2017-11-07: The Time Between The Seconds

• Log: The Time Between The Seconds
• Cast: Kahm Yugh, Isiris Shango'Ra
• Where: Kislev-Aveh Front
• Date: November 6, 2017
• Summary: After several weeks of tracking, Kahm receives word that the man with blue eyes is headed due south. He wastes no time, and learns a truth that no one was prepared for.

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From: Kahm Yugh                                                (Conn)
Date: Fri Oct 20 02:57:59 2017    Folder: NA   Message: 2
Status: Read
Subject: The Long Road
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After enough time passes and enough leads around November City turn up dry, Kahm decides to take Cassidy's advice: He goes to Lacour.

His expectations are not high, following a trail that must be months old at least. Yet follow it he does, starting in the low haunts and dens where such rumors he has to trade in are welcomed. It starts with a simple question, asked of every shopkeep, bargirl, and drifter who cares to take the time to listen.

"Have you seen the man with the blue eyes?"

He asks for dates, names, violent incidents and strange occurrences that flow withing what he knows. Things that shouldn't be there. Odd distortions in the air. A most sudden and unwelcome infestation of crows. Kahm goes through the list, caring little for what odd looks or confusion his seemingly random narrative may elicit. He proceeds through most hubs in the city until they are exhausted, or until he has found something.

And yet, one cannot delve into the lake of rumors and mystery without causing ripples. The mere asking of questions begets further questions, and in Kahm's wake were sowed the seeds of his passing, nurtured and fed over mugs of beer and hushed alley whispers. The meandering susurrations grows like a weed throughout the city and, perhaps, even beyond. Their words, when caught on the wind, are distilled to a fine point.

"The man in black seeks the man with blue eyes."
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From: Isiris Shango'Ra                                         (Conn)
Date: Sun Oct 22 02:09:11 2017    Folder:  0   Message: 46
Status: Read
Subject: Let's be friends
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TERMINUS
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"No.. his eyes were bluer than that."

On his journey into Lacour, he finds scant hints of stories of a man with preternaturally blue eyes. A man, in a tavern, whose sheer presence seemed to incite a barfight. A man, who appeared to stay a night at an inn, only for that inn to suffer one of the worst ghost attacks in the history of the region.

Though there are rumors of unusual numbers of crows milling about beasts killed in bizarre and unusual ways in the wastes, most people's experiences with the man with the bluest eyes have been surprisingly mild. For what little people know about him, he is polite, even attractively so where applicable.

It's just a shame he is a bad omen, they say.

Some who have met him have disappeared shortly after, having left on some pretense or another, only to be found wandering in the desert with no mind left and no words to describe their horror. You must meet him to understand, they say. You're only lucky that he left some time ago, travelling to the west.

Something pulled him from this region, it doesn't take long to realize, for reports are more scattered across the cities in his wake. There have been some sightings in November City. Some in Nortune, where there were covered up reports of a battle in the secure sector that left at least one guard dead, and another without a mind. Someone purportedly drove him off, causing him to fall from one of Nortune's skybridges. However, there was shortly an attack going on near some secured facility. Obviously, from there, information is more sparse.

The most chilling information of all, gathered from the men who saw him is that he seems to have left Nortune, and is heading dead south.

Towards the great desert, and the battlelines between Kislev, Aveh, and Solaris.
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============================<* Kislev-Aveh Front *>=============================

The frontlines of the Kislev-Aveh War have shifted many times in the last few hundred years, but they have left their scars on the land. One can, of course, find fighting between their infantry and Gears here. Such places are dangerous, and most Drifters know to steer away from them. However, sometimes there is no choice; even the rail lines thought to be away from the front can get caught unawares by a patrol, and skirmishes have resulted in delays and death for those trying to get to the Badlands.

The areas not currently being fought in are also dangerous. Deserters and monsters alike can wander them, and the dry, dusty land leaves little succor for those in need. To make matters worse, abandoned fortifications and trenches make an excellent hiding place for the bandits seeking to profit here. Drifters are sometimes drawn here, though, to either fight for one side or to excavate abandoned ARMs and Gears left behind in a battle. This sort of salvage work is risky, but the rewards can be great.

BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxynM-xwLUs

<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.

When they came, they came in groups of four.

It was the standard Gebler field protocol for pacifying rogue ether users. One to neutralize them on the etheric front, two to confirm the kill, and the fourth...

Frankly, the fourth was there to die. No one squad ever knew who it would be, but time and time against had proven that it was extremely unlikely to take a rogue user down and into custody without casualties. Such was the nature of the power they contended with, and the practicality which Solaris put forth into ensuring it was controlled.

Kahm had picked the men in his squad personally, all seasoned veterans who knew their territory and and the grim efficiacies required for success. It was not a mission he would field for Lieutenants Voss or Van Houten-not against these kinds of odds. Not even if he was uncertain of the target...and uncertainty was all he'd had to trade in this mysterious man.

But when the word came that he'd been sighted, that he was headed due south Nortune, Kahm wasted no time. The four of them rode hard to intercept him north, dark-dressed men upon dark steeds, thundering from the nearest relay base in the desert into the rockier steppe terrain that dominated the border with Kislev. The sun was dipping for the horizon...they'd deemed the fading light an ally in avoiding any Kislev patrols.

There was no guarantee of finding him, but the routes people were wont to travel on were known-and Kahm did not believe the target would ever stray too far from people. Not this one.

In unison, they slowed their horses for want of endurance, and Kahm signaled the other three riders from his position in the lead. "<Keep forward. Stay observant. If there's anything off-a distortion in the air, something where it should not be-then we're already in the field of effect.>"

The man's calm eyes stayed forward as they moved. Already, this didn't feel typical.

<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

  He makes no attempt to hide his trail.

  Though he may walk alone in the valley, the shadow he casts is long. His boots crush earth to dust beneath his tread, and the sound carries in a long way with him. He walks, murmuring quietly to himself, terse words that seem more like the recitation of a prayer than a conversation with the self. His hood is drawn over his head.

  It has been some time since his encounter with the sorceress, and he's had some time to recover. 'Abject terror, is my claim staked upon the world,' he mutters absently. A broken blade hangs across his back, a huge blade once proud and noble now reduced to a jagged shard of metal at the terminus of a large hilt. The blade has no particular sheath, secured at his back by a hollow of rope and chain. The traveller rattles audibly with each step from the collection of bindings, continuing to utter the dark story to himself.

  'aa... but it is best,' he asides, 'to create the pillars first.'

  Cut seemingly from shadow, a form drags on with him. The coat of the thing, if it could truly be called a thing, drags in the sand at his side, leaving a long and chaotic trail. Every so often, a small trace of light curls across it, churning the earth as if a small dust devil travelled with him. There is no great other feature that demarcates the creature at his side, sleeves of a coat dragging alongside it as it crawls. Though it crawls, the mighty hump of its back and the slump of its hood still almost reaches the full height of the traveller, as if some great hulking beast beneath the coat.

