Danse de Danio a Chysgoda
The Mighty

"Dragons we've slain, rescued many maidens fair
And no man ever dared break our stride
Or the brotherhood that binds us."
--Sting; The Mighty









Kal-teb-Kanj'lerwen wasn't something he had imagined himself performing. It wasn't something he relished either even if he was decent at the movement. All Renne allowed himself to concentrate on was that movement and with each passing moment, he got smoother with it. Each passing hour saw him grow more determined.

And more desperate.

The Hunter spoke on, whispering words of twisted truths and tempting decisions. he pushed forward first. Renne pushed him back. He wanted his fire to keep on burning, grow hotter and brighter. He started imagining a ride with Ty'Rekh. He coaxed the feeling of her mane and his hair tangling together in a wild, rushing wind. He imagined the foam and sand kicked up in a riot.
His staff sang with fire.
His staff sang with the sea.
His voice whispered a prayer to the sky.

Renne pushed.

The Hunter pushed back.

Renne pushed again. His feet curled beneath him, digging deep trenches into the snowbound earth. his legs somehow managed to scream through the cold,icy numbness. He still managed to make them move to his will, albeit sluggishly so.
I will not lose what remains.

The Hunter cackled with humour. He could hear Renne's whispered thoughts, even his prayers. And he laughed at each one. The dark staff went behind his back. It curved upward alongside his left hip. It clanged against the silver monstrosity.
I am what remains.
No god will hear you.

Renne's eyes flared. Gold. Then orange. Then scarlet. Then gold-flecked blue. In a bold maneuver, his staff came up under his left leg as it lifted to waist level. Prehensile foot took hold of the silver staff as the demonic Hunter bore down with the bone monstrosity. The move was bold. It ended in a short howl as it came down across Renne's twisting back.
Renne came to the ground and immediately rolled. He prayed again.
I will not fail again.

The solid spectre grinned. The blow may have glanced a bit but it was enough. The victory was a victory nonetheless even if this war was not yet decided. His staff lifted up and back across his slim, skeletal shoulders. One end came down in a wide arc like some sick parody of a golf swing.
He wanted to use this winter cold to his advantage. He wanted to revel in the blizzarding night.
Friends can do nothing.

Renne rolled, barely missing the staff by inches. The displacement of air was enough to scare him into moving with more agility. The animal in him re-emerged. Glad now for his times in the uninhabited wildernesses, Renne silently flashed his teeth in a whispered response. He came up and swept his staff back into both hands. It spun up above him, then down his right side and across the front. The staffs met again in a shrill ring of metal, fire and water against shadow, bone and crystallised rock.
Family. Family.

The chanting whisper became a mantra inside his head. Words were becoming harder to blot out of his thoughts. He had weak spots and they were exploited by an expert.
The Hunter whispered almost soothingly.
Friends mean nothing next to a lover.
Or a brother.

Renne growled then. His legs bent, sending him down and under the Hunter's staff. He smiled as his silver beauty made a sizzling, whistling streak of burning bone down the Hunter's leg. He didn't pay any mind to the dead-flesh stench the Hunter bore. Renne tumble-rolled under him and twisted. It was never wise to put one's back to an enemy.

The Hunter first shrieked in agony. Remaining flesh, cloth and bone in his leg now lay open with a deep black streak. But pain brought with it another thing. Rage. Turning around, he watched Renne struggle to stand back up with malicious eyes.
Renne's thoughts only made the rage perform a psychotic waltz with humour. This battle was hardly the cakewalk he'd foreseen. It was however, this lack of ease that made it all the more crucial for this pathetic blue thing to be wiped out.
I do not abandon Family.

He stalked forward and came to Renne as the imp rose to his feet. Both staffs were spinning madly now, occasionally clanging against one another.
The Hunter pushed.
Renne pushed back.

Push.

Push back.

The sky that had delivered a moderate snowstorm before now broke open with a full-on gale. Rain and snow mixed, turning the ground into a treacherous slush. Dead leaves and freezing rain pelted the combatants in what seemed now like a three-way war. Nature fought to subdue the two against one another. It paid no heed to the exchange of innocent faith and disillusioned cynicism.

Renne repeated the mantra in his head. He imagined their scents surrounding him and their laughter making the air tingle with mirth. Around him, the smell of salt filtered through the air. Behind him, he felt his thoughts take shape. They were mere illusions but now, that was all he had.
Home stood behind him with its doors proudly, warmly open. His candle lay lit in the third floor window. He heard laughter and song from within. Men playfully meting out ridiculous dares. A woman whispering to him with a strange accent-of-accents. Pages of a book rustling as they turned.
A mirage? How pathetic.
-I shall stand with Home.-

Maddened. He was maddened into silence. The killing glow was in his eyes now. The Hunter raised his staff, swept it downward and swept it back up, then around again. Slowly, he backed Renne up closer toward his illusionary presence of the place and people. It wasn't long until he had Renne pinned up against one of the place's open doors with barely enough room to keep his staff going.
He whispered then.

