Old and New [Seydon]

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa rose with great reluctance. Disappointment etched on her expression that not only did she have to leave the table, but the food was all gone. Still, she'd coax more of culinary skill back out of him later, it was his obligation as her husband after all. his little thought brought a smile back to her face as she collect her own gloves and her lightsaber.

"Well," she began, tugging her gloves on. "Not exactly no. I'm not going to try to scare them out, hunting flies are not intelligent, and its their nesting ground, fear is only likely to make them attack us with more vigour. They've a three meter wingspan and a nasty set of pincers. Their wings are no delicate either, similar to the structure of their bone in fact." she slipped her lightsaber to her belt and moved to kiss Seydon, her arms looping about his neck.

"There's around fifty of them. So you can use as many bombs and as much fire as you like. Does that make you happier?"

[member="Seydon"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

“Matter of fact...~?” He tickled her lips with his voice.

Slowly, they broke apart, methodically collecting a few last pieces of individual kit. Seydon retrieved the wrapped blunderbuss stowed in a compartmentalized wroshyr armoire, slinging weighty silvertine cartridges into his satchel. Three meter wing span, said wings composed like cartilage or bone, telling their body-to-wing ratio was sizable to justify their measurement. Had Rosa braved their nest for reconnaissance? Ran into one, maybe trying to salvage the emptied kitchen galleys in the lower temple wings? He loosed Winterfang, cleaning its edge with a rag soaked in an insectoid oil, following Rosa into their familiar dormitory hall.

“Stone’s doughty,” Seydon said, following her lead down a steep servant’s stairwell. The lift wouldn’t lower them to the appropriate story, Rosa told. The temple was suffering from fatigue in some of the structure, some portions inaccessible thanks to hallway cave-ins. He lit their passage with a small, fiercely bright lumen-torch. Rosa seemed approving; she held reservations about her husband’s commitment to outmoded technology.

“Still...” He followed her in through a partially demolished cold pantry. Some calamity had felled a wall, creating an impromptu corridor. He’d picked up faint chirking. Now, Rosa perked up, at the sound of buzzing stridulation, the beat of clawed appendages rattling against carapaces. “Too much fireworks going off, could disintegrate what’s left of the mortar. Rather not bring a ceiling down on us. ...You’d never let me hear the end of it. ...Wait.”

There was a far heavy, iron-hinged doorway hanging crazily off a destroyed timber frame. Deep creases had been lashed across the jamb. Resinous excretions coated over the flooring, webbing up into rafters. Foggy things hissed and gnashed in the black just beyond the floored door. Seydon loosed Winterfang, cocked the blunderbuss in his left hand, eased past Rosa to take point.

...A multi-faceted face bearing wide, beetle-esque pincers crawled over the door, drooling acidic excretions. Bristle-hairs lined its six limbs. Its wings were yet housed under a bejewelled, iridescent canopy mounted behind the prothorax. It flexed its wing cage, adopting a hulking posture, hard mandibles clacking.

Seydon thrust his blunderbuss forward, braced, squeezed the steel trigger. The hexagonal barrel-end roared hot and bright. The ‘fly’ exploded apart, cascading the walling with viscous haemolymph blood. Past the wrecked door frame, the chittering nest hissed and screamed.

“Wait!” Seydon backed them down the passage. “It’s a bottleneck. Numbers won’t mean anything if they’ve no room to flank. We’ll hold here.”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

"Gross" Rosa muttered as the innards of the first hunting fly exploded across the hall. The noise from the nest made the her hairs rise on the back of her neck. She'd come before to get a good look, using her abilities to remain unseen by the creatures so she knew what lay beyond that door, walls lined with large egg cases, defensive mothers and large grubs ferried to the far end of the vast room beyond, fed by the whole group that had burrowed their way though from a tunnel that ran adjacent the the outermost wall.

She did not need telling twice as Seydon back them down the corridor, her lightsaber hissing to life in her hands. She cast him a sideways smirk. "I do love it when you get authoritative, you should try it more often. It might benefit you somewhat."