  Despite the idea of that thing, the creature writhing through the dust alongside him is translucent, the coat revealing the sand hills on the far side of it regardless of what angle it is seen at. Blue-eyed crows cackle at the traveller as he passes with his companion, announcing his arrival and heralding his departure aways from him. It has a chilling effect on the local wildlife, making even the dead desert quieter and harsher the closer one gets in proximity to him.

  'aa.. but i wonder who the proud lord would be that digs his own grave ..'

<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.

The closer they get, the more the signs appear. Wildlife vanishes. The land grows silent. Their steeds begin to veer, grow fearful, as if they did not want to progress forward.

A lone crow screeched menacingly at their passing, perched upon a rocky outcropping at the zenith of a nearby hill. Kahm observed it with an ominous sense of foreboding. Gwen Whitlock had mentioned crows.

This was the part of their work where the line between science and superstition grew fine. Kahm drew his hand up in a raised fist, and the other riders halted. If this was power, it was displayed naked and openly. Perhaps it wasn't fully under control, like a faucet unable to regulate the flow of water.

Or perhaps it was a challenge.

They sight the twin forms on the horizon then, of hooded traveler and hunched companion, and Kahm stifles in instinct to reach for his sidearm. "<Dismount.>" He orders, "<We'll proceed on foot.>"

From the traveler's perspective, four horsemen appear on the horizon. Evenly spaced apart, they grew closer until, in unison, they came down on the right side of their respective steeds and strode towards him. Each man was of roughly similar cut and shoulder, each dressed the same: A black duster over fine vest, slacks, and boots, each head capped a dark, broad-brimmed hat tilted low to block the winking sun and obscure the eyes.

Among them, Kahm Yugh squinted his eyes as the figure came into focus. The broken blade, the companion...nothing but the blue-eyed crows fit the description, and yet the deathless pall that fell upon demanded action. Whatever he was, the man could not be ignored.

The four men in black halt at approximately twenty paces from the hooded figure. "Good evening." Kahm say from among them, the third man on the right. "We have a few questions for you."

<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

  Slowly, his sleeves fall to a standstill.

  The grey coat was at least a size too large for him, or at least it would have been, not cinched as it was by the loops of chains around his middle. As it is, his fingertips, dark and potentially gloved, are the only things that can be seen from the hems of his sleeves, which hang low at his sides. The sword, if one cared to look very closely at it, is of an Aveh forge. The style of the hilt, the only visible thing from over his shoulder, is what may have once been some sort of court sword or great blade wielded by some great knight. It clearly is based off of some relic or another, having a lion's jewel forged into the pommel.

  He turns to face his travelling companion.

  "--Feathers fall from the birds," he murmurs, his line of thinking not interrupted at all by the approaching horsemen. His words are clearly heard, and his voice is the descending night. There is no trace of neurosis in the faithless prayer, his words poured like the sweet maple of a tree that would not be able to grow in these lands. He doesn't move or interact with his companion in any way, his hood concealing everything but his lips as they move.

  The heap at his side does not seem entirely a real thing. It is as if a creature was poured wholesale into the world, dark gel mass forming into the grim facsimile of a hulking, inhuman thing hiding underneath a coat. Its form is erratic, and it's hard to pin it down with the eye. In its gel mass, the reflection of the sunset melds with points of light like stars. The creature makes no sound, but it bristles as the traveller looks at it. One of its arms falls off onto the ground, only to slip away into nothingness, and be replaced by another. The sands shudder around it as it crawls forward, ahead of the traveller.

  Merit to his patience, the traveller doesn't move ahead with it, nor does he turn back to face his questioner. "Many seek out knowledge in the worst places," the hooded man finally remarks, for once speaking to someone who can answer him. "Said you, the noble... had you question. I wonder if they are of any interest to me..."

  "I hope they are."

  The traveller lifts his head, and heartbeats will invariably turn to ice as he looks at the leader of the men in black, his eyes the bluest, most painful shade. While looking him in the eyes, the canyon's shadows grow longer, the weight of the sun more oppressive. To look him directly in the eyes is to be open to pain, and the world tilts by sickening degrees with each passing second he holds a gaze. There is nothing stopping a man from looking away, from regaining breath, regaining momentum. But with each eyeblink, the number of crows in the canyon double, waiting and watching for any sign of weakness.

  "They could be the last questions asked in the whole wide world."

<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.

Feathers fall from the birds.

The words did not halt any of the men on their path towards the hooded man, but they took a momentary hold in Kahm's mind. Clearly spoken, and without hesitation. The air grew cold with the slow sojourn of the sun, and the eye of each black-dressed man drew towards the gel-like oddity that shared the road with the traveler. Soundless, of questionable corporeality (protoplasmic, even), and fitting no fauna profile they familiar with. A conjured thing, or something more mysterious....reports that challenged their existing knowledge seemed to grow by the day.

Kahm remained flat-lipped as the target mulled the question over, coming to acceptance through verbal mazes and circuitous logic. He notes the blade and it's points of origin, but for now it is merely another odd-shaped puzzle piece to contend with the rest. "This place is as good as any." He answered, and locked eye to eye with other man, blue to blue.

To look was to contend-this truth he felt instinctively. The sun seemed harsher, the day longer, the air drier and more parched of moisture. In the span of the time their eyes locked, Filgaia seemed to die a little faster, and crows became murders as the men continued in silent appraisal. Kahm did not look away, remained set in his path and his cause, though his mind considered the methodology before him. It would no go as it did with Keil, who was restrained and unable to fight, enabling him to be close enough to work his power on her mind and suppress all etheric reactions. He hadn't gotten near close enough to the target for that, and the second he did battle would be joined, making singular focus impossible. Instead, he stepped to the right, without breaking eye contact.

If you come across him, she said to not believe what you see, and to run. He'll make y'think you're not gettin' anywhere, but don't believe anything you see.

Gwen Whitlock's words rose to the the surface of Kahm's mind, and the man to his right followed, while the men to his left took a step in the opposite direction. There was a procedure to this, although the ignorant might perceive it as ritual, even religious. In truth it was a science, a methodically determined strategy of mental positioning and questioning designed to open vulnerabilities in the mind of an unconditioned user, which was any surface dweller. In this way, the first strike had already begun.

"I heard rumors of a blue-eyed man in Lacour." Kahm said, making himself the anchor. "And in Nortune. Strange events happen around him, they say."

"How do blades of grass count the stars?" The man to his right asked.

"A man without a face. How does he sing?" Asked one of the men on the left.

"Time has a color. Do you know it?" Asked the last man.

