Silken steel, scarlet blood. (Open)

[Whispers and Murmurs]

Closed
Zahil leaned against the wall of a craftsman’s shop, and watched. He watched the people of the city, as they passed by him. They walked, scurrying, blinded by their days, their lives locking them in a routine of banality. Zahil smiled to himself, content with the knowledge he was entirely unlike them. He also watched the streets, the buildings around him, gray and drab under an overcast sky. More than this, he watched the Citadel.

It cleaved the normalcy around him like a blade slicing through the sky. Beautiful and terrible, it rose up from the city, ancient beyond knowing, stronger than stone, stronger than time. His heart raced at the thought of another fight, a real fight. But more than that, he longed to know it’s secrets. He wanted to know what made it what it was, unique to the world. He wanted to know why even as he watched, dozens of people, old and young, mighty and weak, brave and cowardly, entered its halls. The monks that guarded its doors were an enigma he craved to possess.

He looked to his sister, who grinned, eyes aglow. “Let’s go.”

They wove their way through the crowd, Zahil walking with awkward arrogance tempered by natural caution, Senka sweeping alongside him, elegant and playful. As he ascended the seemingly endless stairway, he could feel the beat of his blood and it rushed through his body, and his breathing deepened in anticipation. His brown eyes took in everything around him, and he wondered if he would be fighting one of the people climbing the steps with him. Senka herself was contemplating what would happen, what they would do, and pointing out particularly interesting people who would make a fun fight.

They reached the threshold, and Zahil quietly gasped as the light, the very air, changed. When Zahil hesitated, unsure of what to do, Senka nudged him. “We want to go in, find somewhere where there isn’t anyone else around, it’s too crowded here.” Zahil nodded, and moved started down a corridor. Doors tempted him with their secrets, but he knew he must continue. He took turns at random, clinging to the shadows cast by lines of torches, cautions steps slipped down marble paths until he found himself alone but for Senka. One final turn, and a monk stood in front of him.

Zahil leapt back, he hadn’t heard nor seen the monk a moment before. The monk himself showed no emotion beyond simply nodding when he saw Zahil. It would’ve angered Zahil if he had smiled or frowned down at him, but his lack of reaction left Zahil cautious. “He waits for you to speak, tell him we look for a fight.” Senka was right, he realized, the monk looked expectant.

“I...” Zahil started, then paused and drew himself up as best he could. “I want to fight.”

“I know. How do you wish to fight?”

Zahil started, struggling with the idea that this monk knew his desires, and fought for words to describe what he needed. Senka supplied them. “I wish for light and dark. Still air, inside. A large room, but without sight lines. I wish for... Challenge. And blood.”

The monk nodded, offering no feedback to Zahil’s request. He merely turned and began walking, motioning Zahil to follow. Several corridors later, they stopped in front of a door. “Your battle lies inside,” the monk told him, then left.

The room inside was just right, of course. It was large like warehouse they had once hid in years before. The first thing Zahil noticed was the smell of stale, dry air. The air tasted old, and Zahil imagined this is what a tomb was like. The room was filled with piles of crates stacked on top of one another, some standing razor straight, others toppled and broken. Various piles were littered with moth rotted cloth, ancient tapestries, or perhaps an antique chest.

Covering everything was a layer of dust, at least an inch thick. Age and dust seemed to muffle everything, and the only sound was a quiet creak of rusting chains holding lanterns hanging from ceiling at irregular intervals were iron lanterns that sent an odd, surreal light flickering throughout the room. Anyone walking into the room would leave tracks more obvious than an army on the march. Zahil and Senka didn’t walk. Smiling to themselves, they Stepped into the room.

[Saxon]

Silence emanated throughout the foreboding darkness much like water to an empty glass, while mossy, primeval trees that had never felt the blow of an axe sat stubbornly within dense, unrelenting fog. Thick, sinewy vines and mossy tresses that hung from the trees swayed listlessly in the stagnant air as the ominous hush that had fell upon the marshlands at twilight still held rule as the night slowly crept on. The stillness had seemed fit more for a quiet, foreboding tomb that had been sealed for ages than a virtual swamp that was supposed to habitually teem with life. Why was it so quiet?

