All pity choked with custom of fell deeds.

[Teron_Ashfiend]

He felt Ariane struggle for the air that he continued to steal from her. He heard the distant pounding of the gypsy's feet just barely above the din of battle, the ponderous marching of soldiers falling back into formation, the squeal of Burel's sword as it dashes helplessly against his prey's quicksilver armor that sputtered and snared and convulsed about her.

And Elysia lost to you, forever...

Only to withdraw from those features just in time for those burning blue eyes to catch the careful articulation upon her lips while a dozen jarring bolts of gleaming white fire leap towards him. Her features began to blur amidst a horrid hissing that erupts from his wildly dancing eyes, grim chalices of morbid blue flame that dances within the hateful depths of an ancient skull cruelly robbed of life and expression, all expression save one, as his gaze began to wax into a horrid, bruised purple and with it Ariane's features bled into another likeness that he had not fallen prey to since the forge.

A pity you never learned that you never had any hope...

His grasp tightened with sudden explosiveness to grind her into dust and ruin as sorrowful rage tempered his bloodless visage of taut, pallid flesh drawn over bold features while tears slowly sizzled and raked their way down the colorless planes of his countenance. Quicksilver and coincidence forgotten, he beheld a prized and bloodied trophy in his grasp that had warranted his endurance without surviving over the countless years, who had been lost to him since he last drew breath.

And in that agony the last remnants of warped sanity frayed, a last knot coming undone with the chorusing voices of all the murdered left in his shadow across the millennia howling into his writhing conscience. He strangled Elysia, for one twisted reason only.

"You left me behind!"

The unearthly gaze cavernously nestled beneath a noble brow faded back into a roaring, searing crimson flame.

His piercing cry echoed up the slopes, shaking loose dist and dust to trickle down in elegy for the crumbling 'Fiend. For Khalika is upon him a moment later, with Deliverance's corrupted blade angling for his hands. The ghostly image of his once and ever betrothed fills and bleeds out across his vision in horrible landscape and foreground, seeping into the mirage of trees and stars leering down in cold, haughty and distant arrogance - the arrogance of the forgetful, the arrogance of one no longer bound by mortal vows.

There will be no peace for you...

Vraal's curse echoed to the hour of his doom, the Demon Lord overshadowing even this from beyond the grave, an open and naked grave in the Ashfiend's mind. Delvierance descends, a vengeful stroke for being committed to wanton murder, for being dragged from righteous purposes to venting implacable rage. Pain explodes up along the length of his arm as the armor there shatters, sending a scorched and steel rain against the churned ground while the mangled hand is forced from Ariane's throat.

Deliverance finds purchase tip-first in the ground, as Ariane is released, and as the gypsy tumbles. His other mailed hand darts forward, snaring Khalika by her collar, catching her in the midst of her collapse and holding her suspended by the extended length of a trembling arm. The brutalized remnant of his fist raises overhead to pound the treacherous woman into submission, a fist brutally pulsing with the afterfire of Deliverance's cleaving bite.

Let it go, for these last minutes let it go...

His fist remained raised, poised, prepared to bludgeon her to death with sword and spell unavailable or unwieldy at the moment. A sudden, piercing assault of a conscience wearied by savaging through thousands of years of anguish and rage brings the forthcoming punishment to a swift if tentative halt.

It is then that the Shepherd Knight's blade erupts between Ashfiend and gypsy, a steel blossom of vengeance for slain Myrkenfolk caught up in the senseless, ageless conflict that Teron had spread to all places - a war that raged ever and always within himself and his memories. It is not the blade that brings the words from dead lips suddenly flushed with the pain of life remembering itself in the Wilting Rose. It is those words, from gypsy and swords woman, that offer the final thrust of relentless truth that escapes him in true, agonizing breath that shrieks and breaks as he whispers in the nightmare grasp of horror self-driven and suicidal.