"What is next to you?" Asked Kahm, moving as all the men continue to do, attempting to position themselves in the points of a square, with the traveler and his unknown charge at the center.

<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

  As so he is watched, so too does he watch.

  The nameless traveller with the grey coat and the bluest eyes never leaves the leader of the group, though he is certainly aware of the men as they quietly move past him, flanking him on three other angles. His coat shifts slowly, as he takes one step without moving forward or backward, facing the speaker for the group as he locks eyes with him. There were glitches in the world, the impression of reality and flow to which he had become accustomed experiencing brief breaks and twists in their own nature. The vague recognition of it brings the faintest of satisfied expressions to the traveller's face.

  He is not too young to have seen horror, but neither is he too old to have lost his appreciation for it, is the age of the smooth-skinned young man in grey. Surrounded in black suits, his appreciation of the moment seems only to grow. He is not, by his nature, manic.

  "Oho..." he notices as he is completely encased.
  Questions are asked.

  'How do blades of grass count the stars?' "There are no stars.."
  'A man without a face. How does he sing?' "There is no song..."
  'Time has a color. Do you know it?' "There is no time.."

  Slowly, he straightens his shoulders, his gloved hands appearing from his sleeves. He lifts his chin, held in mild fascination by the world once and again. Recognition colors his awful blue eyes. The thing beside him quivers in anticipation, bringing the traveller's attention to the precipice of the last question. "Like everything else," he explains after chasing the moment. "It's nothing. Nothing really at all."

  One of the men in black will see the links of chain burn away at his back, steel breaking in a flash as his sword is loosed. He will see a flash of a familiar symbol. He will see it at the traveller's back for only one vertiginous moment.

  "It's been a long time..."

  And then the traveller whirls, his coat flaring with the motion. They have only instants to respond, moments to complete their formation, before arms of blackest night break the earth. Made of nothing that even peripherally resembles flesh, the long appendages are the height of men. They rip through the earth, propagating in and from a long arc in the direction of his hand's motion. It is as if he carved a wound in the earth with a long whip, and in it, grasping hands festered, meaning nothing more than to break bones wherever they travel.

DC: You switch forms to Kahm E Yugh!
DC: Kahm Yugh switches forms to Kahm E Yugh!

<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.

Not too young, and not too old. It will be matured. Kahm thinks, who prepares himself, keenly aware of the precise proximity of the sidearm holstered on his right hip and blade on his left. The other three men surely do the same, unable to escape the looming sentiment that something was wrong.

There are no stars..

Kahm's eyes narrowed, and felt his hand slide back, mind honing an ionic edge.

There is no song...

Two of the men exchanged a look, and the lapse of confusion would cost them all.

There is no time..

Sweat beaded upon the brow of the last man, whose hand had already reached his gun.

It's nothing. Nothing really at all.

Kahm felt his throat tighten again a pang of irritation. A distraction. He knew....Kahm had known what he could do, and still they were taken in by it. It dawned on him, perhaps a shred too late, that it was a terribly cunning maneuver for a surface mind.

All are moving into action as the chains break away, but it's the man who sweats that sees the truth, a truth that fatally breaks his training. He falls out of step with the rest, and his hesitation is catastrophic. "Fall back!" The man shouted, disbelief tinging the edge of voice, "He's-!!!"

Had one man not broken, it might have been enough. Kahm and the other two remain in place, and with a thought the air becomes permeated with ozone as a writhing, crackling storm of electric fury erupts within confines of the square they had created. That was the other trick, that the squad should always be of the same specialty. But without the fourth man to close the circuit, the storm was wild and unfocused. It's snapping tendrils may hit the traveler, but it will not have cage him.

In the same moment that the gambit fails, the earth rends apart, and the man who saw is seized by grasping need of countless hands, his screams permeating to air as flesh tore, bones crunched, and limbs rent beneath an endless clawing. This was no illusion, and it was now that Kahm realized the limit in expecting 'lambs' to describe fully a phenomenon for which they lacked the proper education to comprehend.

The leader was already in motion, gone before the hands had their chance to rend them, his forward motion carrying him towards the source. "Lay cover!" He demands of the other two, who've managed to escape the fate of their fallen comrade through guile and instinct. But Kahm suspects a melee crush will play to advantage of whatever skills this one harbors, the the edge of his blade ionizing with channeled ether as the other man took aim with their sidearms and fired.

GS: Kahm Yugh has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Anemo Storm!
GS: Kahm Yugh has completed his action.
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra guards a hit from Kahm Yugh's Anemo Storm for 51 hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

  He reacts as if he knows what their intentions are a moment before they do it.

  The man in the Gebler coat locks his fingers into a vicious claw, a hundred hands following the mimickry. The hands, to a practiced eye, are not strictly flesh and blood, but the taste of power in the air is tumultuous, sickening, twisting. It is not like the warm fire of Ether, or the electric tang that even now builds in the air of Ether. It is nothing that Ether should be capable of. But yet, the familiarity is...

  Hands cut from the stuff of nightmares pull apart the man caught as if well-cooked chicken from the bone. The force is insensate and insatiable, waves of the horrific stuff boiling out from the locus of the effect, the coated man at the middle. Even as Kahm leaps away, hands snap after him, threatening him malevolently before baldly and blindly grasping at handfuls of sand, remaining even as the killer is driven away.

  The whirling motion of the agent continues, the electric energy branching out towards him in the midst of his spinning attack. Truthfully, were he not reacting with almost preternatural awareness of the preparations of his enemies, he would stand little chance at all. Catching the end of his blade's hilt with his free hand, the blade tractors roughly out of the ground as the nameless killer launches himself out of the epicenter of the circuit cage, blasts of electricity forking across his body, branching to every metal point on him, and forcing him into a full 360 degree somersault to avoid landing on his face when his nerves lock.

  When he lands, his body goes low to the ground, carving gouges in the earth as he knits a gesture with his free hand, bringing energy to the fore. A formulaic equation written across interlocked circles unfurls from his glove as he raises a hand, a field of hexagonal light rippling across the equation as the blasts impact against what is almost assuredly an older formula for an Etheric protective field, the shock from each blast causing rippling in his coat. Sword in the sand, he rises slowly, his awful eyes somewhere beyond the field.

  "I wonder if you will come to think of this moment as the greatest in your life," he wonders aloud. "Will your findings add to your legend," he begins, slowly lifting his blade into the air, the broken edge gleaming in the light. He takes a step forward, the shield floating away from his free hand.

  "Or will the despair of your folly choke your dreams for eternity."

  Black bleeds from the leading edges of the blade as he brings it downward, slamming into the sand. A black cutting wave echoes across and through the battlefield, stirring up twin plumes of sand and black glass. In cataclysm, the black knits with the sand and the arc of energy from the blade, the earth constricting as energy crawls across and through it, as if it itself is cut. And slowly, from the wave of force, howling, cackling masses breed. The crows rip from the wave as if from the dark skies themselves, filling the air with chattering feathers that resemble nothing living.

