Dreamwaking: Chimera - Sacrifice.

[Tebrin]

There was yelling, all around. People shouting at Glenn to duck, to get out of the way. It echoed within his mind, but he paid it no attention. It was all unintelligible to the young rake, whose sole focus was suddenly and entirely upon this grim, bloody, and costly decision. Tebrin was a selfish man - and had Ariane attacked Jirai first, even he could not have told you for certain if he would have allowed himself to be slain. Perhaps another day, Tebrin might wonder how this might have unfolded had Glenn been the one to attack Jirai - particularly, say, if Glenn had been in arm's reach at the time.

But Jirai had attacked Glenn. And the only person within arm's reach was the Drow herself. Her retaliatory strike catches the treasure hunter across the jaw - he would not dodge, lest he risk his precisely-placed blade to miss its mark, and his head jerks to the side in a motion that may have provided the Drow some small satisfaction. This smugness would be pierced, suddenly, by the blade of that dagger as it slipped between her ribs.

Hateful verdant eyes glare into her own, and he gave the dagger one vicious, spiteful wrench. Then she was falling, sinking to her knees, and he was stepping back with the woman's dark blood covering his right hand. As it occurred to him that the Drow was dying, horrendous realization dawned upon him. The jewel at his neck began to feel warm, and the doomed rogue turned a meaningful gaze from Glenn, to Rhaena, and then back again. From a distance, he simply seemed sad and resigned to his fate. All who could have seen the fear in his eyes have moved away - and it is just as well, for Tebrin. Still, there is a strange sense of satisfaction. It wasn't the satisfaction he had frequently felt upon worming his way out of a sticky situation and saving his own hide - it was something else... something somehow more...

There was no time to think on it, for that jewel, which Tebrin immediately grabbed with his left hand, was starting to burn. He should say something. This had all happened so suddenly, he had not even prepared a death speech. Was he EXPECTED to say something? He should probably say something. He opened his mouth to speak - and came up empty. With a sigh, he spread his hands to the side and, looking across the field at Glenn, offered him a helpless shrug.

And then Tebrin, from the clavicle up, was a morbid fountain of viscera and vitae - a crimson geyser that erupted from his neck and painted the landscape below. A headless body fell to its knees and then crumpled, lifelessly, upon the grotesque soil beneath.

[Malaroth]

Lavender had his hand, again, just as Burnie coarsely explained himself and his identity with one simple utterance. This prison-world had turned friends into enemies, and enemies into friends, just as a pair of women began dancing and Ariane approached the Drow and her companion. In a world where the mapmaker wielded a falchion, and he himself had been paired with a succubus of all things, it should not be entirely strange that the nightmarishly childlike dancing triggers a sterner rhythm than it had likely intended.

All of a sudden he is off-balance following the fierce echo of a warning shout. Lavender's weight, while not considerable, is enough to haul him towards the befouled, gurgling tree that whispers blasphemies as the wind grants it a voice.

All of a sudden there are fleshy blades, and silence, broken by the tumbling drowess and Tebrin whose countenance is lost in a spectacular geyser of blood.

[Glenn]

Tebrin's sacrifice had not been in vain. There was something to that which might have warmed the man's heart. More likely, however, he would be swearing at himself for doing so selfish and foolish.

No, no maybe he wouldn't, or else he wouldn't have done it at all. The dagger went far wide of the mapmaker. Tebrin had saved his life. And his friend's shrug was responded to by Glenn mouthing the words 'thank you.' Nothing more. Not in the midst of this.

He had gotten his revenge on Jirai, the revenge that they had spoken of. Hell, he had his cake and ate it too in some ways, since he got to be selfless about it as well. Glenn was slowly walking towards the bleeding, collapsed corpse now. Another friend lost. His grip on the falchion tightened.

He was paying no attention to Rhaena or Ariane or Malaroth, just to what was in front of him. This one he would examine himself. He owed Tebrin his life.

[Raveness]

Lavender was spilled out on the ground next to the large skeleton tree. Beside her, to her left is where Malaroth fell, thankfully. She smiled brightly at him, grateful to have saved his life, to have proven that she was not a succubus, but an angel. What Lavender interpreted back in his eyes was anything but thanks.