She stepped forward as the first defender scuttled over it's kin's remains, her face reflected a hundredfold in its glittlering eyes. Mandibles clicking ferociously it lunged, Rosa sidestepped it with ease, her lightsaber cleaving through its thorax decapitating it with casual efficiency. It's body gurgled and twitched, staggering to one side and crashing against the corridor wall where it came to a stop. Enraged, the beast began to fight to squeeze through the door.

[member="Seydon"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Together, they had to stagger their shoulders and keep from entangling their elbows when working their blades. They jousted and thrust forward into the space of the cracked frame and jam, impaling and skewering chittering iron-gold things that trilled out of a skin-warm darkness. The melee began to broil the air, hot with mists of puffing insect biomechanical fluids, severed antennae and legs, broken wing cases, split casket-heads that bobbed too grossly when struck.

He thrust Winterfang through a mandible mouth and shunted the point back through the fly’s shivering head, yanking back, stepping off. Rosa filled the body gap, impaling a worker drone through its underbody. Seydon’s turn: a fast half-step forward, caving through another pair of fly bodies, severing them into twitching halves. A third buzzed in. Seydon slew it too, throttling his hands across the blade, taking advantage of the corridor height, and clubbed its body to pulp. Slowly, the ticking sounds of legs rubbing against hard carapace was muting. They each took their turn, stabbing and hacking at whatever twitched inside the frame of the door. Their body proximity, from the killing effort, and steaming ichor made the air heat and choke round their throats.

The Dunaan fished a palm-bomb from his harness and bowled it into the nest. The grenade was a Falling Comet; highly implosive, a kind of incendiary. It ruptured after a fuse delay, whisking casement shrapnel into whatever insect bodies were too near. Petals of alchemical ‘petrol’, already ignited, washed across the floor, ceiling, and walling. A fine roil of oily smoke billowed up and out the doorway, hugging their corridor rafters. Seydon watched several hunting flies immolate, writhing, bursting when internal body chemicals reacted to the extreme heat and imploded. Eyeless grub-things died in their nests.

...It never struck him as satisfying. On a primal level, death affected Seydon more than he let on. There were quick ends offered at the edge of Winterfang and Razorlight. There were ends like this, drawn out, flailing in agony throes. He watched regardless. Such was what he owed and what his work required. When the heat and fire subsided, he would wade into the nest and put down whatever remained. Seydon couldn’t place another feeling. It propelled him to hook an arm round Rosa’s waist and hold her close. A want for her physical proximity. Perhaps convince his conscience what he did for coin wasn’t really so bad, and that his wife could absolve him of the heavy lead cloak of iniquity he at times wore over his shoulders.

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

It was a messy business, there was no satisfaction in it, but it was a job that needed doing. To leave it would have caused greater problems in the future. Side by side they hacked and slew, drenched by the end in sweat and insect blood. Rosa followed Seydon into the remains of the nest watching with a muted horror as he slew the remaining. The move was seemingly cold, a necessary evil for the greater good one might say and he did it for that very reason. For the first time, Rosa truly understood his pain, even if he did his utmost to try and hide it.

She drew level with him as he slew the last and rose, arm hooking her in close. She looped her arms about his neck and held him tight, silent tears carving tracks down her filthy face. "Stop hiding from me." she whispered in his ear. "I cannot help you, if you hide." Fingers caressed the back of his neck as she worked herself beneath the calm facade Seydon was trying too hard to place. Beneath it was a turmoil of guilt and sorrow. Guilt if he did not, guilt if he did. The Path had set him on the trail of nothing but misery and for that she hated it.

The wave of hatred and anger that rose up inside her made her nauseous and made the serpent stir. She quelled it in an instance, but not fast enough to stop him noticing. Rosa drew away form the embrace, kissed him lightly and took his hand, guiding him back the way they had come. Right now, words would offer no releif. Whatever needed to be said, would be said later. She didn't let go of his hand till they were back in their quarters, and only then when she had tugged him into the shower room to turn on the water.

