Twinflame

K'aijeen darted behind Thal and grabbed hold of the bolt with her free hand. Her tattered body didn't move as naturally as it might have, arms swinging a bit more, spine bent forward by instincts telling her to protect the wounds on her torso. But she was able to get enough leverage -- by kicking Thal in the back at the place where the bolt pierced him -- to rip the metal shaft out of him and let it fall to the dirt. As she stumbled, she swung the branch in her other hand toward the dirt, generating a brief green glow and a gust of wind that threw dirt up behind Thal. The hiss of more bolts oncoming came from that direction. The dirt vexed their aim and they thudded in the dirt around them. She returned to Thal in the next instant, "We should run to the tribe! They'll help." The sundrakes were close enough that the snapping of their teeth was audible.

As soon as K'ile hit the ground, he rolled to his feet and bolted away from the pair. His red ears and tail were like plumes of fire as he leapt over shrubbery and darted off with the speed of a rested -- if wounded -- man. To the south, Amal'jaa beastmasters stood with chains and spears in hand, shouting commands their drakes. West of Thal, reptilian archers set metal bolts to massive bows. And from the east came the drakes. K'aijeen shook the plain branch she carried after the fleeing Tia. "Him!" But her anger only lasted an instant before she noticed all that was going on around her, and she did lower her head as though she could simply duck away from it. When she looked at Thal, she was fearful. "What do we do?"

K'aijeen frowned at that and pulled her arm away. "I'm not hiding." She turned to keep walking. In that moment, a metal bolt almost as long as Thal was tall struck the man in the back, and an amal'jaa hunting call broke the air from behind them. In response, the sun drakes turned from the white animals they'd been herding. They turned toward Thal and K'aijeen.

"I do know. They're family. He's..." K'aijeen pointed at K'ile's unconscious form. "He's bad. He always has been. The others are good. I know. I know them." She did notice Thal's slowing, and she matched it, but didn't want to relent on her point. The bolting herd didn't come close to the pair of undead miqo'te. The number of white animals would cross their path well in front of them, but the reason for their bolting became clear before then. Sun drakes hounded the herd, chasing them with surprising speed. The drakes surrounded the herd, moving it, biting at the outermost members. But none of the drakes went for a kill. They just bit and growled and ran, herding them.

"But if they don't see us how can they help us? Why are you scared of family?" K'aijeen trotted ahead of Thal, fixing him with a very upset, saddened, but not angry look. "They won't be like the other people! The other people didn't know us." The small herd of white animals turned northward and began to run in a sudden movement, their distant movement dramatic but quiet.

((Takes place immediately after The Scorpion of Shan'Gai Chah. Make sure you read them in order!)) They got so close. The sent of fetid Drybone blew out over the dirt, unmistakable. The road leading to Highbridge was in few. The dirt had turned muddy, rocky, and stiff budding plants stuck out from the cracks in search of sunlight. Rodents moved among the shrubs. Larger, white-furred animals stirred a hundred yalms further into the wilderness. They could almost here the splash of the pool that K'ile had said would mark his tribe's location, could almost smell the scent of a troubled population of miqo'te. That was how close they came. Just over a dozen of the large, white-furred creatures milled. Some lifted their faces and ears to observe the pair of tattered dead things and their red-headed captive walking north and east. Others among the beasts kept their faces to the dirt, walking a few fulms at a time to seek scrub brush. Then, all at once, they stopped and looked to the south, ears and bodies primed to move. They stood, frozen. K'ile had gone unconscious at some point and and hung limp from Thal's grip. Beside them, K'aijeen walked with a smile on her face. The rest of her shattered features were covered by a tattered shroud, a torn, filthy cloth the only covering of her torn body. She had not forgotten that Thal had told her to remain away from the tribe when she arrived, but her tireless form moved with a lightness to its step anyway. over laborious hours, she had managed to swallow the sand that had worked its way into the wound in her throat, and covered the wound with her hand. Now she spoke more clearly than she had in days, her grating voice holding a hint of the high, small voice her living body would have had. "You'll see when we get home. You won't have anything to be afraid of there. They'll take care of us."

Rolling his eyes as he watched his hair sway in front of his face, K'ile muttered. "East of Dryboone, south of Highbridge. There's a camp near a pond in Eastern Thanalan." "No." K'aijeen said, sounding frustrated. "You are lying. The tribe is south. They would not leave the Sagolii." "We were starving to death in the Sagolii, so we moved. First good idea the tribe's had in five years." His tail shook. "I told Airos. She didn't let you know?"

"Ow! Walk steady." K'ile groaned, pain from his head firing through his spine all the way tot eh tip of his tail. He could feel his face swelling from the beating he'd received. "You know sometimes I think there's a completely different person in there, and then you do something stupid. What the heck are you even going to do with yourself, huh? And with the kid? You thinking more than five seconds ahead?"

At that, K'ile managed to laugh, and it persisted through the pain of the action. "You don't remember what my name is? By Azeyma, the kid really did a number on you, didn't she?" K'aijeen made a face, grew sullen, and fell back behind Thal. "Hey." K'ile kneed the dead man weakly. "Do you remember what your own name is?"

