Meetings in the Wastes [Closed]

[Illira]

Smoke exhaled from Cypress's mouth as the wind was knocked out of her, the miqo'te having barrelled into her, shoulder first into her ribcage. Her back leg took her weight and kept her from falling over, but her head was bowed as she tried to catch her breath. A burning heat rose from her skin, the fissures along her skin nearly volcanic in their nature. Her long arm sought out the undead's body, to keep him in place.

[Naunet]

Ignoring the roegadyn's grasping for the moment, Thal took her bowed stature as an opportunity drive the fist of his free arm up into her jaw. He would follow this immediately by a similar blow if he could manage it to her ribs with his other arm.

[Illira]

Ashes fell from the under side of Cypress's jaw, as if it were a burning log being hit instead skin and bone. Red and orange embers were exposed, burning the very hand that had hit it should it not be fast enough in its release. Her arms came to encircle the man who was far less than the picture of health. Fabric would be the first thing to go a-flame.

[Ildur]

Ulanan glanced at K'ile once to answer to him. "That just makes it easier for her to burn him. If you are so worried about that, go help her."

 

She turner her eyes away from him, squinting, trying to see where D'aijeen had gone to.

[Naunet]

Heedless of whatever burning magic Cypress employed - not feeling it as anything more than a tingle at the edge of his senses - Thal grabbed onto the roegadyn's shoulders and pulled his knees up before snapping his feet against the woman's stomach.

[Twinflame]

"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.

[Ildur]

Ulanan kept quiet, passing through the pages of her book idly as if nothing of interest was happening around her. She stopped to place her right hand over it, channeling aether into it. It acquired a dim yellow glow that was quickly intensifying.

[Illira]

Cypress's hands dig into Thal, the dead flesh melting as she pulled on her aether channeling into flame even as she felt his weight push on her shoulders. The powerful kick to her stomach did send her down onto buckled knee, arms forcibly parting from around the miqo'te.

[Naunet]

Thal jumped back from Cypress and landed in a crouch on the ground, ears pressed back against his head and tail lashing. This only lasted a moment however, and he used his landing as fuel for another lunge forward, this time with another punch aimed for the roegadyn's head.

[Twinflame]

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.

[Illira]

Cypress's hands thrust outward, propelling another fireball in Thal's direction, as assumed by where he'd pushed himself off from her much larger body.

[Ildur]

"You, go help her." Ulanan muttered to her glowing book, waving one hand behind it in a half-circle. One of the pages ripped itself apart from the others. Then another, and another. The three curved into a sphere roughly the size of the lalafell's head, and joined together in the air, gaining a yellow color. Two tiny black holes and a wide curved line formed on its surface. Soon after, its back shifted and folded, two small wings sproutng out of it. It spun once and faced Thal. It flew around him and Cypress in a circle, imitating the motion Ulanan's hand had made before. Then it threw itself against the man, hardening until it was like a soft and hollow rock. It kept the smile and the tiny eyes, though.

 

Meanwhile, Ulanan turned, too, to follow K'ile and the girl with slow steps.

[Naunet]

The rock collided with Thal's back, which knocked him out of the way of the bulk of Cypress's back but also dropped him hard to the ground. The miqo'te grunted and rolled across the dirt before collecting himself to try and knock the rock away.

[Twinflame]

"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!"

[Illira]

The fire went harmlessly over Thal's now downed form. Cypress heard scrambling, and grunting, but it seemed kind of all over the place as the miqo'te was knocked away. She knelt in the sand, head moving about for images that she couldn't see. So she sunk her hands into the desert sands, spreading heat into the sand, melting it.

[Ildur]

"K'airos and her mother are fine. Are you taking pleasure on tormenting this girl?" Ulanan said with frown to K'ile, walking closer. Her book was open at her side, and she gracefully ignored Cypress struggle with Thal.

 

"Just end it already." she added.

[Naunet]

Kicking to his feet, Thal glanced towards Cypress, noting her confusion, but then also noticed K'ile was not where he had been. Blue eyes darting around until they found the Tia, the man started and bolted forward with a shout, "HEY! Get back from her!"

[Illira]

The sands around Thal's feet as he pushed away began to melt away into liquid glass, Cypress had stopped pouring aether into the desert, but after a point, the sands carried the heat themselves, eventually peetering out.

[Naunet]

"Don't talk, Lalafel. It's not that fast." K'ile tightened his grip on K'aijeen and another pulse of heat radiated out from his body. K'aijeen screamed and writhed, the sand under them glistening and giving way as it melted. K'ile turned his gaze away from the Lalafel to Thal, eyes narrowing at the man. "This is the best for everyone."

 

Thal could feel the flesh on the bottoms of his feet peel away when the sand became suddenly superheated beneath him. It was an unpleasant sensation, though not painful, but he grimaced at it anyway as he forced himself to run ahead of the heat. "The best for you," he barked out and jumped for K'ile.

[Ildur]

Ulanan turned, facing Thal with her book. She swiftly placed her free hand over it and, just as swiftly, snapped it in his direction. The aspectless aether contained within the pages was freed in a straight and black line, trying to hit him mid-jump.

[Twinflame]

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!"

[Naunet]

Thal met K'ile's gesture head-on, colliding with the man with what he intended to be enough force to tear him away from D'aijeen.

[Illira]

Cypress straightened out of her kneeling position, she stepped out onto the cooling glass. Crossing over it, her boots eventually settled into the sands as she neared the voices. Her skin looked as if it were made out of embers, set aflame to burn like a trunk of her namesake. "Why you dead cling past your time I cannot understand," she spat out to Thal in particular, "Unless maybe you are so far from voidsent after all."

[Ildur]

Ulanan forgot everything that was going on. She turned around in a fast movement to growl angrily up at the elezen from under her white and pretty large hat.

 

"You! Explain yourself!" she demanded.

[Twinflame]

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.