Twinflame

The way you're doing the scales on these Au Ra is, to me, absolutely perfect. And their expressions. All your Au Ra are so cute! :love:

"Fireballs!" K'ile answered easily, then he took a few steps back. "My tribe's this way. We should start going so we can reach it before the Amal'jaa wipe it out. Oh, and that thing where you got hit in the face and fire came out of your head? Teach me that, too!"

"Eh... Sorry. That sounds pretty awful. You... uh... Hey!" K'ile took a quick few steps closer to the Roegadyn. "I'll tell you what. I'll let you follow me back to my tribe, and once my arm's fixed you can teach me that fire thing you were doing. Because I can do some things and I had plans to be able to do even more things but I don't think those plans are happening any more and that thing you were doing was impressive."

K'ile Tia looked the Roegadyn over. "The tribe hasn't lately taken kindly to outsiders... But I don't know if I'm jerk enough to leave a blind woman alone in the middle of the desert. Just don't tell them about K'aijeen and Thalen. Or the Amal'jaa. Or really anything that's happened."

"I'll be fine if I can get to a healer. The shaman in my tribe can set it." K'ile gazed eastward. "I might need to return anyway. There's a force of Amal'jaa preparing to attack my tribe, and I need to ensure their peaceful surrender."

"That shouldn't be rare." K'ile muttered sternly, his pacing stopping. "I had them chased out of Drybone by just suggesting they were dead. These people defending them must be after something. I don't even get why they're defending themselves."

"Great. Everyone just ran off. The Lalafel too? What the heck." K'ile kept his arm pressed to his chest and paced in a circle, ears pinned down. "I ought to chase them down and finish them off. So much for helping the tribe, they're off into the desert! But not before they stole my shirt and broke my arm again."

"I never had use for welcome at your side, Cypress." The Duskwight smirked. "I sought to help you when it was permitted, but if you wish me gone, then I will leave you alone. Have a pleasant afternoon." K'ile Tia finally sat up, holding one arm fast to his chest, shivering in obvious pain. Still, he glared at Thal's retreating back. "I hope the Amal'jaa... bah." He stood and turned toward Cypress, looking for the Duskwight he'd caught only a glance of. He was prepared to snap at him with words and violence, but the Duskwight was nowhere to be seen. Confused, K'ile turned his gaze about. "Where'd that old elezen go?"

The Tia on the ground writhed and clutched at his arm, groaning. "Perhaps, but you will not be finding them again today." Megiddo paced around Cypress again, and the cloth loosened. Once Thal was on his way, Megiddo did not believe the blind woman would be able to catch him on her own. "I apologize, but while your pursuit of the girl has been informational to me, it is rather integral to my interests that you not succeed yet." K'aijeen, curled against Thal as he carried her away, sobbed. She was more burned than ever now, her body seeming on the verge of falling apart. "I told you he'd kill me. She'd kill me. They all want to... I didn't do anything but they don't know."

K'ile took a step back but hold himself to Thal by the man's shirt. Megiddo then did a thing very rare. He moved, quickly, snapping around Cypress and lifting his leg to kick K'ile's arm upward, hard. An audible crack came from the Tia's bone as his grip broke and he fell backward, tumbling into the dirt. His body pulsed with palpable heat. The Duskwight turned his gaze on Thal, "Take the girl on go," and pointed to where K'aijeen stood, stunned and agawk, limbs close to her broken form.

Standing very near Cypress, Megiddo spoke in a low tone. "Ulanan has left you in my care again, and I find it necessary to stop you. If you wish, you may think of this as betrayal." "Hell with this!" K'ile sat up and took hold of Thal's collar, pulling himself off the ground and punching the man in the face with one smoldering fist. "I can burn you myself." Heat shot from his beneath the harness on his chest, out over his limbs and to his hands. The air curled around his fingers.

A flash of sliver cut the air between Cypress' body and Thal's, taking a piece of flesh from the Roegadyn's arm as well. A long cloth followed behind it, glowing with the names of Duskwight long past, and when the knife swerved in midair to arch behind her, the cloth followed it. The cloth snapped tight and pulled across Cypress chest with surprising force, like a strong arm crashing against her. The cloth, already scorching hot, was not burned by Cypress' magic. From his position, K'ile couldn't stop Thal from moving too much, but he kept his hand's on the shirt the man was wearing and kept his legs against Thal's legs to limit mobility. "You think anyone is going to help you?"

Finding himself pinned, K'ile growled. "Gah! You're not...!" He kept his hold on Thal anyway, trying to limit the movement of Thal's legs with his own. "Come on! Burn him already!"

K'aijeen shouted when Thal threw her aside, hitting the dirt and scrambling away. A few fulms later, she turned to watch. K'ile struggled with Thal, taking the hit from his knee painfully, which triggered a flash of heat that melted the dirt beneath them and burned the plants around them. K'ile curled himself up to protect himself from further kneeing, just anchoring Thal in place as much as he could.

"Hey Roegadyn!" K'ile shouted, and as he did so he dropped into a crouch and launched himself at Thal. "I'll hold them in place, you blow them up! Aim for this!" He had every intention of grappling Thal to the ground.