"Nah, let them see her." K'ile muttered. "It'd suit me fine if my tribe ripped you both apart." "No!" K'aijeen groaned in frustration, her shoulders tensing up and her shattered brow wrinkling beneath her veil. "They won't do that. They're family. They're good! They aren't like him!"

"But family isn't like that!" She responded, her voice still choking, but apparently able to speak full sentences and ideas now. "The more hurt I am the more sad they'll be. They'll want to help us!"

K'ile groaned when Thal jostled him. He swallowed his pride and allowed himself to be carried, though he still glared at the open wounds in Thal's side. It was a hideous vulnerability. So far everything he'd done to the man had failed to end him. Eventually, something would have to, right? Coming up suddenly beside Thal, K'aijeen managed to bounce despite her rickety body. She swung her staff beside her and gave Thal a anxious sort of smile, as though she was not sure she was allowed to wear such an expression. It showed only vaguely beneath the cloth that was tied about her face. "Finally. Home!"

"What's it matter? I don't intend to try and talk my way out of this." K'ile scowled at the man, his eyes still mostly closed behind his red hair. "You saw what I was doing. All that matters is what you're going to do about it."

"Doesn't matter if at the end of the day you're still doing what she wants you to do." He smirked. "Like how Baoht couldn't kill me, right?"

"How would you even know?" The Tia hung from Thal's fists with his hands limp on either side, tail shifting behind him. Perhaps he really had given up on the idea of fighting about. At least with his hands. "Now that I've seen her like this, with you, it brings into doubt a whole lot of things. How many other people are walking around who shouldn't be? Not remembering anything?"

"Good." K'ile winced one eye open. "Because you've been tempered. By her." He pointed at K'aijeen. Even with the cloth tied over her features, K'aijeen's scowl was visible, her shoulders shaking. The scowl was as hurt as it was angry, her shivering bending her to one side. Her thin fingers pulled tight over her grip on her staff, and her other hand strained across the rags that she wore. They tore. She coughed, "Liar."

"And take more of the family away?" K'ile huffed, trying to talk through the whirl of disorientation and thunder roiling inside his skull. "Hey, sounds right to me. That's what the undead do, is wander mindless and skill without knowing why."

"You don't have any idea what I was doing," K'ile spat at him, honestly having trouble opening his eyes against the swell of pain assaulting his senses. "You don't remember the tribe. You don't remember your kids, or your women, or your family. You don't know how many of them have died or how many of them have left! You don't remember. No, I don't think you're evil. I think you're just still dead. You don't get to pretend you're not."

K'ile cringed as he fell. He was growing tired of blows to the head, and his brain was in full agreement with him. It felt like his skull was made of brittle wood, or else absent entirely by this point. He didn't have the strength to fight the man's undeath. K'ile was sure he'd killed Thal a dozen times over this night alone, and yet the dark magic continued, unrelenting. "You can't expect me to just fold and go along with you."

Tensing, K'ile growled as best her could manage. "Put. Me. Down." He had no intention of making this easy on the undead who were haunting him. Whatever it was they were trying to do to him, or with him, they were going to fail in every way he could manage. So he didn't cease his struggling. It became stronger. He couldn't quite resolve the dexterity of his fingers, but as soon as he could, there was a wound in Thal's side that looked vulnerable.

As K'ile's strength began to come back, he began to struggle. His weak arms moved against Thal's back and his knees pushed against Thal's wounds. The Tia's tail shivered and his voice couldn't manage much more than an angry groan. Watching this, K'aijeen gripped her staff tightly. She glared at the shifting Tia, appearing prepared to do something about him.

K'aijeen growled at that, or as close to such a sound as she could make with her neck wound exposed and filling with sand. She emitted a scratchy gargling. The Tia over Thal's shoulders remained stationary for a long time. Too long to be a good sign. His ears and tail continued to move for awhile before finally his fingers started to flex, his limbs stirring in confused numbness.

Following after Thal in silence, when he said this, her ears stood up in confusion, and then lay down flat. She tugged at the rags around her. "A dead slave's tattered death shroud." Around this time, K'ile's tail shifted, and his ears twitched, the first sign that there might be come life left in the man. K'aijeen gestured towards the derelict Tia's firey head. "I want his shirt."

K'aijeen paused once they were beyond the bridge, lifting herself to her full, modest height, to look back at the Amal'jaa "city" of Zunr'ak. The cloud she'd made was beginning to fade, and the firelight she made out seemed distant. She turned to look towards Thal, "We are almost away. Should be safe soon."

K'aijeen did as she'd proposed. she used the staff as a walking stick for a moment, keeping her pace up while working one hand in slow circles to conjure up subtle green lines in the air. The power grew and the dirt around her moved. She stopped walking and brought this power to the head of the staff, where it was magnified greatly. She couldn't help the rags from blowing out from her, revealing her for a moment as a dead body wrapped in a shredded shroud, but this vision passed quickly. As she moved the wind, she worked her conjury into the dirt as well, upsetting the foundation and pitching a fine dust into the firmament. She made sure the cloud did not focus on them, but spread crookedly towards the cliffs behind them, slicing with a subtle bite of skin and scale before wrapping back outwards over the outlying fires and ironworks they were walking past. When she was done, she trotted forward to catch up with Thal, letting the winds she'd stirred up move on their own, the heat of the ground dancing with the cooler winds. It would settle quickly, but not immediately.