Her entire body tensing suddenly, D'aijeen seethed with undefined frustration. She felt the desperate need to continue pulling on K'airos, but she wanted to slap her for the cowardly distraction she'd latched on to. The way her name slipped through the door drew neither curiosity nor anger, but the voice and its sudden interjection breathed a threat into her presence. This was not something that should have been possible. It was not something that could be permitted to happen. Her attention needed to be completely on K'airos, and yet this inexplicable event called to her. As though it were made beforehand, a trap that had been set, a distraction called done for just this moment.
The fragmented shards of frustration coalesced into a theory, and D'aijeen's frustration drew cold. Her shadow darkened. He turned her gaze away from K'airos and leaned her head down, so that her features were in shadow. The cactuar earring swung against her temple. Her exposed legs felt very thin and cold and not at all desirable. She shivered, suddenly frail, assured of her hideousness, assured that she was hated. Sap ran through her veins, and she did not feel loved. Something was pushing very hard upon her.
"K'airos." Her hand moved up and gripped the collar of her sister's shirt. "Beautiful K'airos, perfect to me, everything that I could ever desire given breath and body. Do not speak to anyone except me now. K'airos, love. Beloved. Ideal lover. Nobody knows that I am here. Who did you tell that I was here? Who did you tell? I command you to answer me. Who did you tell about me being here, K'airos?"
"I...sent a letter to mom." K'airos replied immediately, eyes wide with surprise at her own words. Her hands pushed against her mouth, hoping that the words would somehow be unheard. "But I told her no to come! I was clear about it! Very clear!"
"I'm afraid that's not how I found you. I just followed you from Ul'dah." the man outside added with a chuckle, as if he was hearing. "I mean no harm! I just want to speak to you about a certain project you left in the Shroud a few years ago. It was quite impressive and we'd like to learn more!"
When K'airos answered her, D'aijeen buckled. Her ears fell. her tail swung between her legs and wrapped tight about one thigh. Her fingers tightened and twisted on K'airos chest, and she appeared that she might fall forward. The sound she made was shrill and loud, like a wounded animal, like she wished she had claws. The small woman shivered as if cold, as if terrified. Her screeching lengthened and deepened, it broke and began to cough out of her throat. She sounded like she was choking, and the shivering became a shake. Then the sound became a snicker, and she leaned back to laugh. D'aijeen looked at the ceiling and laughed quietly. Her shadow darkened until her white shoes turned black, and she laughed louder, and she appeared saddened by something she saw on the ceiling. High in the corners of the walls, something white moved inside the blackness. The room seemed darker as D'aijeen watched the ceiling and cried, as she shook and laughed and pulled on K'airos' shirt.
Her arms went limp and fell to her side. Her tail went limp and hung behind her. Her jaw went limp and her mouth hung open. Shadows poured down her chest as though cast by a light above her, though there was no such light. D'aijeen didn't breathe. Her ears lifted. The cactuar earring danced with a metallic clatter.
When she lifted her head and breathed again, the shadow lingered on her chest. It was black as an ink stain over the white frills she'd decorated herself in. Darkness crawled up her legs from the shadow she cast, like tendrils. The shadows against the ceiling leaked down the walls like water.
D'aijeen sighed.
"Nobody followed me her from Ul'dah." She lifted one hand and lay her knuckles against her sister's cheek. "I was not followed. So there, we are already lying."
K'airos recoiled in terror, mumbling. "No...no! Please don't! Please don't! I'll...! Don't!" she begged, jumping in place, her voice shaking and her breath becoming unsteady.
The man outside spoke again. "Sorry, but I did. The mail doesn't travel as quick as you think it does. But that doesn't matter." A wind came from the door, leaking from the crevices in the wood and the tiny space between it and the frame. It carried his voice towards the green-haired Miqo'te and only to her. "I'm here to talk about the man you raised in the Shroud. Tanned skin, red hair, sunny disposition, hated by the Elementals?" His voice sounde all around her, as if the man was inside the room, walking around her.