There, in the steeled gaze of the knight what Lavender saw was condescending and accusatory. Malaroth only saw the demon spawn that he thought she was, despite her words, despite any of her actions. Even though he was being kind to her. In the long run, she knew he was only trying to save himself. It shattered the young woman's heart.

As Malaroth moved to get to his hands and knees, Lavender reached out with her right hand and caught the handle of Seth's dagger. Wrapping her fingers around it tightly she would bring the blade across her body toward Malaroth's back.

"I'm sorry," she would whisper softly, her gaze pained as much as her action. With all of her pent up frustrations, Lavender would bring the dagger downward.. into her own chest, just under her left breast, sparing Malaroth.

A succubus would have stabbed him, she thought, but now, maybe now, he'll believe. She hoped.

[Carnath-Emory]

Ariane could follow, surely.
Ariane does not.

Better by far to intercept the Olwak girl as she dashes past, and the swordswoman is eminently capable of doing just that. A hand shoots out to tangle fingers into the girl's heavy, bronzed hair, a recoil of the elbow jerking her neatly back to the taller woman's side. A tilt of her head sets her mouth near the girl's ear, and:

"Recall: I have spoken you a promise," she breathes then. "I won't have you flee and make a liar of me."

Straightening then, she's wheeling back about to snap a glance towards Angieszka, Glenn Burnie, Tebrin and tumbled Malaroth and -- except that of a sudden there's no Tebrin; of a sudden there's very little left of him at all. The detonation has painted the landscape with red and her features with shock, and:

"Glenn Burnie! To your feet and with us, he is gone, he is meat and there's nothing here that changes that. I don't intend that you join him in it."

Because from the periphery of her vision there is sudden movement about the tangled forms of winged Lavender and strange-eyed Malaroth, and she has lost her taste for risks. Some churning motion that at first she can't decipher, and a tell-tale glitter that is brilliantly clear. It has her backstepping sharply: one, two, three abrupt steps, and the fourth sees Rhaena drawn back behind the swordswoman's shoulder, a hand in her hair and a bloodied sword angled before her.

Oh, but that hand has real and persuasive and terrible purpose. It has tightened its hold upon that bronzed hair, and a twist of the wrist is turning the girl's face towards the tumble of Knight and Angel.

"There," she breathes, quietly now. "There."

[Jirai]

For the first time the girl actually offers Ariane resistance. Of course, it is a struggle she is fated to lose. The swordswoman's hand tangles in her hair, jerking her back. The girl writhes in that grasp, trying to free herself of the unwanted hand. "No! Let me go. Let me go to him!" She pleaded with the older woman. It is only Ariane's whispered words that still her struggles, silence her voice, though her gaze is for the still-distant mapmaker, unwavering.

Unwavering, that is, until a twist of her captor's hand, her protector's hand forces wide eyes away from the people she cared about, forces them to the tangle of Knight and woman. And the girl watches as she has been required to do.

[Malaroth]

Amongst the scuffling and tumbling, as the wretched earth pressed against his cheek and clung between his fingers, he saw one pair of deaths only to be greeted by the subtle whisperings of the woman behind him. It is a shadowy thing that teased his ears, that taunted him with truth and wore it like a shining, polished helmet to catch whatever perverse sun bled upon the ground.

A sudden, searing pain jolted across the length of his collarbone and began to burn. A breath, a staggered half-step, to remaing kneeling as he planted a bare, filthy foot beneath him. The world began to shimmer and burn, set aflame yet shrouded in shadow.

His own shadow flickered and writhed as if pinned to the ground before it fled him entirely, crawling up through the length of limbs and veins and leaving inky corruption in its wake. The black flame scourged his flesh before settling just beneath his cerulean gaze, shadows wreathed the storms imprisoned within his eyes whose centers simmered like stirred, hateful, crimson embers.

A last breath as he glared at the motley crew.

A sigh interrupted by his ending.

[channe]

Four lives; four deaths.

And here is Agnieszka's hand, grasping Glenn's shoulder; here is her face, and only Glenn can see her shoulders shudder for a moment. Only he can see the wetness around her eyes, which she quickly wipes away with the back of her hand. Her other hand drops.

And then she turns.
And sees Ariane with her sword angled towards Rhaena.