[member="Seydon"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Water hissed out of an ancient brass fixture, nearly bleached a kind of titanium from impassioned calcium rinsing and steel wool brushing. The stall was only accommodating for a single body, echoing the temples utilitarian and somewhat celibate aesthetic. Water skipped and pooled in a corner of the tiled basin, tilting through the mortar gaps, into a dented plumbing drain emptying into distant collection cisterns, for filtration, recirculated into the temple system.

They dressed down in hushed stillness. Seydon could smell the cake of insectoid ichor clinging pungently to their trousers. Rosa insisted he leave his boots in the hall, and he’d obliged. Vest, undershirt, long reinforced pants and belt, hung in a careful row along a slide of wooden rungs jutting from the wall opposite. Warm light tinted the fading tile work, from old tungsten-filament bulbs installed to hanging wire fixtures overhead. He glanced at the single mirror framed in tarnished metal above the only bathroom sink; saw his wife looking over her shoulder as he undressed.

Counting out his scars, he knew. His backbone, shoulder blades, the slab of his muscled backside was discoloured and corded from knotted scar tissue and the repaired musculature beneath. Faded blows were withdrawn, silvertine, inset a little more deeply. Fresher markings were angrily pink, looking tender to touch. Every excursion, he came home to Rosa increasingly unrecognizable. Seydon shot a stare back into the mirror, at himself, pale cats-eyes coloured ailing yellow. The face was haggard. Thin, cutting lines across his eye, nose, lips, dozens of nicks along his jaw line. Near constant whisker shadow. His youth was lost behind albinism and wear and tear.

At times, loathing drew up his gorge, making him unable to stand his own reflection. His palm smacked the mirror, drawing back and staring across the small bathroom at Rosa. ...Suddenly aware of how unclad she was in turn. She bore flaws and brandings too. It enhanced her elegance, he always thought. Accenting lines of exciting femininity, taking all the wrongs and hurts she had bore and transmogrifying their presence into a beauty of their own.

Stop hiding from me. Her lilac eyes shattered him. I can’t help you, if you hide.

...You don’t know. Seydon crossed the bathroom, standing against her, hip to hip. It’s hard. I keep it together. You don’t know how sick I am of being ‘alright’. If I falter, I do not come home. And you do not get this chance to upbraid me. Everyone’s allowed to walk away. ‘Cept us. I want you. Badly. I want this. More of it. All my pieces are falling aside, I can’t keep them from tumbling through my fingers. Don’t you feel it? How stretched it feels, when you touch me through our bond? I have to hide. You need to see me strong. The alternative is just far too dangerous.

“I want you...” Came out. His voice was a rasp, hoarse, choked up. Something was blurring his vision. Their emphatic bond through the Force was widening from a low trickle to the roar of a coursing river rapid. He couldn’t keep years spent on the Path of Embers, their tolls, black thoughts, inklings of desperation and a vicious, adamant will to overcome, sleeping and waking alone, and sheer guilt. Before, when they came together, their emotional unity was careful, measured. They’d never made love so raw. His arms swept her up, clutched her into a hot, angry, needy kiss. Stop hiding. Stop hiding. Help you.

Help me now... He thought, and fell into her body and soul, wholly.

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa drowned in a tidal wave of his emotion, it battered her psych like he'd never let it before, but the gates were open he could no stop it and nor did she want him to. Every touch, every kiss and each soft cry helped her stay afloat. Their love burned, it cleansed and it drove away all her pain. As her nails dug into his skin she opened her own flood gates, seeking to drown him in her love. It didn't matter that he wasn't always there, for in her heart he always was. She absolved him of his guilt, drove it out with fire.

I am always with you.

She couldn't let him go, not now, not alone. Not now she knew what he'd been hiding. She'd fight tooth and claw to stay with him, to keep him away from the lonliness of the Path. I love you, now and always, you are my light in the dark, my anchor to what is right and what is true. Do not be strong for me, my love, be true. Do not fear what might happen, I will never leave you.