  Blue-eyed blackbirds, with nothing-feathers that cut to ribbons.

GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Kahm Yugh with Enmity Radius!
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has completed his action.
GS: Kahm Yugh takes a solid hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's Enmity Radius for 105 hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.

There were many ways for Gebler agents to die when pacifying an ether user. The one the claims the first of the four is perhaps the worst any of them have seen, including Kahm. The sheer ferocity with which the maddening hands grasped at the air Kahm's left leg had occupied a heartbeat ago was a potent reminder that even the slightest misstep was death, and nothing less than perfection was required. But by that metric, they had already filled.

Questions swam though Kahm's head as his eyes tracked the motions of the nameless one's blade. Things weren't making sense. Why had the cantus failed them? What had Garn, the dead man, seen before the hands claimed him? The killer's foreknowledge of Gebler's methods pointed to a severely limited line of outcomes, Kahm's mind refused to accept what his instinct already knew on a fundamental level. He was still closing ground as the other man conjured a shield-an old shield-to contend with the fire from the other rest of his squad. His words spoke of a twisted poetry which the operative felt compelled to answer.

"It seems you know us." He said, opening the atmosphere to a thousand up a thousand willing circuits, calling his power and letting a flow, mingle, and clash with the oppressive will that had claimed it. "But we do not have pleasure."

It could only be ether, but it was also not a form he recognized. The lectures of an old teacher began to ring in the back of Kahm's mind, a conversation on the nature of their art, but he forced it away from his focus as the target brought his blade to bear. The air was sundered, the brief suck of pressure before release the only warning Kahm had to prepare for what came.

Suddenly, the man found himself amidst a storm of cawing, ravenous crows. He time enough to invoke the most basic of defenses, a personal barrier humming close to his skin that was scarcely enough to protect him from the the onslaught of beaks, claws, and beating wings that assailed him, tearing flesh and cloth alike in a force that could only be weathered. The thought of illusions crossed the man's mind, and the theory that while the attacks were real, how the mind perceived them might be something that existed within this killer's domain. His hat was lost in the rush, and Kahm burst from out the back of that winged darkness with his duster in tatters and blood running down one side of his face from a gash along his temple-many smaller ones dotting his arms and legs.

Burst, because he was no haggard man staggering awake from a nightmare, but a bullet that had already been fired before the attack. His speed distorted the air, the honed edge of his blade crackling blue with energy as it sought the man's center mass, prepared to discharge all it's energetic potential and momentum the moment it found purpose.

The two agents behind them were worse for the wear, one covered in blood while the other held a hand over a bloody eye. Each still prepared to launch lightning of his own own, intuitively understanding Kahm's purpose to use the blade as a target for their attacks if it struck the mark.

GS: Kahm Yugh has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Shock Thrust!
GS: Kahm Yugh has completed his action.
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra takes a solid hit from Kahm Yugh's Shock Thrust for 119 hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

  The crows surge into and through the battlefield, rendering it a cawing, fluttering, chaotic black.

  In the massive storm, it is truthfully hard to make out his body as he rises, slowly taking his blade up in his hand. It seems a size too big for him, not large enough to be cumbersome, but certainly made for a man a size or two his greater. The weapon folds, turning into an open stance at his side. In the fluttering dark, there is only the sound of breathing, the panting of breath and the cackle of haunting birds.

  His awful eyes can be seen, even in the black.

  "The methods have evolved since last we met," the conjurer comments, as a rogue branch of light trails between his fingers, the aftershocks of that circuitous blast. "but..."

  The idea fades, the words trailed away and eaten by the fluttering black. The rush of the man newly reborn cracks the air, leaving little space to evade, the young man's beyond-blue eyes slowly canting up to trail after Kahm. Truthfully, he is not looking at Kahm, but focusing keenly on a space somewhere past him. This is the impression that the fast-eyed soldier notes as he runs the killer through with his blade, ether capacitors sprayed with blood, the iron in which reacts in odd ways in time to the electrical discharge. It causes the blood to dance across the weapon in unnatural methods, the killer impaled so hard that his hair shifts with the hit, a triple-course of lightning cutting into and through him, the branches of white light cutting rays in the sand and cooking it to glass behind him. The blast cooks a spiderweb into his torso, leaving lightning branches in telltale Lichtenberg trails across his tunic. However, the Ether trails in strange fashion across the edges of his coat, as if made of some sort of stronger material. Like it was designed ...
  The killer's blood dances in strange ways between the two of them, slowly floating up into the air.

  ".....you will thank me, in the end," he whispers, his voice honey.

  Gripping the blade at the terminus at the guard -- avoiding the direct -- and frankly, unknowable -- of capacitors between Kahm's hand and the blade, the killer shifts backward, to pull him off balance, and his blade flips forward. He's trying to keep Kahm's blade inside of him. Inside of him just long enough to cut into his neck, and scatter the blood across the sands. But it's not just that. Not simply that...

  He knows that it's not enough, his hand is placed too specifically. He's trying to force Kahm to break offense, to guard, so that the sheer weight of his strike can knock the man off-balance, allowing him to step around him. He's trying to maneuver him into a certain location... for what purpose? Hands still grasp for bodies in the background. Crows still fly all about. There is something else...

  Didn't he have a travelling companion not even a moment ago?

  The killer, streaming blood openly into the air to float unbidden across and over the sand, is presenting Kahm with a choice. Lose his head, or hurt him more, and cede ground. Years of training are screaming to pump more lightning into him..
  "...For, I will give you a gift. The horror of absolute freedom.."

GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Kahm Yugh with A World Without!
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has completed his action.
GS: Kahm Yugh guards a hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's A World Without for 87 hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.

The eye were how Kahm had found him in the black, unnerving as they were.

There is a flash of satisfaction as his blade strikes home, as he feels the power course through the target's body at a degree Kahm assessed sufficient to cook the organs and set blood ablaze, energized all the more as twin bolts of lightning fed into the bloodied tip of his blade where it exited the man's flesh. Power works over and through him, and there was a surety to the murderous embrace that the Gebler operative did not dare break the circuit, did not think to even slow the torrent power that had been turned on. With a foe of this caliber, he had to be certain.

"......you will thank me, in the end."

Still he moves and breathes. The defiant behavior of his blood is glimpsed from the corner of Kahm's eye, long enough to allow the killer the opportunity to grab and shift them off-balance, though there was precious little Kahm could have done to prevent the act. The rush of air warns him of the other blade, tells him that in spite of everything this man could somehow still attack. It would be decision made in the thundering of hearts, in the time between the seconds that fueled every action and consequence. The crackling of crows filled his ears, and Kahm heard the unbidden words of a man who'd once instructed him.

