[Malevolence]

((OOC: Yay an opportunity to write a novel! This could take a while, so don't be surprised if I put an "I'll finish this later" at the bottom of this post. Blah))

Taere was pleased with his attacks. The first partially feigned attack, as he expected missed entirely, as Ouri was expecting it full on. She easily dodged the spike of acid, but turned too late to intercept or avoid the second. The barb of acid struck her squarely between her deltoids, pressing hard with its caustic burning into her spinal column. The skin on her back began to boil, and turn a deep purple from sub-dermal bleeding and instant bruising as her capillaries collapsed and liquefied. As the acid burnt into her spinal column, her nerves came into contact with the mordant liquid. She instantly began to seize and convulse as her reflex neurons fired off signals to inhale. Instantly her lungs filled with stale air and dust, and a thousand different dead microbes from the old Dwarven air. Her coughing only got worse as the dust irritated her alveoli, turning the porous tissue of her lungs a dark brown covered in years and years of soot. Taere turned away; he could not bear so see such pain. This was not what he wanted to cause in people, this was—

NO

A sharp pang in his arm clued him into a problem. The pain immediately ran up his arm, and assaulted his mind. But the pain was not his. It came from Ouri. This was different, and he knew it. There was something lost, something old, and a loss of hope. There was something utterly wrong happening in Ouri’s mind, and Taere had done something to cause it. This was wrong.

Taere’s senses came back to him. His vision returned to normal, from the swirling inferno of thought it had been moments before. Ouri regained her composure as well, and turned towards Taere, rubbing under the hole in her back softly.

“Interesting attack,” she said. “But I assure you, it won't work twice. Anyway, I am interested to see what else you have in store for me.” As she rose, her hair cascaded down her shoulders, unmarred by the scathing acid that had torn into her vertebrae. The red copper hues caught the soft light of the oil lamps, and gave Ouri a new attractiveness that Taere had not noticed before. He immediately shook off the feeling – he was fighting her after all! She again raised the black blade, but this time, hesitantly, as if she was not going to actually use the blade to do battle. Her voice, still wavering, showed a fake sort of confidence in her sword, one that Taere easily saw through.

“I suppose it’s my turn.”

So it is… Taere thought to himself. What he didn’t think or conceive was what Ouri was about to conjure up from her subconscious. At first it seemed that Ouri, too, was to give in to the magic qualities of her blade. Taere readied himself, as a deep indigo glow started emanating from the blade and quillions. Taere’s thought process was simple – Indigo is blue but green with a but of red, so…earth and sky and a bit of fire. This is going to be a sandstorm. With this easy thought in his head, Taere prepared for a barrage of heat and wind by pulling his coat sleeve over his face and closing his eyes, but when the storm did not come, He slowly opened his eyes again. There was no sandstorm. This was something different. The hair on Ouri’s head and neck began to stand on end, as the energy inside her grew. The immense proportions of potential energy stored inside her and her blade was growing exponentially to terrifying levels, yet Taere could not take his eyes off of her. He was enthralled entirely. The Blacksun Filter sent him aural warnings and optical inputs, but Taere disregarded them, shoving them off without a moment’s thought. He was enthralled by this power, almost in love with it…

But this emotion quickly changed. A film washed over Ouri’s eyes as the power began to grow more. Taere’s vision flashed red from the Blacksun Filter’s warnings, as the power was actually physically seeping from Ouri’s body into the ground. Cracks formed beneath her feet as the raw energy seeped out of her. Taere’s thoughts changed slowly from a thrall to a sort of frightened trance. The energy’s color on Ouri’s blade then began to change, becoming first a deep purple, then almost a solid black, and finally regaining color to a bright but deep vermilion red. Taere then finally became truly scared of what he was seeing. This energy was not a true attack or fire of any sort, but an emotion. It could not kill, but it could drive a man mad to the point of suicide. Taere was beyond terrified, he was petrified with the fear of insanity. He had seen what is done with the insane; how they were treated. He did not want to end up this way any less than he was afraid of death, if not more so. His mind was open to Ouri, as hers was to his, and in the psychic channel, he felt one emotion. Guilt.