"K'airos, it's okay." D'aijeen patted her sister's face with the back of her hand. "I promise that I will never hurt you. You will never need to be afraid of me."
Then she spun around in a violent snap. "I raised no one in the Shroud! The spell failed!" In one hand, a stick appeared, with small carvings and rodent skulls held to it by leather ties. They clattered loudly as she swung her arm towards the door, and a powerful rush of air dispersed the voice around her before slamming into the door and ripping it open and throwing it off its hinges, slamming it against the opposite wall. This was obviously intended to hurt whomever was outside.
"Then how do I know about him? " The man walked into view, having been standing to a side of the door rather than actually in front of it. He was wearing red robes and wore a hood over his head. In his right hand, he was holding a very weak looking branch, with dried leaves sticking out of it, ready to fall at any moment.Â
He spread his arms and bent slightly, trying to convey that he wasn't there to fight, glancing at the floor with his golden eyes. "Please! I came to talk! To share knowledge and learn from what you did. I can lead you to him, if you want. He's not even far! Just...forgetful."
K'airos, despite D'aijeens words, was very afraid. She curled down next to the bed, grabbing her head with both hands and burying it behind her knees.
The shadows in the room spread as though the walls contained ink and had cracked open, allowing the ink to slowly leak out. It bleed up her legs and down from her lips, spreading over her skin and her clothes. Inside of the shadows beneath her and the shadows on the wall, white things moved, polished surfaces. Masks. Looking out at them, but with disinterest.
D'aijeen growled at the man, a deep and silent sound that was almost just a groan in her thin chest. "I left him buried and warded. If you did something to him, I'll kill you. That's the only warning you'll ever hear."
Qion'a kept his submissive pose. The only change was that he raised his head to look at D'aijeen. He had a slight frown over his forehead, but spoke neutrally and carefully. "We didn't know about him until very recently. He said he unburied himself, with the help of a local. He's quite alive, I assure you. Just let me show you, and you can decide if you wish to kill me or not afterwards."
"You think I'm an idiot!" D'aijeen took a step back the other way, shadows snapping free from her feet and reaching after as though desperate to keep hold. The shadows she cast lingered without source she moved. She thrust her wand and fetishes forward, and then pulled them back aggressively. The wind she'd thrown forward seemed to rush back into the room in response, slamming against the back of Qion'a's legs in an attempt to knock him off his feet. "You did not follow me from Ul'dah! You're a liar! You come lying and speaking of things you cannot know. Liar. Confess to me desperately. Eject the truth like a poison from your belly, else I'll extract it."
The wind pushed against Qion'a's defensive wards, making them crack like ice under a heavy weight. His back was lighted in a dim blue light as the aetheric lines of the spell unfolded and became visible behind him. He took a step back and straightened.
"Not lying! I'm just a good tracker." he said while he took yet another few steps backwards. "But I get it! I will leave! Give you time  to hide somewhere else, to keep a tight leash on your sister, make sure you are not followed and that nobody knows where you went."Â
He raised his branch, the dry leaves on it shining as if they were about to be set aflame. Right then he smiled. "Then I will show up again and you'll have to believe me when I say I was just following you."
"No. You can stay." The shadows that wrapped D'aijeen cracked like glass and shattered outward, growing and becoming solid, and rushing forward in the speed of a blink to slam into the man physically. The spell was larger than her intended target. Shadows with polished faces cracked the floor and slammed into the walls, breaking the doorframe and making the walls buckle. Shouts could be heard from elsewhere in the building.
K'airos was still curled down behind the bed, trying to shrink away. She shrieked when she felt the spell smashing the walls. "Stop! Stop! Please, stop!" she repeated in whispers between breaths, unable to speak any louder.
The man barely had time to reinforce his wards before being thrown out of the room, hitting his back with the wall outside and falling towards the floor. His knee managed to meet it first, saving him half the trouble of raising up. He turned to the hallway and started to sprint away.