Where were the predators that stalked the unsteady grounds, in search of weaker, faltering prey? Why had the unbreakable bond between animal and nature, the very cycle of life itself, seemed to have been swept from this place? It felt stained. Wrong. It wasn't supposed to be like this. There needed to be life in a place where the uncharted, untamed wilds that had never met civilization. There had to be.

A long, finite pause followed before the first, quiet footfall cracked the damning silence. Slowly coming into view, a lone figure waded through the dense grey while his right arm was wrapped stubbornly around a bulbous orb that had been covered in the skin that once belonged to an animal ritualistically sacrificed solely for the purpose. The man's dark, pin-striped suit clung to his sticky, pallid flesh as black, unkempt hair that was practically wedged under a stained, aged fedora was matted to his sweaty brow.

Thoughts bubbled over in Saxon's mind as he cautiously stepped over a branch and continued to navigate his way through the smoky haze. Grim realization passed over his normally stoic face as the eldritch realized there would be Hell to pay if it found him. If it heard him. He had taken something very dear from that thing, and it still baffled him that what he carried betwixt his arm pit was damn near impossible to explain.

But this kind of thing didn't need an explanation. It didn't want one. What it wanted was to be back with its owner, and if it hadn't been wrapped in the flesh of a blind, mountain ram it would've called for its master by now. Saxon could feel the heat radiating from the object, its desire to be free. To go back and belong.

Screw that.

Saxon had single handily brought that monster down and had taken its precious icon in order to rescue a young woman on her deathbed and a village that was on its last leg. There would be no going back. The weird had to get out of here before it found him, but all he could see was grey. The more he walked, however, the more unsure Saxon became with the direction he was going. This treacherous swamp was more like a labyrinth with no exit than the eldritch had been led to believe.

Com'n now. Focus, Sax. Just gotta get clear to open a door into Tsep, the weird reasoned, Then I'm home free. On the emphasis of the last word, the hair upon his nape stood on end as thick, leathery coils brushed past his feet and something invaded the eldritch's mind in a singsong voice:

" Found you..."

" Oh shit," Saxon breathed as he stopped dead, his perception for danger screaming at him to run as the monster that he had robbed was everywhere and nowhere at once. It would watch him. It would prowl, and stalk the weird until it was sure it could strike a felling blow. For that was the way of A'Dis and it had little choice with the risk of shattering something so precious and vital to it.

Gargantuan bands of green coils slugged quickly past the corner of the weird's eye as it prowled about him, its form far bigger than the trees of the marsh could contain. A low, sharp hiss welled in Saxon's ears as he carefully moved the object towards his left hand where he clenched his serpentine staff in a white-knuckle grip. Quickly the staff doubled over and coiled around the object, keeping the veil intact as it scooped it free of its master's arm and bore the burden while Saxon quickly fished through his pockets.

" A'Dis, why do you still follow me? I won it fair and square; I will not let you welsh on our wager. Do you hear me?" Saxon said as his attention turned towards the steely grey that seemed to virtually seep from the marsh itself," Answer me!"

A single, bulbous yellow orb hung in the air as a silhouette of a massive, reptilian head stared curiously at him as the creature whispered within his mind," Becaussssse it issss mine. The waysss of old do not belong to sssomething ssuch asss you, Ssstranger. Don't deny yourssself a quick, painlesssss death. Give it back..."

Brandish a black, basalt key from the depths of his jacket pocket, Saxon's expression darkened," It is not yours to take! We had an agreement!" he snapped.

" Give. It. Back!" The deep, menacing voice roared within his mind before the serpent flung itself at him.

Saxon was almost crushed under the weight of the monster as he leapt out of the way while it sprang towards him, and all he could see was the tumbling grey, white ivory fangs and that single, wicked eye. Not even daring a response, the weird took the opportunity and broke into a mad dash as he rolled to his feet. Key and staff in hand, Saxon began to mutter quietly to himself the incantations he had heard himself say before he stepped out of reality and into the dark recesses of Tsep. It didn't work.

In a split second the grim possibility of the item he possessed muting his access to the void crossed the eldritch's mind when he felt a sudden breeze hit him as something blew past and swung about the trees. Running faster and faster Saxon didn't fully realize what it had been until the face of A'Dis came clear as it unhinged its jaws and rushed towards him, hissing menacingly.

" No!" The weird cried and with that he leapt headlong towards the side of the Snake God and everything went black as Saxon was swallowed completely whole.