"What the hell are you doing, Ariane?"

Her voice is a shriek.

[Glenn]

Cinnabar, Seth, Tebrin, Malaroth. Yes, perhaps Glenn would have just stood there gawking until his own head joined the others, still reeling from the shock and the horror of it all, of seeing people that matter to him die, again, people who had been closer to him than anyone in years, who he had let get close on the hopes that something like this would not occur.

Was it real? Was it not? The sheer possibility was enough. To see it was enough. He was ready to despair, to surren...

Ariane's words shake him out of it. Agnieskza literally shakes him out of it. Rhaena was still alive. Ariane was still alive. He was still alive (Agnie too, one would suppose). He could drawn strength from that, from necessity. He was so damn good at doing what was necessary for survival, and yes, for revenge as well.

What WAS Ariane doing? He immediately forgave her this as misunderstanding, as confusion, as shock under the situation. It was Ariane, though. There was SO much trust there, an unspeakable amount. Ariane, when he first asked her about various people in Myrken, Deost, Aeryn, others, would often respond that she would trust them with her life.

Glenn trusted her with so much more than his own life. He trusted her with everything in the world that he cared about, with everyone that he cared about, with his very soul every single day as they tempered him into something more akin to a weapon.

And here he trusted her with Rhaena, despite the evidence in front of him. "Ariane, stop that." His mind was working now. His mind was charging forward and his heart was full of vengeance. Yes, he had made some poor decisions and Tebrin and Malaroth were perhaps dead for them, but no he would not surrender, not so long as Rhaena and Ariane lived, not so long as there was so much to answer for. Perhaps, however, all that he had seen, all that they had experienced had caused some cracks to appear in his thoughts. Even one who had seen so much in his life cannot easily take so many shots to the heart unscathed.

"We're not going to dance. We're not going to walk until we die. We're going to fight. We're going to fight this fucking dreamwaker who thinks he has the right to do this to us, for Cinnabar and Tebrin and Seth and even Aeryn and Malaroth, yeah. And we need Rhaena for that, Ariane." His trust in Ariane was so absolute that he thought that she was steadying the girl, perhaps preventing her from taking her own life as Lavender just had.

So he just spoke right on, moving as he spoke, pacing, which was well and good for the sake of self-preservation. There was only one moment's hesitation, one moment's glance to Ariane, but he was too far gone with this plan to stop. There was no time for restraint. There was no other way. This was their once chance to not just survive, but to get back at he who did this to them. Damn the consequences. "Rhaena's power is the one thing we have that can fight him. It's sleeping now, because the asshole made it, but I know how strong it is. Trust me, I know." And the sound of loss that had laced his voice when speaking of Seth and Tebrin and Cinnabar slipped in once again, though it was more subtle now. "She'll just need us to give her strength to reawaken it. I can't do it though, not with the shield."

And then his eyes turned slowly to Agnie. If anything they were more focused then they ought to be, as if he was looking right through her. There was a manic, desperate look to them. It was an unsettling gaze, made all the worse by the fact that the ground was tearing worse and worse as he paced. Ruin seemed very close on his heels now. "Agnieszka, it's got to be you, ok? Ariane will let go of her, and you'll take her hand, she'll talk you through it and you'll give her some of your strength and she can do this. You can do this, Rhaena. You and Agnie can do it and hurt him, make him face us and Ariane and I will do the rest. Just let go of her, Ariane, and we'll do this." He nodded repeatedly. It all made so much sense to him. It was all so damn clear. All Rhaena needed was her best friend's strength and they could bring the fight to the dreamwaker! They could survive. They would have revenge. All it would cost Agnie was a little bit of herself, right?

[Carnath-Emory]

Malaroth, then. She would rather turn her eyes from the sight of it, but that is a cowardice to which she'll not surrender herself. It would be inescapably wrong to demand a thing from Rhaena Olwak that she'd not endure herself, and so there is her steady, grey gaze set upon him, cool upon his smouldering own --

Until there's nothing left of it at all.

Only then do her fingers relinquish their grip upon the trader's bronzed hair, untangling with some care. Care which takes time, and that's unfortunate, because during that time young Agnieszka has made the inevitable assumption, and the shriek of her voice draws a cut of slate eyes back towards her.