D'aijeen ran out into the hallway, the attack she'd cast already melting away into dark fluid staining the broken room around her, staining her clothes, staining her skin. Its putrid scent curled in the air around her as she turned to watch the man's back. "No!" Now she had a bladed scepter in her hand as well, and her with her stance spread across the width of the hall, she crossed the two focuses in front of her. The bones tied to her wand clattered. Her clothes rustled as the air about her moved with the energy of her spell.
When she snapped her arms to either side, the floor beneath her broke and shot forward. A chill wind shot from her form and wrapped about the summoned stone. Earth and ice shot at the man, a two-fold attack meant to stop him in his tracks.
The man jumped and turned around in the air, swinging his focus violently to the side. "Victor!" he shouted right before the spell hit him fully in the middle of his leap, the ice and stone wrapping around him, binding his  feet to the ground.
The wall he had swung his branch towards darkened. A portion of it collapsed into itself like moving sand. A grey snake-like creature, horned, roughly the size of a man but much thinner, emerged from it. It bashed itself against the opposite wall and turned towards D'aijeen, clawing and twisting its way across the hallway before spreading its wings and trying to violently ram the woman.
D'aijeen felt weak. Her feeble body seemed suddenly overstrained, first from struggling with K'airos, then from the use of magic. Just running from the bedroom to the hallway felt like it had been too far, and her head ducked forward as soon as the stone and the ice snapped away from her. She didn't see it hit her target, nor did she see the monster he summoned. Her eyes were on the ground, but she looked up just in time for the head-first charge of the stranger's voidsent.
The beast slammed against the air directly in front of her head. There was a flicker of light, and a haze of green magic lay between her face and that of the monster, like impenetrable colored glass between them. Through pits in the green shell, D'aijeen's eyes glared into those of the monster, mere centimeters separating them. She barely saw or heard it, but she felt what the creature was, and she hissed at it on instinct. "Obey me. Kill that man gently. Go."
In the next instant, the monster snapped backwards as though struck, falling on its back as shadows rushed out beneath it. It splashed down among the white masks of the Baalzephons, but they caught it gently and lifted it up, turning it around, and in a moment, the beast was careening back the way it had come, towards the stranger, Qion'a.
The fragmented shards of frustration coalesced into a theory, and D'aijeen's frustration drew cold. Her shadow darkened. He turned her gaze away from K'airos and leaned her head down, so that her features were in shadow. The cactuar earring swung against her temple. Her exposed legs felt very thin and cold and not at all desirable. She shivered, suddenly frail, assured of her hideousness, assured that she was hated. Sap ran through her veins, and she did not feel loved. Something was pushing very hard upon her.
"K'airos." Her hand moved up and gripped the collar of her sister's shirt. "Beautiful K'airos, perfect to me, everything that I could ever desire given breath and body. Do not speak to anyone except me now. K'airos, love. Beloved. Ideal lover. Nobody knows that I am here. Who did you tell that I was here? Who did you tell? I command you to answer me. Who did you tell about me being here, K'airos?"
"I...sent a letter to mom." K'airos replied immediately, eyes wide with surprise at her own words. Her hands pushed against her mouth, hoping that the words would somehow be unheard. "But I told her no to come! I was clear about it! Very clear!"
"I'm afraid that's not how I found you. I just followed you from Ul'dah." the man outside added with a chuckle, as if he was hearing. "I mean no harm! I just want to speak to you about a certain project you left in the Shroud a few years ago. It was quite impressive and we'd like to learn more!"
When K'airos answered her, D'aijeen buckled. Her ears fell. her tail swung between her legs and wrapped tight about one thigh. Her fingers tightened and twisted on K'airos chest, and she appeared that she might fall forward. The sound she made was shrill and loud, like a wounded animal, like she wished she had claws. The small woman shivered as if cold, as if terrified. Her screeching lengthened and deepened, it broke and began to cough out of her throat. She sounded like she was choking, and the shivering became a shake. Then the sound became a snicker, and she leaned back to laugh. D'aijeen looked at the ceiling and laughed quietly. Her shadow darkened until her white shoes turned black, and she laughed louder, and she appeared saddened by something she saw on the ceiling. High in the corners of the walls, something white moved inside the blackness. The room seemed darker as D'aijeen watched the ceiling and cried, as she shook and laughed and pulled on K'airos' shirt.
