Twinflame

Following Thal dutifully, K'aijeen was silent and restrained. She kept her face down and the rags of the robe bundled about her. The Amal'jaa's own stink and the pervasive sulfurous fumes would kept any of them from noticing the pervasive stench of death that still clung to K'aijeen, as if it were in her very bones. Once they were far enough out that Thal was willing to speak, K'aijeen let her ears pop up to hear him and lifted shrouded face to look at him, able to see decently through the thin cloth stretched over her face. The feeling of the rag on her eyes was the least uncomfortable sensation she was currently contending with. Rolling her chin to loosen the muscles in her throat, she croaked. "I can call a wind. Dust."

"Not a fan of dying." K'aijeen uttered in frustration. "Or being dead." She fell in line behind Thal, however, keeping herself bundled up and concealed. * Baoht Zuqqa Roh lingered, glaring at the wall that had arisen in front of him. This was not luck. This was not the will of Ifrit. This was the magic of the children of Men, the lesser elementals, the dirt and the dead. Weak but cleverly employed. Undeserving of triumph. Baoht Zuqqa Roh was insulted, and he slid a metal shaft across his bow. He would hunt them down before they even left Zunr'ak. However, when the Roh turned around, he found himself face-to-face with the Priests of Embers, a collection of dusty-scaled Amal'jaa Chahs with their staffs grinding between their hands and their small eyes glaring. Before the Roh could even think to respond to their sudden appearance, the foremost among them barked, "The Bowl lies open! The sacrifices smolder. Soon Ifrit's fires will turn to tempering, and I hear that you have murdered Shan'Gai Chah." Fist tightening around his bowstring, Baoht Zuqqa Roh growled. "Do you see the corpse of a Chah?" "I see a molten dais and no living Chah." The Priest looked at his fellows, collecting nods of ascent. "In a moment, however, I suspect I will see the corpse of a Roh."

"He's going to draw attention." K'aijeen spoke boldly, managing to put a firm inflection to her words, even if she sounded more concerned than the anger she'd claimed a moment ago. She put herself in front of Thal, bending down to try and give her glare to his eyes. But the cloth over her face blocked her own expression, and the mask on his face blocked his eyes. "He murdered me. He murdered you. We should kill him before he gets us killed again."

Moving at a full run right up until just before she reached the exit of the cave, K'aijeen slowed then, ducking her head forward and pulling the hood down over her face. She did her best to hunch without looking weak, but her thinness made her look weak no matter what she did. And she was weak. She was tired. The familiar feeling of exhaustion pulled at her. She'd rested underground for a time, but already, she was tired. Looking around outside the cave, she saw the dark canyons of Zunr'ak, braziers burning with red hellfire, but no Amal'jaa immediately in sight. She turned towards Thal, though the cloth tied about her face concealed her expression. "Why are you carrying him? What are you doing?"

K'aijeen cut up to Thal and ran past him, pausing for just a moment to conjure with her staff. Either this item was more powerful than the stick she'd been using earlier, or her abilities had increased, for with near-effortless swiftness green lines of power lit upon her hands. When she thrust them outward, the manifested as a gust of wind, blasting the fumes down the hallway and out the cave's exit, where for a moment the night sky could be clearly seen. Then the fumed began to coalesce once more. She gave a glare to Thal and croaked. "I'm mad at you. Very." Before she began to run once more.

The Roh did release his bolt, and it pierced the air as the abomination dove away. Baoht Zuqqa Roh cursed his luck; why couldn't he have hit Shan'Gai Chah by accident? Still, he took another bolt from the brace across his back and followed. His large steps, more bounds, carried him quickly. "Do not think you can outrun an Amal'jaa, child of Man. I will decorate your flesh with arrows until you can no longer lift yourself for the weight of metal upon your bones." As Baoht Zuqqa Roh lifted his bow to fire again, the earth itself closed between him and the child of Man, just like a throat closing at the mouth. The rumbling slam of a narrow strip of floor slamming up into the ceiling shook the cavern like a tremor and sent Baoht Zuqqa Roh stumbling backward in confusion, cut of from the abomination and from Shan'Gai Chah. Just as Thal was running past her in the tunnel, K'aijeen had lifted the staff in her hands to pull the earth upward, effectively closing the tunnel. This shook the cave so much that for a moment she was afraid it would cave in, and through her hands over her head, dropping to her knees and hissing in fear. The linen robe over her shoulders hung open, torn and pitted and bloodied from violence. It billowed out from her as the cavern's fumes roiled in response to the change in the cavern's composition. Her naked body was no less disfigured than it had been earlier in the day, great pits carved into her chest and back so that one could almost see all the way through her body. The gouge in her neck and open throat were on display, no longer concealed. Instead, the thin red cloth was now tied about her head, hiding her eyes and wounded skull from view. She remained cowering for only a moment. When the cave did not immediately cave in, she stood and swung herself away from the wall she'd created. Holding the cheap, likely makeshift staff in one hand and closing the tattered linen rags she wore with the other, she loped after Thal.