~*~

From the marshlands to the next moment, time folded in on itself as the eldritch plunged through a circular porthole in a granite wall and landed with a thud," Youch!" he yelped.

A cloud of dust erupted as the matted cloth Saxon landed on cushioned the fall. A loud, sucking pop from whence he came. Before the eldritch had time to consider what he had done, what had happened. The impossible act of escaping a horrendous death and the blind desperation that followed him into the darkness he plunged into, something he dreaded more than A'Dis itself reached his ears; Plop.. Plop.. Plop..

Snapping his head in the direction of the noise the eldritch roared something unintelligible as the orb that he had bore fell to the ground and unfurled from the mound of goat's flesh and the naked, bulbous eye that had belonged to A'Dis stared menacingly up at him.

" Oh crap."

[Whispers and Murmurs]

The waiting was difficult. They had arrived excited, ready for the prospect of bloodshed. The waiting frustrated them. Zahil grew tense, while Senka became impatient. It was an eternity to the children, though in reality it might’ve been only a few minutes before the stillness was broken by the tumultuous arrival of their opponent. Despite his frustrations though, Zahil held back. To his eyes, shadows twisted around the man’s heart in maddening patterns he had no words for. He wished to act, but suspicion coiled about everything he was, and it demanded he wait, and watch.

Senka, always carefree, was under no such compulsion. Though she herself could not act, curiously practically bubbled from her. When the man dropped his burden she saw no reason not to take a closer look. She was Shrouded, and a trillion ashen motes swirled across her skin, merely brushing against the lightest points of her skin, while devouring the deepest shadows. The Shroud turned her from a brown haired little girl into fragment of charcoal night. Buried deep amongst the crates in the room, the Shroud frolicked, and Senka might as well have been invisible. But as she slipped out of the shadows to take a look at the weird man and the giant eye, the lantern-light flashed across the Shroud, turning Senka into shifting points of contrast floating through the room.

Zahil sighed; she should’ve stayed hidden. She glanced at him and stuck out her tongue. He sighed again, and shook his head. He turned back to the man. A burning desire to learn the secrets of the eye consumed him. Senka could do what she wanted, no one could see her anyway. He would stay hidden until the man acted, to best divine his secrets before he died.

[Saxon]

Scrabbling towards the dislodged snake's eye, Saxon grabbed the ram's skin and wrapped it tightly over the object with lines of panic cracking his normally stoic visage. Cradling the orb in his lap, the eldritch hugged it in the way a father protects a child from unseen danger, his smoldering blue eyes looking this way and that as he tried to make sense of what had happened.

" Where am I?" he muttered and then added," How am I still alive?"

Puzzling questions raced to overtake the weird's mind, but faltered as memories of a gravelly, hoarse voice belonging to the huge, homely hermit who had given him the shroud and one piece of key advice that the eldritch must adhere to if only to keep his own life:

"Within the bubbling depths of those cursed swamps to the hamlet of Jobus, keep that eye covered. No matter how much it begs, or pleads or tempts you with its awesome power, whatever you do do not let it free!"

He had failed. Plunging into the depths and mythos of whatever it was that decided to spare him that grisly fate, the eldritch had mistakenly left that eye in the ill-advised care of his coiling staff, Syvriak. Expecting the sky to fall down at any moment, the weird looked fearfully up as he contemplated the unknown consequences of such a grave mistake. The strange ascetic who had lived virtually like a troll without the luxuries of modern day life had refused to tell him what such consequences might be, but Saxon could hazard a guess in the poetry of it.

A'Dis could see me?

The thought rang throughout his mind as he racked it for answers, the eldritch whispering to himself as he became aware of his surroundings," Where am I?"

Slowly gathering himself to his feet, Saxon cradled the eye in one arm and began to walk towards the wall from whence he came. Rough and grainy the surface was while at the same time giving off the foreboding ambience of being impervious by textbook definition of being a wall. How had he passed through it? Where had he gone through to get here, and how did it take him from the uncertainty and evil of Kasurugan Bog to this place of order and silence? Questions plagued his mind as he continually rubbed the palm of his hand against the wall, searching for its mysteries.