Her arms went limp and fell to her side. Her tail went limp and hung behind her. Her jaw went limp and her mouth hung open. Shadows poured down her chest as though cast by a light above her, though there was no such light. D'aijeen didn't breathe. Her ears lifted. The cactuar earring danced with a metallic clatter.
When she lifted her head and breathed again, the shadow lingered on her chest. It was black as an ink stain over the white frills she'd decorated herself in. Darkness crawled up her legs from the shadow she cast, like tendrils. The shadows against the ceiling leaked down the walls like water.
D'aijeen sighed.
"Nobody followed me her from Ul'dah." She lifted one hand and lay her knuckles against her sister's cheek. "I was not followed. So there, we are already lying."
K'airos recoiled in terror, mumbling. "No...no! Please don't! Please don't! I'll...! Don't!" she begged, jumping in place, her voice shaking and her breath becoming unsteady.
The man outside spoke again. "Sorry, but I did. The mail doesn't travel as quick as you think it does. But that doesn't matter." A wind came from the door, leaking from the crevices in the wood and the tiny space between it and the frame. It carried his voice towards the green-haired Miqo'te and only to her. "I'm here to talk about the man you raised in the Shroud. Tanned skin, red hair, sunny disposition, hated by the Elementals?" His voice sounde all around her, as if the man was inside the room, walking around her.
"K'airos, it's okay." D'aijeen patted her sister's face with the back of her hand. "I promise that I will never hurt you. You will never need to be afraid of me."
Then she spun around in a violent snap. "I raised no one in the Shroud! The spell failed!" In one hand, a stick appeared, with small carvings and rodent skulls held to it by leather ties. They clattered loudly as she swung her arm towards the door, and a powerful rush of air dispersed the voice around her before slamming into the door and ripping it open and throwing it off its hinges, slamming it against the opposite wall. This was obviously intended to hurt whomever was outside.
"Then how do I know about him? " The man walked into view, having been standing to a side of the door rather than actually in front of it. He was wearing red robes and wore a hood over his head. In his right hand, he was holding a very weak looking branch, with dried leaves sticking out of it, ready to fall at any moment.Â
He spread his arms and bent slightly, trying to convey that he wasn't there to fight, glancing at the floor with his golden eyes. "Please! I came to talk! To share knowledge and learn from what you did. I can lead you to him, if you want. He's not even far! Just...forgetful."
K'airos, despite D'aijeens words, was very afraid. She curled down next to the bed, grabbing her head with both hands and burying it behind her knees.
The shadows in the room spread as though the walls contained ink and had cracked open, allowing the ink to slowly leak out. It bleed up her legs and down from her lips, spreading over her skin and her clothes. Inside of the shadows beneath her and the shadows on the wall, white things moved, polished surfaces. Masks. Looking out at them, but with disinterest.
D'aijeen growled at the man, a deep and silent sound that was almost just a groan in her thin chest. "I left him buried and warded. If you did something to him, I'll kill you. That's the only warning you'll ever hear."
Qion'a kept his submissive pose. The only change was that he raised his head to look at D'aijeen. He had a slight frown over his forehead, but spoke neutrally and carefully. "We didn't know about him until very recently. He said he unburied himself, with the help of a local. He's quite alive, I assure you. Just let me show you, and you can decide if you wish to kill me or not afterwards."
"You think I'm an idiot!" D'aijeen took a step back the other way, shadows snapping free from her feet and reaching after as though desperate to keep hold. The shadows she cast lingered without source she moved. She thrust her wand and fetishes forward, and then pulled them back aggressively. The wind she'd thrown forward seemed to rush back into the room in response, slamming against the back of Qion'a's legs in an attempt to knock him off his feet. "You did not follow me from Ul'dah! You're a liar! You come lying and speaking of things you cannot know. Liar. Confess to me desperately. Eject the truth like a poison from your belly, else I'll extract it."
