Twinflame

Baoht Zuqqa Roh chuckled. "I suppose, though, I will have to give you move than a scent to go off of, won't I?" He stomped one foot and roared, summoning his drakes. They weren't far off, and one was next to him very quickly. He crouched down next it and removed a bundle of cloth from a pouch on his side, opening it and holding it beneath the drakes nose. "Do not worry, however. I have a plan."

The upper highways were hard and unpleasant, even for the Amal'jaa. Baoht Zuqqa Roh did not walk them for his comfort, however. They moved more quickly than the low, easy roads of men would have allowed. They bypassed the thick sands of the lowlands quickly. The settlement of the Ala Mihgo refugees was a vague blur through air that shook like water, and no other home of men entered into their sights. It was as though the desert existed only for the Amal'jaa, as it should, and this desert was silent. They would have to pass through the lowlands to get to Zanr'ak. It was a long time before they came into view, but then the migrating sands were before them like a river cutting through the land. Baoht Zuqqa Roh stopped without descending, looking across the chasm to the home of the Amal'jaa. "Are you a hunter, child of Man?"

"Then you should never have left. The desert does not pity those who feel remorse." Baoht Zuqqa Roh gave the child of Man one final glare. "If your only breath is to complain, then save it. I do not like meat that whines too loudly."

Bahot Zuqqa Roh walked around one group of large stones and then began to climb the next. He made his way up into the dusty mesas and crags of Thanalan, the blistering highways of peists, carrion-feeders, drakes and beastmen. "If you manage to kill him slowly, be sure to ask him. Though, child of man, it is not difficult to imagine why one would desire the destruction of one not meant to exist."

"Shan'Gai Chah is not like the rest of us at Zunr'ak." Baoht Zuqqa Roh turned to walk out of the water, back southward. Dark fluid glistened around the wound that Thal had given him, but he did not react to it. He was beginning to feel the pain more, but that did not mean he needed to respect it. The wound did not deserve his consideration. "The Amal'jaa of Zunr'ak are chosen by the fires of Lord Ifrit. We are untempered metal until he hardens us. Shan'Gai Chah came to us untempered, begging for the grace of Ifrit without having earned it." He huffed, and then growled, and the drakes that followed him ran ahead. "That is not why I am angry. He will be tempered soon, but has not been tempered yet. He should be a servant, but declares hunts. He declared a hunt for you, and look at you! Unworthy prey."

Baoht Zuqqa Roh found something distasteful in the demeanor of the child of Man. Every few moments it found a new way to disgust him. As long as he could tolerate it, however, it didn't matter. If the man succeeded in killing Shan'Gai Chah, he would not succeed in escaping afterward, and ash could have neither life nor unlife. "We will travel south so that I may hunt in Zanr'ak. It will not be as far or long as you think, for the Amal'jaa have desert roads that your people never use. They would die of exposure to heat if they did, but I sense this will not be a problem for you. Once I find Shan'Gai Chah, I will sick you upon him like one of my drakes. Then you will either kill him or... cease to be. I will not help you."

K'aijeen didn't resist Thal. She curled up when he lifted her, laying her head against his chest. Her arms remained over her head, hiding her wound. She continued to shake. A roar shook over the water. The sand drakes looked up at Baoht Zuqqa Roh's command, were still for a moment, and then moved to his side. The abandoned they half-eaten corpse of their fellow. Most of the heavy meat had been eaten away, allowing it to float, and it bobbed lazily in a mess of pink and brown gore. Blood and tendrils of flesh hung from the maws of the survivors as they followed Baoht Zuqqa Roh, who paced around the pool fishing out discarded discarded metal shafts and slipping them back into the massive quiver on his back. "You should leave her. If I were weak enough to be so easily defeated, my drakes would not drag me to safety. They would eat me and return to their feral ways. They would be right to do so."

She curled up, and her tail swung tight between her legs, ears down, face hidden beneath her arms. K'aijeen did not answer verbally. She might not have been able to. Ragged sounds continued to slide out of her throat and she shook. She might have been crying. Baoht Zuqqa Roh shifted impatiently. He spoke over the sound of the feasting drakes. "Child of Man."