"What have I done?"

the spear points of light perforate his towering frame, obliterating the remnants of his squashed shadow, outlining him in the furious white fire of Kyra's magic that arches his back and sends lightning to illuminate his features with some horrid, coursing light that flows between skin and bone and douses him in entirety save for the fire of his eyes. That light pulsed like a quickening heart, every breath and thundering beat erasing him, fading him, wiping the stain of his awful presence and festering hate from the world. It an undead horror, entombed in armor, who glares out upon his enemies through the waging battle within, a flickering and burning ghost, and finally the memory of a recently slain man whose hand reaches for those broken chains where until recently a most precious urn had been kept.

A thunderclap dispels the Ashfiend entirely, drawing him into the prison that awaits, hammered from the tomb of his own ruined armor. In the fall of a shadow his is dismissed from the world.

The last of his servants present had fallen to blade or spell. Deliverance remained where it had been released, Arak's Ruin embedded in the struggling Shepherd Knight, and all else was gone save for a single item: a small sapphire jewel set upon a black leather chord where it had once lain about his neck in secret. A stone that pulsed with blasphemous magical potency, the potential to turn the foulest necromantic power into the greatest of restorative and life-giving magics: the last remnant of his vow to Elysia to see her restored to breath and life. All was quiet.

And still.

[Tebrin]

As blinding illumination ceased, the landscape was minus one unliving, tireless blight. There stood pearly-haired Kyra, the faint rustle of a breeze returning to air un-naturally stagnant by the Fiend's blight, caressing silken strands from sweat, blood, and dirt-stained features and clothing.

Her beautiful dirge, that tireless requiem ended, her dance drew to its inevitable and graceful conclusion as the un-natural illumination... and its new prisoner... were drawn into the prison. Within the mahogany chest, shards of shattered armor glowed with white-hot light and then were still, unremarkable, entirely unchanged save for the gentle pulsing of red runes across their surface.

Her slender form still thrilled with power, fingertips flexing as energy crackled betwixt her digits, and it is without joy or elation that she shifts her chin to regard the prison she had created with sightless gaze bound behind ebon silk.

With painfully-slow deliberation, she knelt at the chest's side and, lifting its heavy lid between pale fingers, she drew it shut. The impact of the lid upon the body of the container sounded like the beat of a drum, reverberating throughout the suddenly-silent battlefield with unusual intensity, to be followed by the ominous 'snick' of a locking mechanism. A soft word spoken, a single line traced upon its cool surface, and the runes which decorated it flared to life, firey light spiderwebbing out across the chest, before coalescing into one uniform, pulsating display of illumination.

And then it, too, was dark. Pressing her palms flat to the top of the mahogany chest, Kyra slumps gratefully over its surface, shuddering breath inhaled between clenched teeth and exhaled between pursed lips. It was a quivering and exhausted-looking sorceress which, after this brief moment of reprieve, pulled herself to her feet, straightening to her full height - just under five and a half feet, at best.

Her voice carried upon the subtle breeze, pierced the atmosphere thick with the scent of blood, viscera, and death, breathed simple words of victory into the soldiers which had become her vanguard, to her friends which surrounded her: Ariane, who had nearly perished in her defense. Glenn, who perhaps could not even hear her. Rhaena, nearby. Cinnabar Calomel, who had set her to this particular task some weeks prior. The attention of most, if not all of Myrken's survivors focused upon this explosion of mystical energy, upon Cinnabar's final commands, upon that hoarse and hopeful shout of defiance.

"...It is done," She announces with a voice that eschews her apparent fatigue, which betrays none of the giddy triumph which threatened to spill over into her words. They were carefully-measured and calm, as if this had been an inevitability all along - as if Kyra herself had never doubted this eventuality.

"The Ashfiend has fallen."

[Khalika]

"Where do we go from here?

There she hung in his fierce grasp. His anger towards her a dagger across the throat...She again stands alone.

So let it be...

By his hand alone let it be done.

She watches as the mail hand raises, eyes close as she waits. Yet it does not come.. This fatal blow.
His hand is stilled and in those last moments she knows why, but then she is falling to the ground as he cries out. The Shepard knight struck through and the magic binds him before her eyes, as she is a crumpled mess upon the ground, a final hand stretches out for him one last time, but he is gone, and it falls to rest upon deliverance.