After a long couple of moments, Saxon's thoughts turned towards the isolated clachan of Jobus that sat within that narrow dale that was slowly being sapped of life. An image of the pallid, sickly figure of the young woman he was trying to save snapped into the eldritch's mind. From the blonde tresses spilling over her face to those green, catlike eyes of hers that twinkled with the notion that she just might be something more than human.

Pulling himself together, Saxon felt the sudden urge to be free from this place and momentarily forgot the burden he carried, dropping it from his grasp in attempt to find his keys," Damn it!" the weird yelped as he lunged at the eye like a bear pawing at a salmon flopping wildly in the air. Falling onto the ground with a painful belly-flop, the weird skidded across the ground as he felt himself losing the battle with the snake's eye, Saxon's fingers wrapped around the icon and tucked it safely back in his grasp.

The eldritch took a couple of quick, quavering breaths as he chuckled and quietly cursed himself for his stupidity. Slowly the weird came to realize that he was no longer gripping the goat's skin but the fleshy, wobbling surface of A'Dis's eye. Cradling it in the palms of his hands, Saxon's blood ran cold as he looked up and noticed that the eye was looking at somebody else other than him.

[Whispers and Murmurs]

At first nothing happened. The man’s bumbling hadn’t shown Zahil anything, and made him only more impatient. Then the impossible happened. The thing, the eye, looked at Senka, and the world shattered. Senka’s terror tore through Zahil, greater than anything he had even known. It wasn’t possible. The monstrous eye looked at Senka, and following its gaze, the man had looked straight at her. He saw her. Senka screamed, a soul tearing sound that ripped apart their being. The broken mirror that was the world swirled around Zahil and he fell to the ground dizzily, as Senka Stepped, fleeing deep into the safety of the room’s shadows. But there was no safe. He saw her!.

On top of their terror at a world gone wrong, Zahil was filled with blinding rage. Senka was his secret! How dare this disgusting man find her! He felt violated at the intrusion into his own private world. His secrets were scared, infinitely more important than Senka’s games, which in turn were infinitely more important than the pathetic wants and dreams of lesser folk. And this man comes and tries to ruin his greatest secret, to steal his sister from him. Zahil’s dagger slid out of its sheath. He would end this man’s life, destroy him utterly and completely, and leave nothing behind. And get his secret back.

He climbed to his feet. Only an instant had passed, and the man hadn’t moved. Zahil Stepped, and the familiar rush of the world became part of him. His blood thundered through his existence for an instant, stronger with fear and anger than it had ever sounded before. He slipped into the world a couple feet behind his target. He instantly threw himself forward, his dagger arcing in toward the soon to be dead man’s liver. A cry of inarticulate rage burst from his lips, not a sound he would’ve made in his normal killing mind, but between surprise, fear, and anger he was lost to his conscious mind.

[Saxon]

(Bunnying approved)

" What the?!" Saxon bellowed while he tore his gaze from the charcoal hued girl to the direction of the boy's cry which managed to jar the weird from the strange sight. Coming down at a sharp angle, the boy had the advantage of surprise and timing on his side, and if he had been a couple years older and a tad bit faster, he just might have skewered the weird on the spot. Setting down the eye with a wet plop, the eldritch threw his closest foot forward and into the side of the little boy's head, sending him flying back the way he came," Piss off!"

Refusing to expose himself again to an attack, the eldritch pushed himself to his feet while keeping a careful eye on the direction which the boy traveled, disappearing into shadows of far darker shade than what Saxon had allowed outside the realm of Tsep. The fact alone that his fedora, Amalarj, which had the ability to give the weird a sort of night vision hadn't been able to pierce through the depths of the shadows in this building wasn't a good sign at all,.

" Something is very wrong here," Saxon muttered as Syvriak began to coil up the side of his leg and into his right hand. Normally darkness bent itself to the eldritch's will, sometimes it was more difficult than others to get it to do his bidding, but he had never seen shadows like this that outright resisted his indomitable will.

We'll see about that.

The eldritch lifted a lithe, pale hand towards the darkness and felt the familiar tug within him as whatever part that allowed his manipulation of darkness began to pull and wrestle with the mere echoes of a primordial force that had existed since the dawn of time. Seconds passed before Saxon began to twitch his fingers and whisper something unintelligible as he focused more and more of his will onto moving a shadow. Lifting it, moving it. Anything. Just move, the eldritch thought stubbornly.