As they lay, clean of the filth that they had accumulated in the lower corridors but caked in a fresh layer of sweat, Seydon's head rested on her chest. She ran soft fingers through his hair humming a familiar song to him. She radiated calm, despite the battle stirring in the recesses of his mind. Let him sleep first, then she would wage war with her own demon.

[member="Seydon"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

He slowly woke, wrapped in a thinning, threadbare blanket around one leg and Rosa’s knees and ankles hooked in against the other. Slants of milky, stormy light filtered through the far window. Outside, it rained. Occasional thunder burst, but distantly. This morning, the mountains would bear the lightning brunt. Seydon stirred, pushing his palms and wrists against the bedding, glancing over.

Rosa was laid half in shadow. Sometime during the long evening, she’d managed falling into her own deep rest. Hickies adorned her ribcage, but otherwise, for all their sensual ferocity, she was unmarked. He took a kind of pride that he never bruised. Regardless, while a chillier wind began gusting and rattling the blinds like bamboo chimes, he rolled her arms aside with care and looked over her shoulders, hips, and the inner skin of her long thighs. She mumbled a partial sentence in her sleep. He glanced, saw her mouth locked in a grimace, teeth just slightly blared, nostrils flaring with breath. Nightmare, or the beginnings of one.

The Dunaan tried to be the anathema to her bleaker moments. In their torrid session from the bathroom shower to the floor of the bedroom and beyond, he realized through their bond-link how much they both privately wrestled with self-abasement, denigration, doubt, and too much guilt. He pressed parched lips carefully to her own, warming her tongue, interrupting the dreamscape visions weighing his frame down against her hips and belly.

“C’mon, come back to me...” Seydon breathed. His hand stroked her brow, down through long, raven-dark locks. “It’s okay, we’re okay...”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Great black clouds rumbled over head, lightening scoring across the sky. The prison was cracking and she pounded at its psychic bars, screaming her taunts over the incoming storm. The sea roiled at Rosa's back as she rebuilt the bars again and again, only to have them broken.

"YOU CANNOT KEEP ME HERE!" Layil's screams were full of mirth, powered by Rosa's torment, by her doubt and by the fury that she had against Seydon's suffering. "What are you going to do Rosa? Stop feeling? Use the your exposure to these tormented souls you're so hell bent on saving to strengthen the walls of this prison. It.Wont.WORK!"

A final strike against the bars and Layil was free, her prison shattered. Light and Dark stared at each other, energy crackling between them. "Don't you understand?" she pleaded with Layil, "I cannot let you go free, you will undo all I have done, you will drive him to the edge like he's never been before. I will not let you do that!"

"Me?! How will I drive him to the edge? It is you, pretender, that will destroy him. It is because of you that he hides!"

Come back to me.

Rosa cast a glance over her shoulder, terror in her eyes, searching for her husband. "Seydon?"

Layil was at her back, her breath hot in her ear. "Take a long hard look in the mirror, Rosa Gunn. You are a pretender, you preach light you exude false calm but beneath that is not what you are. That is not what we are! Did you not hear Kaili? Master your emotions, empath!"

"SHUT UP!" the scream was feral, like something she'd never uttered before, lightening leapt from her fingers engulfing Layil, whose screams were between laughter that echoed in her ears.

The force lightening was real, as Rosa's mutterings became shouts her body convulsed, sparks igniting in her fingers and travelling along the contours of Seydons body.

She would not wake.

[member="Seydon"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Crystalline pain rode down every nerve transducer in his deep tissue, smoking the skin of his organs, and leaving bent striations on muscle packs and the connective fibres clutching bone to join to bone again. Seydon couldn’t see. Arc-bolts cascaded from her teeth across his face. The flash was a sunflare at point blank range. Extreme muscular contractions clamped his musculature into place, plying threatening force. Tension ache was a secondary hurt. His vocal chords twanged enough to produce a guttural, slurring roar. A heavier cord of twisting electricity struck his sternum, throwing him across the bedroom, smashing his shoulders through the bathroom screen door.