K'ile hit the dirt a yalm away from Thal and rolled another yalm before stopping, a trail quartz-laden dirt between them. His hand had been wrenched painfully from K'aijeens arm, but he curled his fingers against the sprained wrist and ignored it as he got to his feet, glaring at the undead Miqo'te. "You're already damned. You're not the only person who can warn Ul'dahns about the Amal'jaa, so what are you even fighting for? Why are you protecting her?" As soon as K'ile's grip on her was broken, she pushed herself back up against Thal and wrapped her limbs around him. She his her face against him and choked out pained sobs.

Meggido's brow lifted, not appearing very threatened by the Lalafel. "This is a terrible place for any kind of discussion, if I felt like having one. If you would prefer for me not to let anyone who is not already dead leave this confrontation alive, I would implore you to find a peaceful way to end it." That said, the Duskwight turned away from the Lalafel, walking in an unrelated southeast direction toward nothing in particular. He threw the knife in his hand out in front of him, and the long, thin cloth tapestry that extended from its hilt curled into the air behind him as though stirred by a heavy wind. As Thal drove his elbow into K'ile's sternum, the Tia drove his knee into Thal's side. K'ile tried to roll so that Thal would fall off of him as they tumbled into the dirt. K'aijeen landed to one side of them, twisting and kicking her legs and trying to pull away but still bound to the pair by the searing grip on her arm. Weeds around them flickered with small yellow fires as the heat ignited them, the ground beneath them giving way and glistening.

The Duskwight standing over Ulanan looked down at her with an implacably plain expression. "It is sufficient explanation to say that it would be best for our relationship if you cease your attempts to eliminate D'aijeen." Thal's impact did not break K'ile's hold on K'aijeen. K'ile was knocked off his feet, but he dragged K'aijeen with him, and they all collapsed into direct that broke and grew hot beneath them.

Before the black bolt could reach Thal, it impacted on a flash of silver that flicked through its path. The bolt burst into a dark dust and the knife it had struck spawn away into the sands, ripped free fromt he cloth that had been trailed behind it. The tapestry withdrew, arching over the dirt back behind Ulanan, where a suddenly tall and gray figure stood like a shadow cast in the air. With a knife limp in his other hand, the tapestry curling behind him, the figure looked down at Ulanan. "You wanted me here, and here I am. Aren't you glad?" K'ile didn't notice the bolt or its deflection. Holding stubbornly onto K'aijeen with one hand, he met Thal with his other hand, blistering hot. "All you'll get over here is more of the same!"

"This wouldn't hurt so much," K'ile lunched and took K'aijeen by one arm, pulling the screaming girl back. "If you'd just let it take the first time." "I did! I did! Please I didn't do anything!" His hand burned her arm. She tried to keep her feet out of the vitrifying quartz, but she had to step in the quartz to struggle against it, and her legs gave out against the heat. She collapsed, her knees and legs crashing into the melting sand and burning. K'ile glared down at her, pitiless. "And you were haunting K'piru and K'airos too, weren't you? Did you do anything to them?" "I didn't do anything! I've never done anything!" She cast herself one way and then the other, pressing against K'ile. "It wasn't me, it wasn't!"

K'ile Tia jumped up on a pile of rocks and looked down at the girl hiding behind them. Red ears standing on end like fire atop his head, K'ile glared down with a very unhappy smile. "You should never have come back from the desert. You all should've stayed in the dirt." "No!" K'aijeen screamed and threw herself away from the rocks, her withered body running two yalms before falling to the ground. "It wasn't me! I didn't do it! I died like you told me to! I did what I was told!" K'ile dropped to the ground behind her. When he landed on the ground it cracked and fumed and glistened with quartz.

"Yeah, that's what I thought and it didn't work. But, hey, if you're so confident." K'ile jumped up and turned to chase after K'aijeen. The undead girl hadn't found the hole she'd been looking for. She settled for a stand of large rocks, jumping behind them and pressing her back to them. She pushed herself against them until her bones hurt, fingernails straining against the surface of the stones.

K'ile's ears stood on end as fire ripped away from the Roegadyn, scorching sand and air. That was something that he needed to learn to do, desperately. When Thal evaded it, K'ile's nostrils curled. "Charging a blind Roegadyn? Really?" K'ile stood up and hollered, "Look out! He's charging you straight!" His tail whipped behind him. Then he looked at the Lalafel. "Your Roegadyn friend's going to get beat up! She's blind and he's undead."

Something in Thal's gesture triggered K'aijeen's panic, and as soon as he pushed her behind him, she bolted away. She was a fleeing skeleton draped in a tattered shroud, thinking nothing about defense or any realistic escape. She just wanted to find a hole to jump in. Somewhere dark where no one would find her and burn her again.

K'ile lifted his voice. "Actually, what he's saying about the Amal'jaa is also true. But if you guys want to kill him, I'll take your help instead." He smirked and looked at Thal, his tail moving behind him. "See, I got it all figured out. The Lalafel probably knows better people anyway."