Nothing.

Feeling frustration bubble within him, Saxon felt compelled to tap into that sea of frothing ire that smoldered just below the surface and pull the darkness forward through sheer will, but he dismissed the notion. Trying to move something with forces he didn't completely understand yet, would be like tying a finicky cow to his back and carrying it up hill in to find a nice place to graze. It was too strenuous, and in the end a moot point when all it would do is exhaust him and left the weird vulnerable.

Fine then, have it your way, Saxon thought with contempt as he felt sweat bead across his brow. From what little he saw of the boy, he didn't understand why he would choose to attack him. What had the weird done to deserve it? Nothing. Seeing the little tyrant's face pressed into his memory, the weird panned from where the little girl stood moments before to the direction where the boy came. His face was masked with a sort of fury that the eldritch had seen somewhere before. Could it have been jealousy? Envy? How had he wronged this little boy he didn't even know? It was the story of his life: Saxon just didn't understand.

There was no reason for this, none at all. What it all boiled down to was that the eldritch didn't have time for this. He was on the clock, and he had an entire town to save before they wasted away into nothing, and this kid who had casted some sort of vendetta against him was standing between the weird and the lives of a couple hundred people.

" I don't have time for this," Saxon breathed with a hissing sigh as he turned back to collect the eye.

[Whispers and Murmurs]

Zahil’s attack had been stupid. He had Stepped further away than he needed to, and given up his advantage shouting. On some background level it didn’t surprise him when the foot collided with the side of his head and sent him tumbling to the ground. He bounced once, then Stepped away before the thief could continue his attack. He couldn’t change his momentum though, so his progress was stopped a second later when he thumped into a large stack of wooden crates deep in the maze of the warehouse.

He sat there dizzily for a moment, then instinctively felt the side of his head for injury. It was an entirely futile gesture; the Shroud muffled all senses, it separated Zahil from the world, making him harder to see, to hear, to feel. But he could feel little more than the tingling sensation that came with touching shadows. He couldn’t tell if he was injured, but it also didn’t hurt. He put the thought out of his mind; there was still a game to play. Senka’s game. If Senka hadn’t come out by the time the game was over, he would have to find her, which worried him. She had never been hidden from him before. But she had never been as scared as she was then.

He Stepped, bringing him into the shadows behind a pile of moldy woolens close to where the thief stared into the shadows around him. Zahil smiled to himself. The shadows would not betray him, he knew.

Zahil pondered what to do next. He could simply attack again, but his need to do so was gone with that first moment of rage. His anger wasn’t truly diminished, but it had shifted, as shadows twisted when a fire was blown by the wind. He would avenge his sister and himself on this man, but he would do it the fun way. There would be blood, and screams, and pain. But where to start? First, he must take something from the thief, clearly. Not his life, not yet. But something dear enough.

Always he watched, and he had seen how protective of the bizarre, grotesque, alluring eye the thief was. It was the best choice, he knew. The thief mumbled to himself, and Zahil Stepped. The world rushed, and something strange happened. In the heartbeat of the Step, Zahil could feel a pressure in the shadows. A reluctance to approach the thief, or to set Zahil next to him. But then the heartbeat ended, and Zahil appeared behind the thief, crouched right above the eye. An instant stretched, taut, as the thief turned, but it was too late for him to stop Zahil. The moment snapped, and Zahil grabbed the eye and whirled away into the depths of the warehouse.

[Saxon]

Flinging a hand forward in an attempt to save the eye, Saxon couldn't get a handle on the boy before he vanished. Scrabbling towards the place where A'Dis' eye had been, he tore at the ground feverishly repeating again and again," No.. no no no no!"

I had it! The weird's mind screamed as he clawed fervently at the ground. Digging. Searching for what was rightfully his. He needed to get that eye back to its rightful place, and where it could do the most good. It had been in his hands when he left the bog, and in his hands when he had met the boy for the first time only moments ago.

Why had he released his grip?

He had let his guard down more ways than one, and there was little doubt that the boy would probably squash the damned thing before the eldritch could get to it. Before his world turned upside down, however, a small ripple caused his limbs to shake as if he was a dowsing rod approaching water.
" That could only mean.." Saxon began before his face twisted into a sneer," I suppose you have a weakness after all, you little twerp."