“Aaaugh!” The Dunaan’s hands were locked up, fingers clawed. Feet were likewise misshapen from contracting muscle fibres. His body was hot, alchemical fortification across his nerve and organ structures battling the inflicted damages. Blood pooled about his knees. Pouring from where, he didn’t know. His naked frame felt burst in a dozen places, skin crisped or blistered.

Their bedroom was cascading with dancing ladders of Force energy. The bed was partially on fire, the blinds were shredded and billowing from an unseen gale. Perturbed spirits hissed, rattling chants of malediction from beyond death, called through the veil by Rosa Gunn’s reality trembling fit. He could hear ‘Her’ as a second, deeper chorus echoing behind his wife’s nonsensical ravings. A bolt shot into the bathroom, melting the vanity, Seydon yelping as molten glass spattered onto his shoulders.

“Rose!” He shouted, finding his voice. Through pain and crippling physical contractions, he galloped back into their chambers on wrists, ankles, and knees. A bolt found him and opened an ugly weal down the length of his spine. Another glanced off his brow, scoring the skin over his temple, brain rattling in its skull cage. “Rose...!”

Seydon fought his way back onto the bed, smearing blood. Rosa was a convulsing and gnarled figure, lashing out at unseen phantoms. A second voice laughed behind her screams. Her eyes were rubies of hard light, teeth aglow, lightning jetting from her hands. The brunt struck across her husband, lighting his skeleton through his skin, punishing him unknowingly. The Dunaan fought it. Sheer effort, forcing through rising anguish, making muscle unlock string by string, struggling to crawl forward. His fingertips touched at Rosa’s temples, at the bone of her eye sockets. Smoke was rising off Seydon’s flesh. He redoubled, focusing with laser intent. Slowly, a cleansing notion, like a feeling of cool mist flowing through the fog of a hot day, began seeping into her dream.

“C-C-C’mon...!” Seydon stuttered. Blood welled under his tongue and dripped past his teeth. The Dunaan occasionally used a cleanse technique to rid his faculties of some unwanted influence from psionic Sithspawn. He’d never tried inducing it on another. That was his wife’s compass. His touch shook against her skin. “C-C’mon...! W-W-Wake up...!”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Realisation dawned, thenlighteninh as scoring from her hands, not Layil's. She stopped it staring horrified at her fingers.

"Oh dear, what have you done?" Layil's smoking form staggered to it's feet. "Poor Rosa, don't know what you are, denying yourself of true power. Just imagine what we could doing you stopped fighting it!"

Tears rolled down her cheeks. "I don't need to, I remember all of it. I remember all those people...all those souls..." they were on the beach in there thousands, still dark phantoms, all that was left of them. They began to whisper, accusations that rippled across from the netherworld.

Rosa stepped back. "I'm sorry." She told them. Seydon's voice drifted to her across the darkness, the skies around her were growing lighter. She smiled through her tears.

"He really is a nuisance." Complained Layil. "I was hoping you'd kill him."

Rosa's face filled with horror. "Oh god, Seydon!" She wrenched herself away from the beach, terror dragging her out of her mind.

Eyes snapped open, and she was bolt upright. "Seydon?" She called in a panicked tone, whirling round to find him at her head, smoking heavily and bleeding. "Seydon!" She cried, scrambling to his side and moving him onto his back. "Oh gods, I'm so sorry." Trembling hands took his face and she kissed him gently. She fought against the lump in her throat, battled to maintain calm. "I'm sorry." She muttered again, hands moving over him slowly from head to toe, healing as she went.

[member="Seydon"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Consciousness tottered between punch-drunk hurt and razor clarity afforded by throbbing nerve ends. Seydon blinked through her wafting Force cloud soaking into his frame, limp where she’d temporarily clamped his nervous system shut and afforded him blood-less numbness, pin-pricks tickling finger tips, too aware of crackling in his lung alveoli, faint char smell akin to over-cooked grill meat. Rosa was contritely whispering her apologies endlessly. Made him refocus onto her voice, following her natural timbre and vocal cadences, relaxing him into passivity.