The wind pushed against Qion'a's defensive wards, making them crack like ice under a heavy weight. His back was lighted in a dim blue light as the aetheric lines of the spell unfolded and became visible behind him. He took a step back and straightened.
"Not lying! I'm just a good tracker." he said while he took yet another few steps backwards. "But I get it! I will leave! Give you time  to hide somewhere else, to keep a tight leash on your sister, make sure you are not followed and that nobody knows where you went."Â
He raised his branch, the dry leaves on it shining as if they were about to be set aflame. Right then he smiled. "Then I will show up again and you'll have to believe me when I say I was just following you."
"No. You can stay." The shadows that wrapped D'aijeen cracked like glass and shattered outward, growing and becoming solid, and rushing forward in the speed of a blink to slam into the man physically. The spell was larger than her intended target. Shadows with polished faces cracked the floor and slammed into the walls, breaking the doorframe and making the walls buckle. Shouts could be heard from elsewhere in the building.
K'airos was still curled down behind the bed, trying to shrink away. She shrieked when she felt the spell smashing the walls. "Stop! Stop! Please, stop!" she repeated in whispers between breaths, unable to speak any louder.
The man barely had time to reinforce his wards before being thrown out of the room, hitting his back with the wall outside and falling towards the floor. His knee managed to meet it first, saving him half the trouble of raising up. He turned to the hallway and started to sprint away.
D'aijeen ran out into the hallway, the attack she'd cast already melting away into dark fluid staining the broken room around her, staining her clothes, staining her skin. Its putrid scent curled in the air around her as she turned to watch the man's back. "No!" Now she had a bladed scepter in her hand as well, and her with her stance spread across the width of the hall, she crossed the two focuses in front of her. The bones tied to her wand clattered. Her clothes rustled as the air about her moved with the energy of her spell.
When she snapped her arms to either side, the floor beneath her broke and shot forward. A chill wind shot from her form and wrapped about the summoned stone. Earth and ice shot at the man, a two-fold attack meant to stop him in his tracks.
The man jumped and turned around in the air, swinging his focus violently to the side. "Victor!" he shouted right before the spell hit him fully in the middle of his leap, the ice and stone wrapping around him, binding his  feet to the ground.
The wall he had swung his branch towards darkened. A portion of it collapsed into itself like moving sand. A grey snake-like creature, horned, roughly the size of a man but much thinner, emerged from it. It bashed itself against the opposite wall and turned towards D'aijeen, clawing and twisting its way across the hallway before spreading its wings and trying to violently ram the woman.
D'aijeen felt weak. Her feeble body seemed suddenly overstrained, first from struggling with K'airos, then from the use of magic. Just running from the bedroom to the hallway felt like it had been too far, and her head ducked forward as soon as the stone and the ice snapped away from her. She didn't see it hit her target, nor did she see the monster he summoned. Her eyes were on the ground, but she looked up just in time for the head-first charge of the stranger's voidsent.
The beast slammed against the air directly in front of her head. There was a flicker of light, and a haze of green magic lay between her face and that of the monster, like impenetrable colored glass between them. Through pits in the green shell, D'aijeen's eyes glared into those of the monster, mere centimeters separating them. She barely saw or heard it, but she felt what the creature was, and she hissed at it on instinct. "Obey me. Kill that man gently. Go."
In the next instant, the monster snapped backwards as though struck, falling on its back as shadows rushed out beneath it. It splashed down among the white masks of the Baalzephons, but they caught it gently and lifted it up, turning it around, and in a moment, the beast was careening back the way it had come, towards the stranger, Qion'a.
![[Image: AntiThalSig.png]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/179079766/AntiThalSig.png)
"Song dogs barking at the break of dawn, lightning pushes the edges of a thunderstorm; and these streets, quiet as a sleeping army, send their battered dreams to heaven."
Hipparion Tribe (Sagolii)Â - Â Antimony Jhanhi's Wiki