Kicking her legs and making a small, but very emphatic squelch of pain, K'aijeen writhed while Thal pulled at the arrow. When it come free, it did not come out smoothly. Her skull seemed to bulged outward with it and her hands sagged unnaturally at the ends of her arms. If she could have screamed,she would have, but the sound she made came out more a ragged cough that last a long time. As soon as that arrow was free she rolled away from Thal, keeping her arms crossed over her head, her hands limp as though they were loosely tied with string. Baoht Zuqqa Roh turned his gaze away from the pair and growled at nothing. Whatever magic this was, he cursed the children of Man for even possessing it.

K'aijeen sat up, the movement rigid and top-heavy. Her legs popped up and her tail shot forward to try and keep balance, and she almost fell back again, but remained upright. Her arms were pinned to her forehead, and she strained visibly against the arrow, but made no progress. She exhaled a long, high-pitched sound that might have indicated pain.

Baoth Zuqqa Roh growled, idly pulling the metal shaft out of his side and washing his dark blood from it in the water. "I am not in a mood to be patient with my captured prey, child of Man." Nonetheless, he remained, glaring. His sand drakes idled in the pool near the corpse of the one that had died. For a time, they simply stared at it, nudged it, waiting for it to move. Then the hungriest among them took a bite, and the rest joined in. In the dirt near the water, K'aijeen lay on her back with her arms crossed over her. The black metal shaft had pierced through both forearms before embedding in her head, and her crossed limbs were pressed hard over her face, obscuring the view of her eyes or any wound. No fluid flowed from the injures. The holes that had been driven through her arms were dry and ragged.

"No, child of man. It does not. And new drakes have little value to a hunter. No, no. But, perhaps, you can help me with something." he lowers his bow and works his jaw. His dry tongue moves around his teeth as though he is choking on something, and his claws curl and close. Then he bites out. "The one who sent me to kill you: Shan'Gai Chah. He must die."

"Child of man, you are dead. You had no life to defend. My drake's life purchased nothing, and its loss has left a great debt in me." Shaking out the bow, watching water droplets fall from it, he set one of the great black arrows against the string. He lifted it and pointed it at the man.

Baoht Zuqq Roh paced over to his discarded bow, pulling it out of the water and eying the bowstring. Then he cast a glare at the child of Man. "Shan'Gai Chah has commissioned your death. It appears that you are dead, so my mandate is fulfilled. There is no honor in hunting that which has already been caught and killed. However." The Amal'jaa snapped his teeth. "You slew one of my drakes, a thing which I do not think that you can repay."

Baoht Zuqq Roh watched the child of man moving, acting as though he did not feel pain. The bloodless did not bother him. The man did not even seem to pale. He spoke without wheezing. He did not plead. Baoht Zuqq Roh watched through the torn skin as the man's muscled twitched helplessly, and yet the limb that required those muscles moved undeterred. Flexing his claws and eying the bow he cast aside, Baoht Zuqq Roh growled, "There is an honor in being the prey of the Amal'jaa. An honor which you mock by resorting to unspeakable magic. You should have allowed yourself to die."

Children of men always squirm pathetically when faced with their ends. Not once had Baoht Zuqq Roh seen one greet death with dignity, and this man was no exception. Writhing and pounding, leaving bruises beneath his scales and beating at his muscular head, not once did the small man succeed in inflicting a pain which Baoht Zuqq Roh could not ignore. Instead, the Amal'jaa's teeth pierced through the man's chest and body. he felt his teeth pierce past muscles and through tendon, and when ripped his maw free of the man, blood was everywhere. Triumphant, Baoht Zuqq Roh opened his arms, grabbing the man with one to cast him away. To let him bleed out and die as meat for his sand drakes.

Feeling the satisfying crunch of bone, Baoht Zuqq Roh did not hear the satisfying howls of pain he had hoped for. "You writhe like a captured beetle!" Seeking those cries he desired to hear, Baoht Zuqq Roh curled his head down to bite into his prey's body. The flesh tasted rotten. Men were not worth eating.

The action Baoht Zuqq Roh took next was so obvious a stone could have taken it. As the child of man pressed itself forward against him, Baoht Zuqq Roh dropped his chest and pulled his arms inward, trying to crush the man.

The pain told him both where his quarry was and what his quarry was doing. It was useful for that. Baoht Zuqq Roh would think about the injury later. He turned fast, to pull his wound away from his quarry and try to take the arrow as well, lifting his large arms over the man. "You bite like a fly!" He slammed his arms down in an attempt to catch his prey. "Let me show you how a scorpion stings!"