We must at least consider the possibility....that the classification of ether as air, fire, water, or earth is not decreed in reflection of any objective truth, but because it makes good soldiers. If we are told to think the system is true, then it becomes true for most of us. The power to conform reality to human thought, magnified by thousands of minds thinking the same truths. What if the surface is hell only because we believe it so...?"

In such a paradigm, absolute freedom was commensurate with absolute destruction.

Defying his instinct, Kahm releases his hand on the blade, leaping back in time for the killer's broken sword to open his shoulder instead of his neck, hissing against the loss even as his feet skid against the sand. His reaction is as instant the realization that the other creature, the thing that had been 'nothing', had left his senses. The air between Kahm and his and quarry scintillated into the appearance of dozen falling shards of broken glass, except the shards took greater form into blades of conjured lightning, hurling themselves at odd angles to control the killer's vectors of attack, several imposed before Kahm's person in a way to require their contention before there was any hope of attacking him.

He spies the symbol a man had died to warn them of in this moment, and his breath exudes the word like a curse.

"Apostate." He said, and in the next breath, "Impossible."

Hands gnawed and grasped ravenously behind him, and his eyes espied the other two agents closing in behind the target with weapons drawn, aiming to take the kill. He didn't have time to warn them.

GS: Kahm Yugh has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Blade Wall!
GS: Kahm Yugh has completed his action.
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra takes a glancing hit from Kahm Yugh's Blade Wall for 57 hit points!
GS: Kahm Yugh takes Cover! He gains 50 temporary hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

  His blade catching just a line of crimson heralding the Major's retreat, the nightmare spinner commits to the bladestroke, but even pinioned through by the Major's weapon, he raises the blade gloriously, the blood from his body weeping from around the blade and floating away from him in strange, bizarre patterns, globules slowly stabilizing into bizarre geometric shapes.

  It's easy to imagine that the blood itself is an illusion, that it doesn't exist. Ether cannot bring form to a thing like this. The sickening sensation of the world lurching is likely some sort of indicator of the fact, and it's only gotten worse since the killer first conjured the storm of crows, whose black wings still beat throughout the air. No matter how many steps you take to correct it, the ground will never feel level, so long as those eyes are open. The hissing, buzzing cicada sound must be a contribution to that, a mild pain that is constant and everpresent on the senses.

  Slowly, the nightmare agent uses the handguard of the blade to roughly unburden himself of the viciousness of being impaled, the blood weeping openly from the wound and left unbidden as it draws slowly from it, adding to the crimson miasma of miniscule geometric shapes surrounding him. Though he doesn't bother to wield the blade, he is forced to take the potential liability with him, leaping back as a wall of glasslike blades sail into him, the first blasts cutting into his flesh and searing away the blood. The others are victims to his weapon flash, as he deflects reams of electricity with strokes of the blade in the midst of his retreat.

  He lands too close to the two agents at his back, his boots skidding in the sand. Even so, he stands slowly, either blade hanging at his side. One is held by the hilt. The other is held by the guard. His hood thrown back entirely now, his dark mop of hair spills free, frizzed out slightly by the electric impulses of Ether that have charged it. It's not a flattering look, but to see him lift his chin and smile, it is hard to think he is overburdened by it. The broken symbol of Gebler hangs at his back, the view of which is now plain to the other two men behind him.

  "I'm impressed," the spinner comments. "You would have died, had you not relinquished your sword. We are all trained to treasure our Solarian steel, aren't we..."
  Even now, you can see the metal flaking away from his Aveh sword, as if it is crumbling from just being in proximity to him. "The forges of heaven have always been more inspired... if lethal to behold," he continues, as if explaining why he is perfectly content holding the sword by its guard now. As if he knew exactly what the blade was for, and what it could do. "But in a slave's hands, it will never reach its true strength. Let me show it to you."

  As if to prove the point, he slams the blade into the sand in front of him, point-down.
  And then he lays a hand on it.

  There's a lot going on, with the glass thunder wall giving Kahm a relative heartbeat of safety to gather himself. A slow pulse of dread echoes throughout the battlefield. Some of this must be illusion. But that feeling at the back of the mind is gnawing. None of his attacks have dissipated, left the battlefield. As if he continues to conjure them as they occur to him, and the threads are left free floating in the wind. A technical mind would be inclined to ask, how much of it is free-floating Ether?

  His bloody glove is on the Solarian blade's hilt.
  At that moment, Kahm has precious eyeblinks to act before the nightmare spinner casts all of his strength through the blade's capacitors. In a moment, Isiris will have flooded it with an ocean of Ether. The blade will briefly experience a strength boost beyond the ken of even the entire team's collected output, as the laws of physics seem to warp around it, blood weeping from the sands and crawling up the hilt. The crimson geometry begins to interlace around him, needles spreading between the sordid droplets of blood around him. A latticework, grim and chaotic, spreads from the epicenter of his hand on the Solarian blade, spreading out from him in thread and droplet in strange, alien patterns. Droplets float by Kahm quietly, inobtrusively, even as the vicious lattice spreads around the wall, interlocking more and more blood droplets by the instant. Kahm has only a breath to realize that he is already surrounded.

  Everything around him is a nightmare. Everything around him is Ether.

  Threads turn to needles. As the killer attacks, the spiderlike lattice surrounds him, threading into the seams of the hulking creature in his shadow, a creature with the approximate dimensions of a giant toad draped in a warped version of the Solarian coat and uniform around him. Shadows gain definition quickly as the latticework threads into and from the secondary target, spreading out into and from the creature, towards the agents, all three of them at once. Threads turn to needles.

  And needles will turn to knives.

GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has activated a Force Action!
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Kahm Yugh with Ephemeral!
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has completed his action.

DC: MISS! Kahm Yugh completely evades Ephemeral from Isiris Shango'Ra!

<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.

The blood is an issue that demands explanation. Kahm is nominally concerned it portends something more sinister, like the general reversal of gravity, but thus far both their feet seem securely wrapped in Filgaia's embrace. More concerning, he's given the apostate a weapon, a weapon frightfully attuned for a man of his capabilities. He could already hear his defense instructor berating him in the ear, but the agent was secure in the belief that it was the right decision, a tactical loss for a future, unrealized gain.

"It's a tool, like any other." Kahm answered. "But a good one."

No doubt, the spinner is about to find out. The other two men with Kahm find their attacks rebuffed in the same moment they behold the Gebler sigil on their opponent, leaping back at once with minds surging with the implication. Several puzzle pieces fell into place, but the image remained uncertain. Hesitation now dogs their steps like the shadow that clung so close to the killer's heels-they were equipped and outfitted to take on an rogue, untrained ether user. A turncoat from among their own ranks was a separate matter, and an imperiously more dangerous one.