Suddenly, Taere’s mind was assaulted again, but this time by Ouri herself. This feeling of guilt, at first a simple theme of a psychic channel, now formed itself into a spear and lashed out at Taere through the back of his mind. As he felt this stabbing pain slash at the back of his skull, he heard two words uttered from Ouri’s mouth: “Crimson Tears.” He immediately knew what this meant. He felt it coming up in the back of his cerebrum, moving forward to his optic nerves, through his retinas, and into his eyes. His tear ducts started as the guilt overwhelmed him, but he immediately noticed something. His vision became clouded and red. Blood seeped from his tear ducts, and slowly began to run down his face. Thoughts rushed through his mind: Am I blind? Where am I bleeding from? Blood tears? am I a vampire? How is this happening? Will I bleed until I die? Why did you do this to me? Why did I do this to you? WHY DO I DESERVE THIS? Taere sank to his knees, crying to himself as the red tears tolled down his cheeks, face and neck. They stained his armor red, as the shining silver plates were marred with his own blood.

The tears slowly slowed, as Ouri’s mental assault was concluded. Taere’s mind was in shambles, and he couldn’t seem to regain his composure. He lightly held his sword, and stumbled with it towards Ouri. He made a slow swing at her, which Ouri easily sidestepped. Taere then tripped from his own momentum and fell flat on his face. The blood caked on his face held dust from the stone floor as he pulled himself up to his feet again, and stood with slightly more composure as his mind slowly began to reconstitute itself. His eyes’ red color faded as the blood was washed out with his real tears, and finally Taere was himself again. But this overwhelming emotion of guilt had affected him more than Ouri could have imagined. Taere’s idea of fighting suddenly changed from winning to just ending this fight. Ouri was tiresome, and needed to be removed. His mind moved from guilt to rage that such emotions had been involuntarily awakened in him, and Taere’s eyes glazed over red once again, but this was his own kind of red, his sigil’s red. The scarlet pigment of the Red Dragon.

Taere’s blade suddenly changed. A strong red fire ignited in the hilted jewel of the Malevolence, and the Red Dragon etched into the blue topaz glowed brightly amidst the flamed. The blade of the Malevolence melted itself, extending the end point into a straight blade, and shrinking the jagged edges closer to the hilt. The blade suddenly looked to be the most balanced weapon ever held by any human hand. The blade was a straight, single edged sword, similar to a no-dachi but twice as long as any normally seen blade of the type. The blade heated up from the flame in the hilt, and megan to sear the air itself, lighting the small microbes and dust prticles on contact, and cast off plumes of smoke as Taere slowly swung the blade around in his hand. Knowing he may need the final reserves of this power later, though, Taere held back his rage, keeping the last pieces of his attack from manifesting themselves upon Ouri. An end was enough, overkill was a dishonor he did not wish to engage in. With this heated blade, and red glow to his eyes, Taere spoke:

“That was pathetic. Your ‘Crimson Tears’ are a disgrace to the very color you named. By using this, you have disgraced my family’s sigil and me. My mind was assaulted; my emotions were toyed with like so many small sticks in the hands of a fidgety child. I cannot allow you to toy with the minds of men with your demonic trickery. If I cannot flush out the demon inside you, I will have to take the whole of you out of existence.”

Taere, with his blade scorching and his eyes burning, rushed towards Ouri. He was a blur of red light as he closed in on her form, and as he did so, raised his blade above his head. There was no question that Taere was enraged. But it was not so much his emotions that fueled him. It was those of Ouri, pushed into his mind and reacting with his, that caused this rage. This was her fault, and Taere, with his searing blade, intended to cleave her from this plane of existence and put her in a place where her mind and her demons could harm no one. That place was oblivion. As his blade descended upon Ouri, Taere was finally satisfied that he would have done some good in the world by ridding it of this mental witch, and torturer of souls. A sense of peace overcame him as his blade descended. Then, suddenly a new emotion overwhelmed him. Hope. This one had nothing to do with Ouri. This one was from within his own mind. His hope for life and the reclaiming of a lost soul; this emotion now controlled his actions. Regaining sense from his zealous state, he saw his blade inches from Ouri.

With a slight movement, the blade changed its course. The burning crystal struck the stone tiling inches from Ouri’s left foot. Taere landed stooped next to her static form, as his entire thought process and movement had taken place over the course of less than a second. He looked up at her, and stared into her blue eyes, suddenly noticing a green ring around her pupils thinly blended into her irises. These were not the eyes of a killer. Taere could not do anything to her. He simply stood in silence, and stared into her eyes. Not killer’s eyes, not witch’s eyes. They were eyes of a girl, lost within the demons of her own mind. Taere could do nothing to her…

((OOC: Wow, I just pulled that out of my ass. Gives a new meaning to deep. Or something like that.
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Jeez that’s long. How’d I do that in an hour?

Have fun judging Spike!))