Open Don't Never Look Away [Tinnok]

[Razkar]

The blade sucked and slid free from his leg as she drifted away from him. It should have hurt, but it didn't. Just a dull, perfunctory acknowledgement of an injury, an aching that was not important. What was important, though Razkar did not know why, was the shcok and grief that rippled across that hated snake-like face.

But it was changing. Shifting. Coming back... and then with one word-

"Eagle..."

-he saw his friend again. He saw his Wolf.

"I'm so sorry."

The shadows keened and screeched around them as she seemed to collapse into herself. Her face may have changed, but her body spasmed and jerked around her, as if warring against her own insides. Her eyes were as he remembered now, and he did remember.

The red mist had faded. It still throbbed and scratched inside him but Razkar knew who he was again. He was a warrior, not a beserker without soul or honor or purpose beyond shedding blood, any blood.

He grunted as he tried to get to feet and the shadows lengthened... claw-like tendrils snaking towards her as she bowed her head, despair breaking her into fragments. They sought to claim her, he realized. A lifetime of anguish and pain, disgust at what looked back at you whenever you looked in a mirror, all shattering inside her.

They feed on that, a voice said, and he was not sure it was his own. They wait for the darkness to come, with rage and tears and grief... and then they sup until there is naught but an empty husk.

"No..."

It was but a mention of a whisper, but the word rippled out as the shadows seemed to cloak here. The male snarled with a fury born of righteousness, not mindless hate and black lust. His wounds seemed to knit under him, pain present but adrenaline firing through him far more than in the... other world.

"No."

The shadows paused, some confusion in them now, even as the first smoky claw caressed her weeping face, hiding from his eyes in shame and disgust. That disgusting, ghostly, ghastly touch was all he needed, and a surge of fierce protectiveness burned through him like flame through tinder.

Razkar swept to his feet, tall and proud and knowing who the petch he was. He strode forward and planted himself next to her, and when his bare feet hit the ground he could hear the blow like a hammer on an anvil.

"I am a Child of Myri." He snarled at the shadows, dancing around them now in mingled amusement, fear and anger. "We are Children of Myri. Warriors of Taloba. Kin by blood shed and backs watched. You have had your games, be you demons from the Nether or the poison of our own minds, but that ends now!"

He raised his ax and gladius and roared, sunlight radiating from the weapons as if on his command and his voiced rose to match it.

"I am the Wrath of Myri... and you will have no claim over her!"

The shadows wailed and massed for some sort of retaliation. Razkar did not know if he would remember this, if he could even... die, in this place, but instinct told him that these shades would be the end of him more than those meat sacks he had so easily slaughtered before.

But he stood his ground. His feet did not stir from their path to his friend.

Because that was what she was. Her name... Her name was Tinnok, he remembered with perfect clarity. And he would not leave her to the deep darkness.

OOCDamn, that felt awesome to write...

[Tinnok]

She felt the shadows pulling at her frame, the Dhani reveling in its freedom and the underlying shame of her actions. She had lost control of the monster within, just as she always feared she would, she had hurt someone she cared for, her friend and comrade.

But clawed fingers sunk into the ground, angry with herself, and the Dhani's eyes widened. She was cowed and ashamed, yet it should not be so, and even as the thought pervaded her mind she heard the Eagle's voice. No

She saw the mark of crimson sew itself back together, and felt a vein of strength slide through her being like a water serpent. She focused upon the scales. She did not will them to go away, nor hate them for being there. She would never be a Myrian...not the way he was, not the way her mother, brother, or sisters were.

She was a snake, clever, cunning, and vicious, but she too was a Myrian warrior. No.

His voice was more firm, and so too was Tinnok's mind. She was an abomination. Yet how strong had this made her? For every inch she gained her brethren pushed her back a foot, and yet every time she had been broken and discarded, the reptilian whelp had returned, even more stubborn and determined than the last time. She was an abomination...she was so ashamed of herself, and hated it, yet so too was she proud. That her lungs still pumped with jungle air, and that every day her hands became steadier. That she had failed to be a true solider, yet took care of her jungle in Caiyha's name, stewarding the land of her people.

She was their abomination....his wolf.

And as he cried to the heaven's a strange mixture of Myri's champion and Syna's child, his dark counterpart rose. If he looked, shadows still coiled around her being, hiding from the rays of light that streamed off of his body. They swirled and amassed around her, stroking her flesh asking for purchase. Most of them evaporated, but some...some sunk into her pores and dug deep down. She would not make a comparison between Syna and Leth....yet the thought crossed her mind for the vaguest of moments. Her claws shrunk, her skin returning to its normal color, and slowly Tinnok pulled down her wolf's hood. She was a snake and she was the wolf. He was a killer, soldier, warrior, friend.

They were comrades. His name was Razkar, and a warrior who she would be honored to die beside. She lifted a hand and circle of shadows hung in it, suspended above her flesh. She clutched the ball and felt it sink into her skin. She knew the Dhani pulsated just beneath her skin, begging for blood...this too was just another part.

He the Eagle, She the Wolf.

She let him speak, for there were no words that she would say that would match his fervor and triumph over the strange bloodied glade they inhabited, even as the corruption washed away. A gentler breeze rolled across her face and the wolf smiled softly.

She walked up beside him, the plane they stood upon raising to form a strange elevated hillock over the faded greenery. She neither sullied his words nor aided them...for something within her gut told her this was his realm. It was strangely beautiful in a savage primal way...befitting the two wild creatures they were.