Getting to his feet, the eldritch felt his muscles twitch again, and then another time like they were strings being plucked. It had been the first time in a very long time he had experienced this, and as the weird felt his insides quiver, memories began to be dredged from the bottom of the proverbial barrel. There had been a time where the eldritch had experienced a sensation like this, but it had been so long ago and nearly forgotten. Could he really track the boy this way?

It had been so long since the darkness tapped into him that way. The weird had absolutely no control in where the feeling led him, but he had known from experience that it had never led him astray. Saxon no longer felt alone, and it was invigorating to feel the force he was charged over ripple within him and guide him to what the eldritch had believed to be his goal.

Slowing his jaunt to footsteps that barely made a sound, Saxon turned a corner and into the labyrinth of crates and boxes. Carefully and deliberately stepping up and over small, minute obstacles that stood in his way, the weird slinked deeper and deeper into the archaic web of ruin that sat before him. Somewhere inside this place sat one of two people, and if the eldritch had partaken in gambling more often in his life, he would've been sure to bet A'Dis was close by.

[Whispers and Murmurs]

With a few Steps Zahil was buried deep in the warehouse. To three sides of him unstable stacks of crates rose ponderously upward, then leaned into each other, forming for the boy a tiny cave within building. He silently hopped over a pile of rusted metal and to a broken crate, the smell of moth-eaten cotton flowing from the cracks. He paused in front of the hole, and held up the bizarre artifact he carried. It was quite cumbersome for the lean child, and heavier than he would’ve expected. He could feel the muscles shifting beneath the smooth layer of the skin as the eye shifted, unable to look at him the way it was being held.

He turned it in his hands, and immediately the eye locked onto his face. Living his entire life in the streets of Radasanth, Zahil had never seen a snake, and the eye staring balefully at him was utterly alien. There was something monstrous about that gaze, something beyond the mundane. A lesser person wouldn’t be able to meet that stare, Zahil knew. He smiled at it as he placed it into the broken crate amidst the rotting cloth. He slipped his dagger into his hand, and ran it softly around the skin near the eye, and though its strange, long pupil thinned, but Zahil got the impression the thing felt no fear. He didn’t know if it felt anything, really. With a flick of his wrist, he threw a few layers of cloth over his prize. He would unlock its secrets later.

He backed up, then Stepped away. In half a dozen steps he had done a circuit of the nearby parts of the room, and found the thief. He was wandering through the warehouse, looking for Zahil, surely. It was no matter; he had left no footprints, made no sound. It was time to start playing, he decided; stealing the eye had only set the mood of the game. He started forward slightly, only to stop as a small wave of dizziness struck him. He leaned back into the wall behind him, and took a few deep breaths. It occurred to him that he had ran the shadow paths more in the last few minutes that he usually bothered in a day, but he pushed past that thought harshly. He wasn’t such a weakling that a few Steps would take him to his knees.

He slipped off the crates he had been resting on, and padded after the thief on Shroud muffled feet. The sound of his breathe was devoured by the shadows encompassing him. In only a few moments he was crouched behind the thief. He would take it slow, he thought, and play the game right. It was more fun that way. The thief started forward again, and Zahil moved with him, driving the tip of his dagger down towards his victim’s hamstrings.

[Saxon]

Saxon had a knack for running into trouble. He had always been at the wrong place at the wrong time, and every time it had always been like getting kicked in the teeth for the first time; surprising and painful. It was something the weird had gotten used to, and had tried his best to cope with the grim fact that the world was literally out to get him. And people wonder why I live like a friggin' hermit, he thought as he continued to tip-toe amongst the clattered boxes and ruined stockpiles of things the eldritch couldn't make heads or tails of.

Suddenly, the intangible pull of darkness that had been guiding him to the little blackguard jerked left and then behind him like a compass point following a magnet. Feeling a rush of vertigo, Saxon's insides turned as he began to turn and mouthed the words," Wha-"

Like lightning pain shot through him as he heard a heard a sickening thump and felt cold, apathetic steel plunge into the back of his of his leg. The amorphous Syvriak slithered into the eldritch's grip and formed into the staff while its master howled in agony. Torment like never before as pain sparked and coursed its way up the nerves and into the hub of his brain.