Clutching the blade.....Teron..the Gypsy weeps...

For the wounded..

For the living..

For the Dead...

For Teron...

Who she found somewhere between the memory of a Wilted rose and the reality of a Fiend. He was neither, and both, but she found him when no one else did. And he found her, when no one else was looking.

In time this will all be forgotten, like all great battles remembered in myth, more then fact. But for one it will be remembered true...

All of him will be remembered, for we must accept the sinner, if we accept the saint...

[Glenn]

Elliot Brown

This... wasn't right. It wasn't right at all. It wasn't how it was supposed to be. He was supposed to feel better. That feeling in his chest was supposed to go away at the moment of the Ashfiend's defeat. Oh, he knew the sun wasn't going to come out and the birds weren't supposed to sing, but this was wrong. It was just wrong. What had been accomplished?

None of this had brought Dreamirse back. None of this had brought the fallen knighs and squires back. It didn't even bring back the Chapter House.

It was all so pointless. He didn't feel better at all. There was no relief, no joy in this unholy victory. He had hated the Ashfiend, feared him and loathed him and now he just felt cold and empty.

Worst of all it may have taken Sir Malaroth from them. Elliot had dropped his sword; he was running towards the Grand Master now, towards the midst of it all. "Someone, please, help him!" The knights simply couldn't bear to lose Malaroth as well, not even for the most decisive of victories.

[Seth_Bloodmoon]

After the struggle of wills against the Ashfiend, Seth's eyes had snapped open. It took a moment or two for him to adjust to this sudden return to reality but the instant he had he was hauling himself to his feet. His brilliant blue eyes surveyed the struggle against the Fiend. Now he could afford to take action, now he could go on the assault in the physical realm.

He raised Twilight Heart, touching the blade's tip to his forhead, murmuring quiet words in his native tongue. With the brief prayer uttered the tall elf entered the frey, choosing to cleave into the death knight's minions. His intent was to protect Kyra as Cinnabar calls out the words to do such.

When the Fiend is finally ended, there is no cry of triumph from the tall elf. No smile of satisfaction, hefting his sword into the air in victory. There is only grim silence. Yes he had wanted to see the Fiend brought down but now there was suddenly no will in him to celebrate the triumphant moment.

-------------------------------
Ixius
-------------------------------

Ixius had heard Valaeli's call and after a moment of hesitation on his part, chose to answer it in a sense. His form flickered suddenly into existence near where the half-dragon had fallen. Ruby hued eyes breifly took in everything goin on around the snow white elf,, his features set into an unreadable expression. He could literally care less about virtually everyone involved in the combat taking place below the cliff, even his brother, Seth. They could all die and it would be no skin off his back.

Those red eyes widened ever so slightly at the sight of Valaeli's striken form but the look on his face did not change. Without a word or a single gesture of his hand, tendrils of arcane energy would seek to envelope the half-dragon seeking to heal or at least stabalize her. He would attempt to block the power she was expending with his own magic at the same time, should she still be expending it at this point.

Either way Ixius would lower to scoop her up carefully into his arms, unless stopped. He qould quietly murmur, "You're not allowed to die, yet..." in ilarian elven and with that would vanish with her from the cliff top. Unless stopped of course, but that mioght just be a hard thing to do.

((I truly wished to do more in this, I tried to post for both Seth and Ixius before vanishing for a gaming weekend but life didn't allow it >.< Seeing as things are concluding I just did a breif post. Again, I am sorry I was not more active in this part of the sl...))

[Carnath-Emory]

[INDENT]All flames burn themselves into nothing. All fires that I have seen, pyres and siege burnings, drift to ash and silence. All save one. All save my own.[/INDENT]

She had given herself over to the Ashfiend once before -- many months ago, and at a terrible cost. Of his own will this had happened, but of hers as well, because he would not speak such words to a thing which was not wholly vulnerable, helpless beneath what wrath he might wish to inflict. Because such things are to be spoken of in silence and in dark, and it was in just such a tomb that he had confronted her, in such a sepulchre that they'd said the necessary words.