In time, he felt her relax her nerve pinches and grant him some motor control autonomy. He flexed a hand, glanced down, relieved the digits and bones were still neatly encased in tissue and muscles. The rest of his body looked coated in angry contusions and heavy swelling, mottled bruising where skin had closed but remained traumatized, blood vessels fused together and blood no longer pooling under the skin of his shoulders. Seydon attempted sitting up. Warm hands held him by brow and nape, pressing him back into the pillows. Black, velvet hair cascaded over his face, and lilac eyes looked down through eyelashes bobbing with spent tears.

“...Hey,” Seydon groaned, managing a burst of strength. He pulled her low for a long, firm, sweetly grinding kiss. “It’s okay... It’s okay... I’m fine, I’ll get it together... I’m fine... Come here... It’s okay... It’s okay, Rose...”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa shook her head, drawing herself upright, still kneeling at his side. She looked away, trembling hand passing over her mouth as she took in stock of the damage she'd done to the room and the blood smears from the bathroom. A sob escaped her. "Oh gods." she moaned. His repeated comforts falling on deaf ears as her world seemed to implode around her.

"Th-th-that wasn't h-h-her." she stammered sobbing uncontrollably now. Her heart felt like it was being ripped in two, her throat burning. She couldn't look him in the eye, such was the shame that rolled over her. "Th-th-that was m-me. Seydon. That was me!" She caught her breath, tried desperately to calm herself down, face buried in her hands and resisting any attempts to draw her into comforting kisses or hugs. She didn't deserve it. She didn't deserve him.

Slowly she steadied her breaths, but the tears still flowed, carving pale tracks over her cheeks. "I could've killed you. I nearly did. Seydon...that's not okay. When she slipped free when Kaili was here, I thought I'd gotten her back under control. But I can't hold her!" The words tumbled out, terror etched in her face. "What if she slips when it's someone else close by? What if I kill them? I can't..." she dissolved again into heart wrenching sobs.

[member="Seydon"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Against her vocal and physical protests, working through her palms slapping at his shoulders, one connecting solidly with his cheek and jaw bone, he pulled her off the ruined bedding and onto his naked lap. Rosa had nowhere to turn but inward with her husband. Seydon was her ‘room’ now. The bedroom phased out, replaced by long, corded arms and a breathing ribcage lined with pooled bruises and stripped, ragged scar filigree, the skin rough and hot, lips pressed to her brow and nose nuzzling over her hair crown. He half considered taking her, right then. Wash the woe out one culmination at the time. Seemed a trite bandage trick, where her conscience and scared imagination were concerned.

“She’s gotta die,” Seydon said. With cool, utter assurance. Professional’s estimate.

“Peace of mind? That thing has to go. Don’t know the specifics, but spirits can be put down too. Personalities... Not gonna let her hang over us while we retire. Go after her myself, if I must. ...Just tell me what you want, Rose. What you want to do. Anything...:”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Encompassed in his arms, Rosa stopped fighting, sagging against him she let the warmth of him enveloped her, soft kisses soothing, his words tickling the hair on the top of her head. Slowly, the sobs subsided, tears pooled on his chest as the rolled over the bridge of her nose. Layil had to die.

She could hear the mocking laugh, the taunt that dared her to try. She shuddered in his arms, drawing herself in a little tighter to Seydon. "I don't know." she breathed softly, closing her eyes. "I don't know if I can kill her." For a long time, she said nothing, concentrating only on Seydon's deep breathing, soft stroking of her hair and murmured words of comfort. Slowly her breathing evened out, the tears stopped flowing and her mind slowed from a racing panic to a calm and steady flow of thoughts.

Reluctantly, she sat upright again, wiping her face dry and looking down at Seydon and the damage she had done. Tears threatened again, but she blinked hard against them. Looking down at her hands.

Emotion, yet peace. The words of the code drifted back to her from the recess of her memory. She looked at her husband, too afraid to speak, lest she lose control again.