Feeling his good leg move on its own accord and with a look of murder in his eyes, Saxon grabbed his staff with both hands and felt the pops in his spine as his body began to whirl about. Catching sight of the boy, he swung Syvriak in a downwards arc towards the soft skull of the assailant who injured him. His teeth clenched and his mind sputtering to catch up with the rest of him, the only sound the eldritch could hear was the unintelligible roar escape his own lips.

[Whispers and Murmurs]

Bunny approveds
The thief started turning even before Zahil’s blade reached him, and point intended for hamstringing the man instead slipped deep into his thigh. Still though, Zahil was richly rewarded by the thief’s scream of pain, delicate yes sharp, and so very true! Not like the disgusting babble common people spat at each other every day. He didn’t have time to relish the sound though, as the thief’s staff thundered down toward his skull.

The attack came from a clumsy angle, and it was laughably easy for Zahil to hop backward and roll out of the way of the strike. But too late, he realized that his dagger was at entirely the wrong angle to follow him, and the blade was wrenched from his grasp as he spun away. The dagger tore out of the thief’s leg and skittered across the floor until it ran up against a crate several feet behind the thief. The exit of the blade drew a pained grunt from the man, but not another scream. Zahil frowned with child-like disappointment. Oh well, he reassured himself, he’s sure to have a few more screams in him yet.

As he lurked just outside if the staff’s range with a slight smirk visible through the Shroud, he tried to puzzle through what to do next. With his dagger on the far side of the thief, he couldn’t attack again, but somehow the man had realized he was behind him. Suddenly the thought struck him; how had he realized that Zahil was there? That had never happened before, and it left Zahil in an uncertain world. Just like how the thief had seen Senka. He just didn’t understand. Where was Senka? She could figure this out easily. She was the smart one. Zahil was tense and anxious, and more alone than he had ever been. He glared at the thief, the one who had scared his sister, and stolen her from him. He wondered if, on some level, this man realized how much he hated him in this instant.

The thief seemed like he didn’t want to move, and had planted his feet since his first attack, but he wasn’t favoring one leg over the other. Zahil padded a couple steps closer, and immediately the staff whirled toward him. He jumped back out of the attacks way, then darted forward. The staff spun horizontally toward him, and he dropped to the ground, with his back knee and hands flat to the ground, and his front leg coiled under him. He pushed off, diving forward and rolling across his arm and then his back before the roll planted him back on his feet.

He spun on the balls of his feet to face the thief. The man had reversed his staff, faster than Zahil expected, and twisted, bringing it in towards Zahil. He hopped backwards, but the staff still caught his left arm right above the elbow. He threw his foot into the ground and pushed, spinning with the force of the strike and went tumbling across the ground, his arm numb with the shock of pain. His tumbling did send him rolling past his dagger though, and his good arm snatched it before he skidded into a crate with a thump. The staff was coming down at him again, and he threw himself sideways and rolled to his feet, again outside the range of thief’s weapon.

[Saxon]

Raw, seething fury coursed through the eldritch's veins as Syvriak bounced stubbornly off the ground, unable to find its mark. The boy moved too fast and was too agile for somebody who could be considered a normal human being, and Saxon hated it. Unable to draw breath, the weird sucked in as much air as it took to quell the fiery anger within him. He'd find a way to stop that boy and tell him where the eye was.

Even if he had to kill him.

Holding the staff in a white knuckle grip, Saxon pried his left hand free and felt something within him click. Almost on cue, the shadows in the surrounding area began to waver and dance as they came to life. Almost through sheer will, the darkness fell into servitude as it obeyed its keeper, unable to resist his pull any longer. His face a mask of blank stoicism, the eldritch's composure cracked within moments as he grit his teeth and narrowed his eyes.

It was as if the red, flash of hatred for this boy fueled his control of the shadows, and Saxon wasn't about to let it go to waste as he opened his clenched fist and whispered," Get him."

Spurting in multiple directions, tiny, minute tendrils sprang from their locus of being and snapped hungrily at the boy like serpents that had been crossed on a bad stretch of road. Slowly they began to radiate against the boy until there was a sea of ashen black separating the unruly child and the weird. Managing to find the words, Saxon took advantage of his victim's hesitation and began to speak when suddenly the shadows that had converged upon the boy sprang against his command, intending to snuff that boy's life out right then and there.

" No!"