Baoht Zuqqa Roh growled, and snapped his teeth, the bolt laying across his bow wavering. He aimed for Shan'Gai Chah and tried to release the arrow, but his fingers wouldn't unfurl. They would not allow him to defy the will of Ifrit. He could not be the one to kill Shan'Gai Chah, no matter how great his desire. Instead, he pointed the arrow at the larger child of Man, the abomination. "Kill him. Now. Or I will burn your flesh and return to the desert to burn your girl. Will you survive that and live on as ash?"

"I deserve my own punishment. His family can have his corpse to torment if they wish." Baoht Zuqqa Roh stood, and his bow rose in his hand, metal shaft aiming. "I buried the dead female you walked with. I suspect she will have difficulty unearthing herself if you cannot find her."

K'ile squirmed pitifully, but only for a moment, before going still. His hands moved and grasped blindly at the ground around him but were too weak to take hold of so much as a pebble. "Kill him." A voice spoke from the front of the cavern, low and rumbling, nearly a growl. In the darkness, Baoht Suqqa Roh was nearly invisible, his massive form crouched low like a polished boulder reflecting the red light. The fumes that filled the cave curled about his muscles and his toothy maw. "I know he is kindred to you. I do not care. You could not kill me, and so you must kill him."

Feeling his spear dig into the undead man's body, K'ile Tia, Shan'Gai Chah, roared up at the man, "You should be dead!" just before a large fist hit his already battered head. His ears shook and his body tensed for one more long moment before easing under the weight of his concussion, the darkening, overloaded senses and the pain shivering into numbness. His grip on his spear faltered and the heat pouring out from his chest began to ease. Things did not immediately cool, but the fire lit inside of them dimmed down to coals. He turned his gaze to the backs of his eyelids, feeling his very face twitch against his skull. He let go of his spear and brought his hands to his head, groaning inaudibly.

K'ile had prepared to be bludgeoned or stabbed, but he wasn't ready to be hooked and thrown. The much larger man was able to move K'ile easily, hauling him sideways and throwing him down. The added weight of his armor didn't help him any. All it did was make K'ile fall harder, and this time there was no half-molten stone to cushion his fall. As his already-wounded head smacked down and flared in numb thunder, K'ile twisted the spear that had successfully wounded the undead man, trying to nick a rib and immolate it like a dried Sagolii stick.

Just barely managing to twist so that he did not take the brunt of the hit from the spike, K'ile watched the point of his spear stab the air beside Thal. The point of the dark spike on his chest caught the crevices of his armor, snapping a buckle and yanking him hard to one side. He ignored it for the moment, switching his grip on his own red-glowing weapon and swinging it around, trying to slice into Thal's body with its sharp-edged tip.

K'ile walked to the edge of the dais, the stone glowing hot and bending beneath his feet. Stepping down, he stabbed the ground with his spear, and it flashed, suddenly hot. The swath of the room Thal roiled and spat fumes, flicking hot. K'ile pushed himself forward with his spear so that he was charging Thal in a flash, pulling the glowing point of metal from the ground and lifting the opposite end towards Thal. If he could just impale the man, he could burn him away, and there would be nothing left to animate.

Shan'Gai Chah rose in the fumes and the red heat, the molten dais swelling out beneath him the same as ichor might from a puncture wound, bubbling and pungent. His ears twitched flat against his head and his eyes glared narrow, the red-glowing spear off to his right. "Where did you leave D'aijeen? Once I'm done with you and Baoht, I'll send some Amal'jaa after her, too."

K'ile made sure to fall down instead of backwards. It was easier with the thick, softening stone beginning to grip his feet. She slammed down in it, and though it gave way, his head hurt and his senses reeled. He tired to follow through with his thought and kick Thal off of him, using the much larger man's momentum against him. The dais was drooping beneath them, spreading out gradually across the lower floor.

