, his pale fingers touching her chin and motioning it upwards. A doleful face looked up at him, silvery eyes filled with regret of magnitude such as he never witnessed in his life. They were the verifying seal on the words she spoke, asking him to be her executor should she succumb to the corruption once again. They were heartbreaking, sorrowful, these words of hers, and they made the barbarian smile.

“Crybaby,” he chastened her, shaking his smirking countenance ever so slightly. There was coldness in his voice still, but it lacked the usual deadly severity, thawing enough to make him sound human. His eyes weren’t themselves either, their azure color somehow warmer and more vibrant despite the chill and the gravity of the words spoken. “Have you learned nothing during our time together?”

His other arm moved rapidly at her, almost too agile given Malagen’s physical condition, giving Ira no chance to recoil. But there was nothing to recoil from. Nothing but a tight embrace in which that arm pulled her. His wounds complained with jolts of ache and bled, but the muscular barbarian embraced Ira as tight as he could, pulling their bodies together as the snow worked on covering them both. With her sobbing body so close that he could feel every shiver of her body, the cold and the fatigue took the backseat. He took in a breath filled with the scent of her, the scent he sought ever since he woke up, and for several moments just listened to her dying whimpers and the serenity of the falling snow.

“I cannot kill you, Ira,” Malagen’s voice finally broke the placidity, sounding so little like him that it was almost like another person talking. He loosened his cradling embrace just enough for him to pull his head back and look at her face again. The entirety of their relationship was written through the emotions on her face; pain and fear from the beginning when he still sought to kill her; confusion and hope from time they still tiptoed around each other; concern and... something else. Something that Malagen couldn’t decipher up until this moment, something that he ignored, pushed away, murdered every chance he got. Something he had to yield to.

“I... I think I love you.”

He didn’t know for certain – love was an abstract definition in a mind that never truly experienced it. But this inner commotion that he felt every time he held her, every time he thought of her the way she was that morning back in Radasanth, wearing naught but a bed sheet, it had to be something more then just physical attraction. Malagen had women before and none succeeded in throwing him off balance the way Ira did. He tried to murder her because of that and couldn’t. He tried to run away from her and found himself walking in circles. The only thing left to do was to embrace it and see it through to whatever end fate had in store for them, even if it meant letting go of some of the fundamental parts of his serene self.

Love was, after all, always a compromise.


((SPOILS:

Adaptation – Malagen’s body adapts to various extremes at extremely fast rates. This enables his body to gain various resistances depending on the environment and the nature of the outside influence. For an example, if Malagen spends a short period of time diseased and survives the disease, he gains immunity against it. Likewise, if he spends a short period of time in warm environment, his body will adapt to the heat. These resistances, however, have to be acquired in the usual fashion (either through a quest or at level up). Right now Malagen’s body adapted to two things:

1./ Poison – Malagen’s body can now sustain various poisons. The stronger ones will still affect him in the manner that they would weaken him, but they cannot kill or knock him unconscious.

2./ Cold – Brought up in the north, it is only natural that Malagen’s body adapted to the wintry chill. He can sustain sub zero temperatures with little difficulty.))

[Skie and Avery]

Story

Continuity: 5 - After three pages, I still don't know what the hell a Dram is, why he had tried to kill her in Radasanth and why Ira is possessed by the harpy. There was alot you told me, but I felt like you guys only gave enough to keep the reader going. If there hadn't been as much as there was, it would have been agonizing, but the reader needs a little more. You guys went on and on about the cold, why skimp on the stuff that's more important?

Setting: 7 - Considering what you had to work with, I thought you guys did well.

Pacing: 8 - When I first saw this thing was three pages long, I began to weep. However, the two of you definitely know what you're doing to move along a story and I got so drawn into this that the length flew by. It made me curse a little to see that I was on the last page, and that's the best indication of all.

Character

Dialogue: 7 - Both of you were greatly in character. The way Ira couldn't find the right words was perfect for someone completely out of their element, and what's that at the end? Is hanging around Ira rubbing off on Malagen? I think I see some humor sneaking in there. =P

Action: 9 - Most of the time training threads are weak when it comes to the greater story. To tell the truth, that is what I was expecting coming into this. Just a bunch of pseudo battle crap to let you guys pump up your skills mid level. I'm glad to say I was pleasantly surprised. The things that happened here really brought this to life, the way they interacted with each other being the crowning glory. I dislike giving 9s without good reason, but I truly feel that actions speak louder than words, and this thread spoke volumes about these characters.

Persona: 7 - The slow awakening of Malagen was great. Truly, change is slow and the fact that it did indeed take a near brush with death to open up this man's eyes was very accurate. The way he dealt with her in training, the way she persevered until her snapping point, I felt that both of these characters were spot on.

Writing Style

Mechanics: 7 - Malagen, sometimes your sentence structure is a bit awkward, but for the most part, you were well on form here. There were, however, glaring spelling errors here and there from fingers doing the automatic thing and putting in a word that sounds similar to the word that should be used. Word passes right over them, because it's a spellchecker and not a beta reader. Going back and going over all posts before you submit a request would do a great deal here, because when you leave a piece of writing alone for a while, errors are easier seen much later. Ira, you could definitely benefit from a smoothing of your style. In several of your threads, I see the usage of "passed" instead of "past". I don't know why, sine it's such a small detail, but it's one of those things that stick with you for the rest of the thread, tapping at your brain. If it's a style thing for you, please consider changing it. If it's merely an error of word use, it's one to definately look out for before posting.

Technique: 7 - At first, Malagen's style was very cold, very beautiful but without much humor. As the thread progressed, more humor and personality began to show through. I don't know if that was something you were going for, as Ira began to break down those walls, but it did wonders for the feel of the thread. While both of you have a very solid sort of technique, one thing both of you could benefit from is brevity. The length of a post has nothing to do with the content, and I felt that sometimes the two of you were writing a lot, without saying much.

Clarity: 8 - While the two of you can get flowery, there was never any question of what was going on. I'm really impressed, because sometimes battles can get confusing, but both of you took the reader step by step through the sequences without it ever feeling like a shopping list of actions. Well done.

Wild Card: 7 - I don't think Malagen needs any more cold resistance. The fact that in the snow and ice he could still get it up is enough to impress me. *cue porn music* Bah chicka baw baaawww!!! Awwooo! =P

Totals: 72

Malagen receives 2306 EXP and 324 GP, along with requested skill upgrades.
Ira Shinkara receives 2818 EXP and 302 GP, along with requested skill upgrades.

[Letho]

EXP/GP added! Ira Shinkara and Malagen, welcome to the next levels.