The man was small. Baoht Zuqq Roh had felt what seemed like a firm enough hit to send the man skittering across the water like a thrown stone, but did not see a flailing body beset by hungry drakes. He turned, seeking with his claws, the water frothing about him and turning brown with stirred-up silt.

The weapon was like a needle. Baoht Zuqq Roh half-suspected it would snap between his scales if he was successfully stabbed with it. When the child of man ran to the side, Baoht Zuqq Roh swung his arm in that direction, his one limb almost as large as his target was, all but ignoring the weapon leveled against him. As a result, he did take a hit, the weapon knocking against his hard scales, trying to push through to the soft meat beneath. All it succeeds at doing, however, is ripping out a line of scales which, while painful, only sharpens Baoht Zuqq Roh's strength.

When one of his drakes went limp in the water, blood pouring out of its mouth and choking it, Baoht Zuqq Roh roared. This was not communication; it was fury. Each of those drakes had taken a decade to train. He had named them after the progenitors of his brood. They were living relics, sacred, and the blessing of Lord Ifrit burned in their eyes. When Baoht Zuqq Roh shouted again, the sand drakes recoiled, putting distance between themselves and the man. No more of them would be sacrificed on this hunt. Shan'Gai Chah did not deserve it. "Your bite is small, but stings, child of man!" Baoht Zuqq Roh three down his bow and spread his claws, showed his teeth, his great tail swinging behind him. He waited for the metal bolt that his prey was using as a spear, but to the Amal'jaa was still just an arrow. He would catch it and claw the man to shreds.

Baoht Zuqq Roh spun on the child-like female with a snarl, frustrated that he did not understand how she was still living and angered that she was helping the man. Had she used the shaft herself, he would have been impressed. But to give it to her protector? "Cowardly daughter of a weak species!" He raised his bow, angling another of the long shafts for her. K'aijeen's eyes widened, and she snapped back half a pace. She waited for anger to come, the stubborn fury to rise up inside of her and bring the power with it. But it didn't. No anger came. No power found her. The other will was silent, or absent. She didn't realize that she would miss it. She didn't know how to protect herself. She lifted her arms crossed them in front of her, wincing away. "Don't." The Amal'jaa released his bolt, and it impaled both of her arms before slamming into her skull.

Baoht Zuqq Roh chuckled. it sounded more like a roiling, rumbling growl, and in making the sound he also dispersed the wind that wrapped him. His scent and the sound of his amused breath now rolled over the water. He raised his voice, "Your struggles are entertaining, child of man!" He'd never seen a soft-fleshed man try to wrestle his drakes bare-handed before. Baoht Zuqq Roh raised a guttural howl, and two of the drakes fell back in response. A third, however, merely paused, and then continued, forcing the man to deal with two drakes. Baoht Zuqq Roh was curious to see what his quarry would do. * K'aijeen lay in shock, staring at the sky for a few seconds, before she lifted her hand to look at the shattered remnants of the stick she had been conjuring with. She exhaled a frustrated gargling sound, but decided quickly that they must be another stick nearby. It was just a stick, after all. She cast aside the stick and fixed both hands on the dark metal shaft sticking out of her belly. She strained her meager arms against it and gradually withdrew it, first from the dirt, then from her body. It disturbed her that it bore no fluid from her innards, making her worry that her body's internal functions were shutting down. But she didn't concentrate on that. She rose to her feet and looked towards Thal, choking at the sight. At first it looked like he was being torn apart by the monsters, and when she noticed he was still alive, all she could think was that he mere moments for being destroyed. Shaking herself, she shouted in a violent croak, "Dad!" and through the sharp, two-meter long metal shaft into the fray.

K'aijeen's ears laid down flat on her head, and her face scrunched up stubbornly. "No!" She held the small branch out in front of her and moved it in slow, circular motions, concentrating even if she still appeared fearful. Green light and wind began to move about her hands, but just as the energy began to form, it was disturbed by the passage of a dark metal shaft. The projectile shattered the stick in her hands and pierced through her center, just below her ribs, knocking her off her feet and pinning her to the ground as though a great nail. Baoht Zuqq Rogh rose from the water, setting another two-meter shaft in his giant bow. He roared, and the drakes responded, spreading out to form a circle around Thalen. The Scorpion shouted again, and they came at him from all sides.