"I'm making her l -- "

Glenn puts an end to that with his words. Silences her so thoroughly with with his thoroughly unexpected command that for a moment she scarcely breathes at all. This is foolish, of course. It's not the first command he's spoken at her during this. It shouldn't have surprised her this time at all.

Careful fingers, loosening from Rhaena's hair. Careful sword, which has not wavered one inch from its defensive posture, and Glenn Burnie can surely be mistaken for mistaking that. For four months she has been teaching him to attack, but not to guard. Never that. Still...

"You, too?" she asks him, almost casually. "Odin' ebe'tsya, drugoi draznitsya," and there's some half-taunting rhyme to the words, there's rhythm and riddle to the sound of them. Her gaze tilts back towards Agnieszka; the riddle's laughing conclusion is for her. "Kakaya raznitsa?"

The grin resurfaces now, bright and terrible, and like the sword it does not waver at all.

[Jirai]

She watches, yet again. Before tonight, this girl has seen one death. One. Now, in the space of minutes she has witnessed eight, and many of those gruesome explosions - her own fate, did anything happen to Ariane. Eight. She is in shock by this point, eyes wide, tremors wracking her body.

Finally, Ariane's firm grip is loosening, fingers untangling from her hair with a care that might have surprised her, were she in any state to notice it. Still, she remained staring at the remains - until Glenn speaks. She whips around to face him then. Clearly these were words she had not expected to hear. Not at all.

Beyond the initial surprise, there is little change in the scaled girl's staring face. She watches Glenn as he speaks. Then her gaze snaps over to Ariane, not comprehending the swordswoman's words, but watching all the same.

She says nothing.

[channe]

Her voice is cracking, and she's crying again -- trying to stop it by wiping her eyes on her dirty nightshirt, but. Well. Eight, and Aeryn and Cinnabar and Tebrin and Seth and the girl she didn't even know --

"Poniz'te," she says. Oh, no doubt she's heard that from her mother when she was a child and always getting into things. "Everybody's dead. There's just us. There's just us. Oh, God, there's just us."

And then Glenn is saying something insane, something impossible, and she listens; because what else is there to do?

Destroy the Dreamwaker?

After this?

"Tell me what you mean."

It comes out in a snarl.

[Carnath-Emory]

Hard eyes, from Agnieszka Kaczmarek. Hard dark eyes, and something from Glenn Burnie that's so outlandish she hardly registers it. And a word then, an unmistakeable command so that this has become real dialogue, an undercurrent beneath the music of Glenn's commands. With some burst of soft and skeptical laughter, she flings back at the girl:

"Ver'te mne."

[Glenn]

They were talking over him, but he was more sure of this than ever. It was the only way, the only chance. He wasn't even sure Agnie had been speaking to him. "Rhaena can talk you through it. I did it and I was fine." Well, doing it ONCE made it fine. When he did it more than that, and friviously and again and again and began to prefer it to speaking... well, the addiction followed. Then Lamai Carver's shield followed, and that was why he was of such little use now. "She can call upon your strength if you offer it willingly, especially if you're someone so close to her. I'm sure that the two of you together will be able to restore her power and then we'll be able to get him, don't you see?"

He did not drop the sword, but he did point it down. He would never point a sword at Ariane unless they were training. He went so far as to give his teacher a sheepish yet quite disturbed half-smile. And then he was walking towards her, his defenses down, certainly not expecting her to do anything untoward, really. He trusted Ariane Carnath-Emory completely. He would just walk past her to Rhaena and bring the girl that he would claim to love back to her best friend and they would do this.

[Jirai]

At least Glenn was sure of things.

The mapmaker drew nearer, and her panicked gaze was all for him. "I don't know if it will work! I tried to... earlier... and nothing worked at all." Or maybe that was due to Ariane's hand wrapping around her throat. That aside, though, it had been as though her magic was simply gone.

Besides, Agnieszka had not agreed. Glenn has made a request he had sworn he would not make. Would she agree? Only if Agnieszka first did - and maybe not even then. Ariane had been very clear earlier - what she was to say was simply "no." Perhaps that was why there were nervous glances being cast aside to the swordswoman.