But Kahm's eyes brooked no objection. The situation changed, but retreat was no option. Not in the face of such rank dereliction of duty.

The sword, the anemo blade, to call it by it's name, strikes into the ground like a proclamation, and the world shifts upon the axis of it's hilt. Such ether flows into it that the blade begins to bleed of it, distorting the air with a raw peal of unshed power that set all the operatives off-guard, as if the next pinpricks of saturation could be the different between this pregnant equilibrium and rampant criticality.

Anger tinged Kahm's emotional color with equal portions of disbelief. The quantity was staggering, unprecedented. The man should have cascaded well before he reached this output, his mind destroying itself under the weight of its own immeasurable wish for power. Conventional logic demanded that this power find a balance, however destructive, yet it only seemed to grow in threat and volume. "Who are you?" He manages to ask, in simultaneous thrall and contempt for such force, such strength.

The killer's grim artifice spreads among them like a whispered promise, dipped in blood. They all recognize the threat, but Kahm alone is the quicker actor. Needles become knives, and knives rain mercilessly, but they pierce only that lightning-formed ghost of a man and not the flesh himself, invoking his own substantial understanding of the principles behind his element to bend the forces around him, moving like a sealed pocket of air against the tide.

The other men find their limits, one impaled where he stands a dozen times over, his body leaning half back in death throes. The other evaded with only partial success, good enough to be reeling in his blood on the sand, dying but not quite yet dead.

Kahm's hand found the hilt of his sword as he burned their image into his retinas. This would not go unanswered. Power the likes of which he'd only felt behind the ether machine of his gear before now coursed at the end of his grip, and would make use of it, turning a portion of that force inward, accelerating the biology of his brain, limbs, and nerves. Those blue eyes glowed with a luminous force all their own, and a wave of the force that drives the agent saturated the air, the finessed invocation the hallmark of one who nearly bore the rank of Element.

"Let's see if you can receive it." He said, igniting the air with one foot forward, "My hatred."

GS: Kahm Yugh has attacked Kahm Yugh with Battle Trance!
GS: Kahm Yugh has completed his action.
GS: Kahm Yugh takes a solid hit from Kahm Yugh's Battle Trance for 0 hit points!
GS: Hyper! Statuses applied to Kahm Yugh!

<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

  Blood lines scatter in a veiny, pulsating alien lattice in broad arcs around the killer's companion, the killer's hand drifting away from the hilt of the Major's blade, the epicenter of the attack. The impaled body deep in throes is stimulated further by the pulsating and virulent undulations expressed by the red mass. In only a moment, Kahm escapes, but the bodies of those under his command double, triple, then quadruple, a score of downed black suits shifting and jerking between the two men, pinned down by red lines.

  It is across and between a haze of crows, bodies and blood that Kahm pierces into the nightmare spinner's field of nightmares, driving him back as his strength bleeds from him openly.

  The agent stands some ways away from Kahm, whose blue eyes come slowly to match his own. The Ether that man uses is dangerous, heady, choking. Taking it into himself is an entirely different means, and when it bleeds over into the Major, he will realize -- swiftly -- that the killer's energy is unlike any Ether he's ever encountered.

  "Hatred. A laudible goal."

  There is no detectible elemental bent to the Ether that Kahm channels from his blade. It is deep, cold and vast, like the ocean. The world seems chaotic and malformed under its colors, and every step is like taking a step in a world that is spun on its side. There is a self-aware dread to things, a sentient horror. It is a flattering color to the colors of hate. It is deep, limitless.
  Addictive.

  "Do you enjoy it," the man with the bluest eyes asks, mezza voce.
  "A taste of freedom..."

  Lifting a hand past the blood at his middle, the nightmare spinner's fist hovers over his heart. "Tell me that it is worth the cost. Please me, by saying these bodies stacked upon the sands are fair price for the strength of despair. Pleasure me, and your life will never end."

  "Until that moment... suffer."

  He opens his hand over his heart. Another droplet of blood floats past Kahm, in an eerie echo of something that happened only a moment ago. The sense of deja vu is crippling. But as the spinner gestures, the creature behind the agent lurches ominously, the latticework trailing from it curving, arcing, wounds from the bodies at their feet becoming spears of red, curving in compounding arcs towards the Major, with vicious speed. The spears are numerous, nests of spines exploding outward. But not a single one is lethal, not a single one will pierce a single organ. Without limitation, the thin crimson will spear into flesh. And instead of killing, it will be sheer agony.

GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Kahm Yugh with Malediction Chaining!
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has completed his action.
GS: Kahm Yugh critically Guards a hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's Malediction Chaining for 20 hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.

Slaves. That was he'd called them. Them, the administrators of the world.

The fallen bodies multiply by unknown algorithms, and it is this phenomenon he believed Gwen Whitlock and Lily Keil identified as 'the power to create illusions'. But it was an incomplete and hopelessly short-sighed description of the truth, a fundamental failure of imagination and education. This power was a byproduct, the emission of a far more terrifying engine working beneath surface.

Kahm felt it in the blade, power clawing at the confines like a beast that was barely contained by its prison. To exist as mere potential was a blasphemy of the highest order-the force demanded to be used, to be wrought. The Major could not deny a sense of kinship in this, even as his composure demanded otherwise.

But it is there, the thing that fuels and drives his power. All who would be called Element were trained in this way, to refine their control over fundamental forces by invoking control over the process and not the mere effect, anchoring their mind with the strongest emotion they could manifest. Kahm's method of choice raged about him like an unseen cyclone of enmity, the depth and intensity the only thing that could rival the mysterious, horror-choked presence the spinner had called forth. The man's hatred ran deep and pure, its potency synonymous with the honesty by which he possessed it. Link by link, the twin chains of discipline and training by which that rage was forced into orderly and properly channels broke, and the Major felt the keen of the power call to him.

It was far, far, better than drive could ever hope to be.

His gazed lifted skywards, as if oppressed by the patter of unseen.

"You would call this freedom." He said, as the violence within him reached a crescendo. "You, who have abandoned the mission."

He surveyed the bodies with indifference, acknowledging the justice of it. They had lacked strength, and this was the result.

Spears of blood advance on him, and the Major reacts with fury, swinging his blade without a mind to actually hit anything with it. He invokes that terrible, tremulating power in an instant, spending at least a fourth of it in a shattering distortion of forces, atomizing most of the projectiles before they can even approach them. Those that survive must contend with his speed, but even such a heightened state was insufficient the guard against the sheer multiplicity of vectors the spinner had flung at him. One spear lances his shoulder, another through his thigh. Someone had set fire to his blood, and the man's eyes burned all the more with ambient menace.

He lifted the blade high.

"God alone is without limit, apostate." He declared, casting the bleeding weapon down with all the might he could master. "I'll be ending your heresy now."