[INDENT]You would sit yourself down in a world gone quiet, and have an eternity to want for oblivion. How... how can you stand it?

I cannot.[/INDENT]

She has given herself over to him a second time now, because this is what sympathy has driven her to do. This monster which had put a terrible, conclusive end to its own monstrosity, this monster which had reached for Better Things, she is helplessly inclined towards such sympathy -- when its object is a thing as vile as what she might have become, a thing that despite this has not forgotten how to cherish what it finds singularly precious.

What would he not vanquish to secure his Elysia's salvation?
Nothing.
What would stay his hand, were Elysia anywhere but at his side?
Nothing.

She'd learned that there, a dozen feet below the earth and lost to darkness, lost to the blaze of his burning eyes. I have had her once before, the Ashfiend spoke in that moment, I have had her once before and it was not enough then, and in that instant she'd understood what had gone awry, had known that there was no supplying what he sought.

Had known absolutely that her role upon this battlefield would end in this very manner: with the crush of gauntleted hands about her throat, as if he meant to strangle his betrothed a second time.

That girl had died then, and this one dies here now. With each pulse of her racing heart, iron tightens upon a throat half-vulnerable to the crush of brutal hands. With each passing moment her lungs heave in search of breath that cannot be had, and while the tears are a scourge upon his ravaged features, so too is the agonised thunder of his voice upon her captive ears, her monster's strange heart. It is a crescendo of wounded violence, and at its peak there is iron shattering in dull dissonance against her armour and her helm and the pallid features beneath it. There is the whole of her flung aside, stinging eyes afforded a glimpse of Khalika's plight, Malaroth's gambit, the blinding weave of Kyra's magic --

And half-crouched there upon the dry earth, fingers raking against her own throat, she has no breath to speak an answer to that monster's dying cry. At the very end of it, she has no words at all, but only the desperation of her lungs, and the sting of eyes that mourn.

[Malaroth]

Trembling hands and a wavering blade before there is white light, burning and consuming, oblitering that small shadow that nestled at the Ashfiend's feet beneath the radiance of his charred and broken, battered armor. The gypsy was seized, Ariane nearly strangled to death, the world is red and black and white and cold.

Always hauntingly, distantly cold.

He heard those whispered words pass dead lips, the silent confession and utter bewilderment of a lost myth awakened to sorrowful reality.

He saw the creature vanished, heard Kyra trumpet victory, beheld Khalika and Ariane moruning in their own ways. He was not fool enough, nor braggart enough, to believe his weapon had ended the monster despite Teron's last words.

The squire was running towards him, a private war waging across the lad's countenance, before the weapon bore his arms to the ground and the shadows coiled protectively about his wounds. One palm settled upon Arak's Ruin, a weapon that had been his upon his arrival here, taken from him when Teron fully awoke once more and had left him for crows almost a year ago.

A year in the making, a year in the dying.

"I will be," he struggled through clenched teeth that chattered in the grip of some private cold. "be.. alright," he gasped and slouched forward, his chin landing gently against the torn earth. There was victory he knew, a victory he would live to see.

But for the near future there was only darkness that claimed him in ponderous dreams.

[Khalika]

"Deliverance has found my hand...I shall bare it like a cross..."

The world around me flows over my eyes like the ebb and flow of the coming tide. My eyes look to the sky, as the sounds of battles end are as they should be sombre whispers of regret.

Their villain vanquished, my face wet with that victory. My blood flows with that victory. My actions past and present will mark my future.

I have helped to deliver him....

I have paid my pound of flesh..

I have lost...

My hand now grips a heavy burden as I now look upon deliverance. The choice to lay upon this torid ground and die of a slow bleeding wound is a tempting fate. I tempt fate often, and it has tempted me..Tempted me with him, and now with this thing of old glory. It teases me to make descisions, to choose....

Deliverance from evil..I'm evil, was evil...am evil, wrong, damaged. Deliver me...Deliver them like me, there are so many...A life for a life.

I have reason once more, vengance will rest and justice will stand blind and true, but she..I will not hold the scales..

It shall only be the blade Deliverance....

"Ariane?....I don't want to die..."