The ones that Tu'teggacha loved best were full of
fuel: self-doubt, regret, a paper-thin veneer of arrogance to cover a yawning chasm of fear and self-loathing, these were like dry tinder upon the mental bonfire the Taskmaster was so skilled at building. He could break
anyone given enough time. He firmly believed that. But the serene ones, those at peace with themselves, had to be
taught to see the galaxy's darkness. They had to be tortured for days, weeks,
months even, so that they could learn to feel helpless, to dread the moments they were alone as nothing more than the countdown to each inevitable session of agony.
But the ones like Konrad... they carried that darkness inside them already, eating them up.
The white-hot knife of Harrsk's rage, which the bladesman had intended to turn on Tu'teggacha, instead sank into his own breast, and all of his repressed emotions spilled out like boiling blood. And the Taskmaster
just.
kept. pushing. He let the misery and uncertainty wrap Konrad up in a cocoon of self-judgement. It was the classic "gifted kid" problem: a child excels and excels and excels, as Konrad had, but each success was never quite good enough for the high-expectations parents... making outright
failure all the more shattering.
"Father...?" Konrad asked. But Jaeger Harrsk's charred corpse only sneered and turned his back.
The look on his mangled, half-molten face was one of utter
disgust.
Things were not going quite so well with the witch. Though the Palatini had managed to wound her, slicing through armor to leave a long, thin line of blood across her slender back, she managed to escape being hacked apart in the crossfire of polearms - a feat that few could have achieved against such dangerous warriors. Her scream was certainly music to the Ebruchi's auditory organs (he didn't have
ears, per se), but he knew what it meant: she was alive, and so long as that was true, she was
incredibly dangerous. Proving that point, she unleashed her pyromancy once more, sending the four Palatini stumbling back...
... an opening she widened by tossing two of them bodily aside with her telekinesis.
The Taskmaster's bodyguards, elite though they might be, were clearly no match for the assassins... at least when they fought together. The witch might even be able to take them on her own. The one who'd been burned twice now was down for the count, his robes seared away and the armor beneath smoldering with residual heat; he'd probably been cooked alive in his plastoid bodyglove. The pair she'd more directly manhandled with the Force, sending their flaming forms flying out into the hall like fireworks with lit fuses, had hit the walls hard. Now they were struggling to rise and recover their long-bladed weapons.
The last one, having finished stamping out the edge of his cloak, was about to charge once again... but a gesture from the Ebruchi held him back a moment. It was clear that the lone Palatini could never take Auria down. Probably the three remaining could not even while working together. Even if Tu'teggacha managed to hold Harrsk until reinforcements could arrive, reinforcements he was even now signaling with his personal comm, he would very likely be burned to death by the witch if he didn't do something dramatic. It would require dividing his concentration, perhaps loosening his hold on Konrad, but he had no choice.
If he didn't stop Auria, or at least slow her down, he was finished.
So the Taskmaster reached out, questing for
her mind this time. There was no time to delve deep into old memories and insecurities, to try to dredge up the kind of inner strife that had allowed him to spin Konrad down into the depths of despair - and the witch might not
have such memories to find. Instead Tu'teggacha looked for something recent, something that had provoked a strong emotional response in her... and he found it. Suddenly their linked minds flashed back to Asoport, on the snowy planet of Carlac. They were standing on a long bridge at the outskirts of the city, just beyond the tram station they'd destroyed.
The memory was so vivid, she could feel her sweat freeze to her skin.
Konrad charged in, full of that bull-headed courage she knew so well in him, determined to slay the Mawite witch who stood against them. At first he seemed to be winning... but then, with a telekinetic
heave not unlike the one Auria had just unleashed against the Palatini, his foe threw him from the bridge.
“Goodbye, pesky little fly,”
Tegan Starfall
cackled, as Konrad plummeted over the railing and toward the frozen river... and the legion of undead
things that waited below.
Auria had stood there a moment, frozen in shock and dismay, a look of horror on her face as she watched him fall toward certain death. Before rage had taken over.
Konrad hadn't died, of course, and Auria had taken the fight to Tegan fiercely in his stead. But Tu'teggacha didn't replay
that part of the memory. He froze her recollection at that moment of shock and dread and grief, the sudden loss of a man who had the answers she so desperately desired. Someone as strong as Auria didn't hesitate for long in such a situation, but in the version of the memory the Taskamaster crafted around her, she
did. Instead of fighting back, she fell to
pieces. She panicked, she cowered, and her flames refused to respond to her call.
“One Little Piggy is dead," Tegan grinned.
"Time for the next."
In Tu'teggacha's version, Auria froze in terror as the rival witch closed in on her.
Could she disbelieve that false memory? Could she fight her way out of the web of illusion the Ebruchi was spinning? Probably, given a little time. The Taskmaster could sense her raw strength, both in the Force and in her own self-assurance. But he did not have to break her, a task that would surely have taken even
him considerable time; he only had to delay her a little. He backpedaled quickly up the corridor, toward the reinforcements that might deliver him from this determined pair of assassins.
With Auria hopefully distracted, the last Palatini swung his blade for her neck...
Zoraya Ives-Ayres
Zachariel Steelblood
(engaging)