Conventionally, earth was the counterforce of Kahm's element, a fortress stone and soil that no storm could hope to crack. The invocation of the spinner's power turns that paradigm on it's end, and the ground erupted violent with an explosive torrent of lightning that traveled relentlessly forward, arcing wide from it's point of origins as it flung rock and debris in its wake, seeking the spinner's oblivion.

GS: Kahm Yugh has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Helldriver!
GS: Kahm Yugh has completed his action.
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra takes a solid hit from Kahm Yugh's Helldriver for 136 hit points!
GS: Poison! Statuses applied to Isiris Shango'Ra!

<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

  The world spins, and they stand on but the side of it, waiting for it to stop.

  He stands on the far side of the battle, his blue eyes lit with an unholy light. His grey coat shifts in the shifting winds as he goes through the motion of somatics requisite for the spell he conjures. There is no refinement to them, no specificity or solemn means to his spells. They are all elemental, all pain and misery, burgeoned on by a suffocating cold tide of Ether that drenches the battlefield, oversaturating everything. In the tumult of the battle, it feels like stepping in shallow water, thick like blood. In the surging black of cackling feathers, Kahm momentarily annihilates the latticework around him, beating back the storm with a vicious surge of his own.

  Pleased, the killer lifts his chin.
  His broken blade is still dragging in the sand beside him.

  The nightmare agent has been declared apostate, someone who has abandoned the mission, a declaration that beats a white hot fury within his counter. Recognition of that purity of emotion is the source of the chilling expression across his face. Calm, placid, pleased... and cruel.

  "Spoken like a true whipped dog."

  The cataclysmic blast of force cracks the earth, discharging the lightning into the earth until even the sand bled light. The man without a name is at the focal point of the arc, and he barely seems to move as the strength of his own Ether belts the earth at his feet, pure white light superheating the air and bleaching out the color in his form. He is not struck by one of the branches of the blast, but the main trunk of force, his coat flaring out as he is crushed underneath the purity of judgment.
  The glassed earth buckles beneath his boots.

  "Aa... as expected of one of Solaris' greater killers," he labors, his body slowly raising from the impact crater. Whiplash lines of black spread like a spiderweb over his form. The network of electric nerve-lines continue over his coat and his clothes. It is a web that centers over his face, electric lines weeping blood from beyond the black from his left cheek, the origin of the attack. He made no attempt to move, no attempt to leap free. "Doesn't it seem right, this moment? The ability to judge and be judged?"

  He breathes. The Ether he pulses through the air surges with his breath. Kahm can feel him breathe.

  The shattered blade of his own weapon lifts. "It is only natural that an angel knows the taste of power," the agent supposes. "Only natural that you become more every moment you walk with me. Embrace your hatred, just as you were told... enjoy this strength of mine, the end of everything."

  He lifts the blade, the edge turning on Kahm. It is a Solarian Blade stance.
  There are many variants. The blackest operations use a certain form..
  That instantly kills.

  "I hear her song, the song of God," the nightmare agent explains.
  "I am the only one who can. Join me."

  In an instant, the killer surges, black glass shattering beneath his tread. The stroke he uses is one that would kill the Major, a direct, Ether-enhanced thrust through the chest. Evasion is not easy for an assassin's killing stroke, and there are limited ways of getting around the attack, as he leads with a strong step for speed, but with the thrust shot off slightly late. That was the key to it, truthfully. A homing thrust. No matter where Kahm attempted to evade, the nightmare agent was going to run him through. But they both know one thing.

  An Aveh blade is not capable of withstanding the stress.
  If Kahm stops to think, even for a moment, the nightmare agent will run the Major through with techniques born in the shadows of Etrenank. Then, through pure force, the agent will shatter his blade deep inside him.

GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Kahm Yugh with The Promised Gate!
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra takes 5 damage from Poison!
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has completed his action.
GS: Kahm Yugh guards a hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's The Promised Gate for 99 hit points!
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra takes Cover! He gains 50 temporary hit points!

<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.

The output was greater than he expected.

Kahm was force to expend a portion of his own energy just to shield himself from the terrific feedback that foreign power threw at him, certain that even a moment's hesitation would have seen him consumed by the very same blaze he'd just unleashed. Such power!! The thought tore through his mind, even as the spinner's taunt echoed somewhere over the roar of thunder.

There was a disadvantage to such techniques. The size of the blow, the debris thrown up, and the blinding light from the core of the blast all served to obscure Kahm's vision of his opponent, rendering it impossible to determine if the killer had been struck or not. It would have been well and good were he atomized, but otherwise the man had all the cover he needed to launch his next attack-a fact the Major was all too aware of.

He doesn't delay, feet kicking off the ground in motion while the blast is spend, catching nothing more than what he thinks is might be the tattered churning of a greycloth coke against the wash of cleansing light. It wouldn't be enough, his gut told him. That man would definitely survive.

This man, whoever and whatever he was, would always survive.

The assailant's voice eliminated the need to worry about an ambush, and Kahm held his ground with a curious stance as the wounded man and his strangely poetic injury spoke of angels, power, and judgment. His eyes were on the movements of the broken blade as the other spoke, their glow never deviating an inch from the path of that jagged points. "I don't need to you to tell me." Kahm said, the bile in the back of his throat at odds with the furious pounding of his heart every moment this conflict continued. "You have fallen into the filth of the surface, and the violence taints your soul."

Just as his was tainted.

He knew of songs, the choirs of angels, and in calmer times he might wonder that there could be more than one, but he saw nothing beyond the angle of that broken blade, of the dire form its wielder assumed. "All songs must end." The Major declared.

And he became his own stance.

YEARS AGO

"Among swords, there are three names you must mark." The old master said, his one good eye starting through Kahm with the mien of a seasoned hawk. "Kahran Ramses of Solaris, Gaspar Uzuki of Shevat, and Hyuga Ricdeau, who is claimed by both of late."

The man held a blunted sword before the youth, a change from the usual wooden, and assumed a stance Kahm had never seen. "Is that how they fight?" He asked.

"No." The man answered, his face grim. "This is the sword of the names you cannot mark. The three you must respect, but this one you should fear."

"How do I beat it?" The youth asked, calmly.

"You tell me." The sage answered, and then he was for him.

NOW

The blade was death, but the blade was mortal. Kahm knew evasion was not acceptable-only a simultaneous strike held a sliver of hope. As the assailant screamed towards him, so did the Major thrust through the sky, the point of his weapon and power aimed for blade that sought his heart. There was a thunderous peal of power, a crashing wave of cascading force, and Kahm felt the clash of blade echo though his very soul, body racked by the others will to murder. Wounds unbidden opened on his flanks, wrists, and cheek, as if struck five times at once, and in a blink he was past the spinner on the other end of the battle ground.

The anemo blade sang with smoke and steam at his side, all its power spent.