The dark metal spike hit K'ile's white armor with a stinging click, and the Tia freed one hand from his spear to knock the spike away. When his hand made contact with the metal of Thal's weapon, that metal lit up with sudden heat. He hadn't even thought about it; it had just happened. They stood on a platform glowing hot with heat, the red light refracted through the igneous fumes, each holding a red-hot weapon. K'ile's feet sank deeper into the melting dais and the soles of his boots began to burn away, so that he could feel the hot melting stone against the bottom of his feet. There was no pain. He smiled and stepped back to his grip on his spear once more.

Thal's weapon slammed against K'ile's spear, throwing sparks and heat into the air. The Tia winced at it, but forced himself to ignore his aching head and ears, the igneous stink of the caves already almost overpowering his senses. He focused on the visual, the undead man directly in front of him. K'ile struck the dais with the tip of his spear and it grew hot beneath them, the igneous stone softening and glowing as it began to melt. Small flames lit upon K'ile's boots, but the heat did not hurt his skin. He lifted the point of his spear and jammed it at Thal's midsection.

"The dead are meant to be burned. I won't make the mistake of burying you this time." K'ile ripped his spear free of the earth, and heat poured from the wound. A geyser of fumes from the flash-boiled stone blasted into the air between himself and Thal. He jumped backward, turned and ran, but only a few meters. He leaped up onto the dark stone, shadowed dais, the red lines roiling through it as he set foot on it. He kept his ears directed towards the dead man, however.

The Tia shrugged, smirking. The heat that had flowed from is chest shot through his spear and he thrust it towards the ground, impaling it the same way he might impale a sand drake. Heat shot through the ground towards where Thal was standing, causing fumes to pour up from beneath the ground, turning the sand to quartz and the stone to coals. The glowing red cracks in the walls and the nearby stone dais shone brightly.

K'ile chuckled bitterly at that. "Oh, you finally thought long enough to string more than one idea into an argument. Listen." The Tia slapped his chest twice and heat radiated visibly along the metal buckles of his armor. "The tribe is strong, but they're too caught up in what they lost or what they don't want to lose. They're focused on things that don't exist anymore. If we all start worshiping Ifrit, at least then we're doing something. It'll be better. And the amal'jaa? They're like us. They respect heritage, strength, ritual. It makes sense."

"Hey, you don't know what I'm doing. You've got no idea." K'ile snapped at the man, glaring. He had no reason to be in a hurry. "The tribe is dying, and I'm going to do something about that. You think Azeyma's going to help us? She guided us out of the desert into land owned by Ul'dahns. Turns out her fire isn't very strong. Do you see the Amal'jaa abandoning the Sagolii? They're conquering it. Ifrit doesn't care if his followers are Amal'jaa or Miqo'te. Just that they're strong, and the tribe is stronger than any of these beastmen."

"Ridiculous? How can you get killed and still not learn to take things seriously." K'ile growled and brushed hair out of his eyes, trying not to let himself get pulled into the same old argument he'd left behind years ago. "Listen. I'm Shan'Gai Chah, and I'm supposed to be getting tempered by Ifrit right about now. Even if I decide to handle you myself, there's still going to be a dozen Amal'jaa in this room looking for me, finding you, any minute now. So if you're going to do what that jerk Baoht said and take care of me, you'd better get started. Because whether you try to kill me or not," he hefted his spear. "I'm sure as heck not letting you leave."

"This isn't about you. Of course you wouldn't think about that." K'ile turned his lance in his hand, the thing still glowing red with heat. He scowled, his ears laying flat on his head, and growled. "So instead of killing you, Baoht sent you in here to kill me? I wouldn't have expected an Amal'jaa to send an undead man against me. Why are you doing what he says?"

Rolling to one side, K'ile cursed in anger. The motion and the clash made his brain throb against his skull case, the base of his ears burning, but he ignored it. Anger and fury stirred in his gut as he rolled to his feet. "What are you doing? Did you follow me here?"

K'ile's ears pitched back as a familiar figure burst from the darkness. He saw a Woodwailer's mask, but he would know those ears, that smell anywhere. "You!? What the fu-" He snarled, and did not hesitate. The action came more naturally in the face of this interloper than if an Amal'jaa had jumped out of the shadows at him. Aether fired from K'ile's chest into the metal rod, making it glow with heat, and he thrust it past the oncoming spike of his assailant, trying to strike a mortal blow. He turned one of his large, armored shoulder plates to take the blow of the spike.