I hate her. She leaned forwards, pressing her forehead against his and climbing back onto his lap. A yearning burned within her. A need to forget to distract, fingers slid into his hear, blazing eyes never leaving his. I hate her because of what she has done to us, what she continues to do to us. I don't want to hide anymore, I don't want you to hide anymore. I need to kill her...Every touch of their skin sent shivers down her spine, her lips brushed his, hesitant, she kissed him.

Help me kill her.

[member="Seydon"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

His arm craned over the bed’s edge, scrabbling for pieces of smote clothing discarded at the hemming of the wrecked sheeting. Fingers caught the brass rim of a narrow injector vial, mixed thickly with ruddy mixtures bubbling warmly, jamming the application needle to a spot just underneath his hip. Seydon grunted, a wash of alchemic solutions threading into major arterial lanes and lesser blood vessels. In lieu of Rosa’s healing, the vials were specially prepared blood medicine, extracted from his own plasma and hemoglobin then introduced to arcane extracts; poisons, mutagens, extracts from too-rare flora or beasts slain. The ichor blend charged his metabolic systems, hastening an already accelerated healing factor. Heat bloomed across his skin, now laced with sympathetic sweat. He needed the dosage to repair what damages still lingered in his flesh.

Seydon didn’t want to be handicapped while he and his wife ‘prepared’ for war. Their chambers were halfway destroyed, the bedding wholly wrecked, a smell of cooked stone and stale, spilt blood wafting where the Dunaan had skidded over the cool stone-slab floor. It was maybe not the time. Nor the locale. They should have been making for one of the spare infirmaries Rosa had set up when she’d begun reclaiming the Silent Temple, settling together battle plans as to how they would take Layil apart, piece by piece. Seydon searched her eyes... Knew the queen was just past the little dark corona hemming Rosa’s lilac hues.

Layil did not equal Rosa. The split in persona was severe enough, to his perception, to separate them completely. Like a foetid crone, leeching his wife’s vitality, unable to self-sustain unless she was taking succour from her host’s emotional misery. Key was off-setting her natural advantage, level the battle field, until the high ground was pitched up and away from her. In their favour. Joy, happiness, were a malediction to her foulness. Seydon took hold of Rosa’s wrists, piercing her through with a Dunaan’s hyper-focused scrutiny, a hunting hawk’s intensity.

His work was two-fold: taunt Layil and put her off her sport, and help Rosa ease back into clarity and emotional solidity. Seydon punched another ichor vial in, grunted, and laid his wife deeper into the wrecked mattress. They’d replace it later, and every other article damaged. They sank together into ecstasy, until he was certain he’d shut Layil up. Or at least deafened her with Rosa’s intensely rhapsodic, spilling cries.

[Fade To White]

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Ecstasy drove Layil back into the recesses of Rosa's mind, forcing her to arm herself against the incoming storm. The light burned through Rosa as they became one, mind body and soul, she and Seydon were intertwined, closer and stronger, a force to be reckoned with. Layil was afraid.

For two days, they healed one another, she working to undo the damage she'd etched across his skin, he working her into peaks of pleasure to keep the beast within at bay. Sleep was little, too afraid of hurting Seydon again, she dared not let herself slip into the dreamscape the Layil ruled. Meditation was her rest, slipping away to the terrace each time Seydon slipped into his own dreams. They repaired the apartment too, scavenging the other rooms for fresh undamaged furnishings.

Rosa dismissed all attempts to discuss what was ahead of them, her love so keen to lay out a plan, to understand his part. "Later." she would tell him. "I'm not ready yet." If that didn't work, she'd take him wherever they stood, drawing him into her and driving all thoughts of Layil away. When she was ready she would tell him, when she'd understood the why and the how and found a way to let go of her hate. If she killed her in hate, then she would do exactly what Layil wanted her to do. Rosa would not step off the path of light, not for her, nor anyone.

On the morning of the third day, Seydon would wake to find her perched at the end of the new bed, facing outwards towards the terrace, eyes downcast staring at a tarnished gold mask in her hands. She sat up a little straighter as she felt him stir, reaching out in the force assuring him she was okay.