GS: Kahm Yugh has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Terminus Est!
GS: Kahm Yugh has completed his action.
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra takes a solid hit from Kahm Yugh's Terminus Est for 267 hit points!
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight!

<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

  Yes, such power.

  There is a bizarre juxtaposition to what's expected. What is 'normal.' A normal battle is not like this. Men fight for dominance. They struggle, and they rush to censure one another, scrabbling with bloodied fingers for any opportunity to gain the upper hand. In this, things are not as normal. The young man with the bluest eyes and the grey agent's coat.. is sublime, even charitable in his treatment of the up-and-coming Major, the man with violence in his blood.

  He gifts the Major just the barest taste of the indescribable.
  Then, he dies.

  A single blood droplet floats past Kahm's eyes, amidst all of the energy.

  In the vicious instant that their swords clash, the killer's blade shattering into pieces, time grinds to an agonizing, painful halt. There, light twists in a thunder-threaded knot, Ether trailing after Kahm in a lightning deathblow, his lightning-crackled blade buried in the apostate agent's skull. The storm of crows and blood surge around the two, lightning flaring off of the plumage of blue-eyed blackbirds in blasphemous relief. And yet still he is accomodating. The killer seems fully aware of the danger of growing too close to his blade, seems fully aware of the risks of going after Kahm with an inferior weapon. He seems all too knowing of what killing all of a man's subordinates and then giving him the power to end him will accomplish.

  Hatred and bile rise in the back of Kahm's throat.
  And then the moment splits. And splits again...

  In an eyeblink that stretches on into infinity, the bodies of the Gebler duelists remain locked in mortal exchange on the battlefield inverted, ground where sky once was, and sky where ground once was. The bodies on the battlefield slowly fall from above, down into the sky. And then, the agent approaches Kahm, second versions of both men, standing in the shadows of their selves. He walks across the sky amidst the bodies in freefall, as if walking across a bridge of glass. The nightmare spinner trails black where he goes, darkness flowing from a massive wound across the broadside of his head where the blade ended up after shattering his own. The way he walks, it does not seem like the first time he has taken a sword to the skull. But the darkness is not blood.

  The apostate is unarmed, his hands again sheathed in his coat, which seems none the worse for wear from the rigors of battle. Those awful eyes gleam in the shadows cast by the falling corpses. He doesn't stop to mind Kahm, walking past him as if the man who beat him were only a bystander. When the agent stops, it is only for a moment, and only close enough that the Major alone could hear him.

  He speaks as if uttering a great secret. "You have trained all of your life to achieve empty station in a room with no doors," he begins. "You know in your soul that the power of despair is the only thing that can complete you. Beyond the golden-haired woman and the Baskar, I will be kindest of all to you, you who will monument my investiture. I will be kind to you because only I can be kind to you."

  "Like all of those lost between the horizons of Heaven, you need me," the nameless agent intimates.
  "Of all in this land, I am the only one who can bring God to you.."
  He continues to walk away.

  The earth returns to normal. Crows flutter and fly, scattering. The broken Aveh blade slams into the sand some ways away. A body hits the ground behind Kahm, defeated. But his blade is buried in the massive toad-like creature, whose hood has been cleaved in half by the steaming blade. The smell is atrocious. Its grey coat begins to melt off of it, and the creature slowly exerts a tangible weight on the Anemo Blade as it lists downward, falling with red tendrils from its side laying flat like discarded tinsel. As the hood falls away, the creature begins to destabilize, parts of it shifting, turning translucent, and disappearing, like a puzzle dismantling itself. A hyperextended, elongated jaw lolls slack as the cleaved head hits the sand, revealing the blue-eyed creature underneath.
  It is Kahm's face, dead and open in shock.

  It takes only moments for him to be alone in the sands once more, in a desert streaked and threaded with black glass.

<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.

Kahm Yugh has seen many things in his time on the surface. He has seen continents embroiled in flames. He has seen a man, or a demon, tear apart a gear with his bare hands. He has seen enemies long thought dead rise to threaten to the present.

It's the first time he's seen a man die and live.

There had been a telling schunk and the familiar smell of burnt flesh when the anemo blade shattered through the inferior weapon found it's mark, delivering all the familiar feedback that denoted a man's death. Kahm knew it the moment he made contract-the contest had been made, and he had won. Except...that wasn't quite it. It was his blade that had won. Had the killer been armed of equal caliber, and properly disposed....what would the ending have been?

He stood there, frozen in victory, as the spinner's ghost paced and sang his mockery in an infinite spiral of shadows. The Major cannot speak, object, or even glare at the other in defiance. The pointed words make ever wound the avehan blade could not, each more merciless than the last. The battle was won but the war lost with it, and Kahm found his voice only in the pit of the despair his opponent preached.

"This...is the only way.." He insisted.

The strong must rule. To allow otherwise was to invite calamity.

But how could he ever stand among them, when he was so cloaked in the blood of the land below? The keen of battle, the burn of violence in his blood....nothing could turn aside the fact that it was not the Solarian in him that had carried this contest, not the gifts of the Gazel that had reached across fallen bodies and endless blood to seize survival. The horizon stretched endlessly before Kahm as the spinner receded into it, the others he mentioned burned into his mind. A golden-haired woman, a Baskar...

Of all in this land, I am the only one who can bring God to you..

God, the only one who could deliver absolution. The only one who could redeem this blood-curse.

"Wait..."

Kahm saw his hand stretch out in front of him. Felt his legs move and go nowhere.

"WAIT!!!!"

The fading light in the eyes of his own dying face confronted him, and Kahm stared down the answer from his earlier question. This was the other truth.

A heartbeat, and he was lone in the desert with three dead men, the anemo blade planted straight in the ground six paces in front of him. The Major immediately bent over and retched from the dissonance, hacking and spewing as order re-asserted itself, as the discipline of Elricht Sophard gradually re-chained the beast. But fetters could be re-forged only so many times, and each slip was to weaken them more. The litany sprang into his mind.

Think. Analyze. Assess. Act.

Kahm rose to his feet with clear eyes, taking one survey of the area and noting the blinking of the stars in the sky. The horses had fled, and the dying operative had joined the threat. A search of all bodies confirmed the fear that had already taken root in his stomach.

He had his life, but that was all. One man was stripped of his weapon, the other of his field computer. The target was armed with everything he needed to hunt higher game.

The Major's hand clenched until he felt the blood drip down his knuckles. Penance could be assessed later. He activated his emergency comm, and spoke his position as soon as he was sure no trace of that enigmatic ether remained.

"This is Yugh. I need clean up and disposal for three KIAs. Issue a high alert to all agents in the field."

There were a few moments of commiseration, and he spoke again.

"I need the Lieutenant Commander when available. Tell her...I have very bad news."

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Achievement: Weapon Story unlocked!