[member="Seydon"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

“Mmnn...” He believed her reassurances when his touch pulled her shoulder and she accepted his glance. Rosa’s meditative trances were seemingly keeping the effects of sleep deprivation at bay, perhaps closing down certain hemispheres of her brain matter at a time, simulating portions of an anabolic rest. Seydon didn’t press her on it. Hard enough, just keeping up with hour by hour tasks, holding Layil at bay, and every so often tugging his belt. He rose, yawned, stretched and popped a handful of cervical vertebrae bones and cracked stiffness out of his back. Didn’t bother dressing, save for wrapping on a grease apron.

The old, cracked visage turned over endlessly in her hands. It’d never been serviced; blood spatter coated round the pouting mouth aperture, pieces of the cheek shielding cracked, missing, a horned finial snapped free, grime and significant tear showing across a painted varnish mimicking the grave-face of an ancient noblewoman. Seydon fought the inclination to smash it over his knee, and throw its shards for the jungle to claim. However, Rosa’s stomach was shivering loud to his hearing, and he couldn’t abide that much better.

Breakfast were pancakes. Charged liberally with smatterings of vanilla extract and cinnamon he’d rescued from the Golden Rose’s pantry. A side of eggs-over-easy, buttered white-sugar frosted toast, a plate of mynock bacon that was surprisingly tender, ice-cold water or a slightly pulpy fritta juice squeezed that morning from yesterday’s gathering excursion. If, if she was hungry. Seydon added extra temptation, replacing the apron aside and posing with an arm on the counter space. He flexed an easy grin when he finally caught her eye. “I’ve got brekky to brood over, if you want it. You can take a plate in bed, too, if you prefer.”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa managed a smile, though her eyes slipped back to the mask and she turned it over and over. What are you waiting for? Layil's taunt whispered. Rosa see in a sharp breath and rose, dropping the mask on the bed. She padded barefoot to Seydon, looped her arms about his neck and buried her face into him.

As he coiled his arms about her and held her close she let out a long sigh. She stayed there for a long while, drinking in his scent, relishing in his warmth. When she drew back, there was a determined look in her eyes. She didn't need to say anything, he would know today was the day.

She moved away, settling into a chair atvthe small table, the smell of the pancakes drawing another smile.

[member="Seydon"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

He let her devour the breakfast spread in peace, hovering as a background presence drawing on clothing from beside their repaired bed. What shape would their method take? The Enemy was incorporeal and more than that, a splintered piece of residual personality created through trauma and a way to cope with said trauma. Seydon fought his share of wraiths, phantasms, and poltergeists, counted their astral abilities and transmogrifying powers as some of the worst to overcome. That koschja on Muunilist, anchored to a wealthy banker’s monetary cravings and capacity for frugal cruelty. The storm lord over Spira, and that bio-digital wraith waiting in the flaking Nar Shaddaa under-levels.

Clothing was fixed to place, armaments too. Seydon suspected their physical presence would play little in the coming contest. He thought of them as psychic fetishes, items that would help his thoughts focus. Considered dragging the ancient Dunaan cleaver waiting in white plastic wrapping under the bed, but didn’t want Rosa to look up alarmed at its ugly, industrial make. He wondered about Layil’s prowess lurking in his wife’s cordoned mental recesses. His fear: that she would take Rosa away with her when the time came to sunder her totally. Use some spiteful, last ditch reserves and maybe cripple her host’s faculties to an irreparable degree.

The muscles in his jaw worked taut. Fingers drummed absently on his knee, ‘till he stopped it. Rosa was looking over from the table; once, he’d come back from scavenging dinner plates from the low kitchen galleys and found her, like this, undressed at the dinner table, ‘minding’ herself with a collection of dataslates and flimsiplast printouts. She made him sweat in his costuming, laughter tinkling between thick gasps, knew he wouldn’t bother slipping out of pants, shirt, or vest and cloak to have her then and there.

“Hmmn...” Seydon hummed, memory easing his mood. That was fun.

[member="Rosa Gunn"]