Does Family leave one of its own to burn?

Renne turned his face away, shutting out the question. His silver staff came down as his head came back up. Tears may have stung his eyes but the light in them condemned the old, ancient question of doubt.
He pushed back against the Hunter.

The Hunter pushed back.

The snow, freezing rain and wind pushed down.

And Renne prayed again.

Danse de Danio a Chysgoda
Going Out Quietly

**Rated PG-13, possibly mild R. Violence. Fair warning.**

"We're fools to make war on our brothers in arms."
--Dire Straits; Brothers in Arms









Renne prayed.

The Hunter hated it, wanted it to stop.

His anger had grown and festered, turning the Hunter into a predator. Nothing was held back. Nothing was too low or too despicable of a blow to cast. He remembered the flicker of brown when his staff made thunder upon the illusion's bar. He remembered flickering in Renne's nightmares, remembered walking out of the slick, briny ocean.
He remembered showing Renne his error.
He remembered showing Renne what he was.

The Humans wanted justice.
They would have it.

The Hunter threw his remaining staff piece like a javelin. Idly, part of him wondered how Renne would taste roasting on a spit. He grinned at the thought and did little more than frown a bit as his weapon swiped across Renne's side.
It wasn't a perfect kebab but it certainly was a start.
He loved the smell of raw, fresh meat.

Renne couldn't hold back the scream in his throat. The staff remnant-turned-spear glanced across and under the left rib-crossing. The pain itself forced him to arch his back forward in a knee-jerk sort of reaction. His voice screamed wordlessly while his mind cried out.
He was tired of his world being torn down.

The silver staff was held now between two hands that laid blue to white. The grip was tight enough to draw deep furrows into his palms and fingers but he didn't care. Renne advanced again, too keenly noticing his diminishing agility.
He was slowing down.
He wasn't giving up.
Ar hyd y nos

Renne struck out and prayed.
He prayed forgiveness. he prayed mercy. He prayed strength and he prayed renewal, healing to his home. He prayed for a place that he didn't own but was his all the same. He swept the silver beauty across, then up, then down and had to smile when he heard the Hunter let loose an unholy wail.
Holl amrantau'r s?r ddywedant
It was a small victory. A victory nonetheless. Fancying he could hear a smiling voice in the distance of his mind, Renne let his silver staff slow down, then stop.
He stood up on the illusory Maritime Tavern's floor and pulled out his spyglass. Renne still didn't know how to use it. He still didn't understand the words written on the now permanently affixed message.
All he knew was that it became an object of strength.
Sing and sleep and dream for a while

It was quiet now, both inside and outside the illusory place. The snows had returned to their gentle, floating descent. The sun journeyed across the sky until high noon. At high noon, the Hunter's face turned from a twisted mask of rage into a deadpan, bony thing that bore little semblance to anyone dead or alive.
He didn't make a sound as he turned, stalking out the back door of this place. The Hunter took nothing with him except the shrunken, shriveled piece of his shadowy staff.
I dub thee unforgiven
He walked out into the snow and turned to face the southeast. Darkness was his thought and darkness was his haven. He stood there with his skeletal body gleaming in the noon-day sun. Seaweed and rotting flesh shone as if it were still wet. Much of it was with brine and blood.

He stood there as a sick testimony. He stood there, a quiet malevolence against the otherwise pure and pristine landscape. The landscape was pure. He was not. His opponent clung to innocent faith and hope. He was cynicism and betrayal. He knew the world for what it was.
The world was godforsaken.
And he relished the moment he could tell Innocence the truth.
Innocence. Faith. They had no place.
They were godforsaken in a godforsaken world.
The Hunter smiled and turned around. His eyes blazed now as clouds gathered in the east. The first and second rounds were but the preliminaries.

The time came to pull nothing back.

---------------------------------

The illusory Maritime's front door was kicked violently open. The Hunter stared at the blue creature. He held the silver staff still and had put his spyglass away. His hair was still shorn off and ragged and his tattoo was as vivid as the day he'd had it carved into his left arm.
It was a surreal silence Renne felt as he guarded himself against the approaching Hunter. He said nothing as the silver staff began its twirling, spiraling dance.

His surprise was barely evident when the Hunter swung out and flung the staff away and out onto the snow-covered ground outside. Neither entity said a word to one another. They circled like two predators sizing the other up.
In moments like this, the calm was unreal.
In moments like this, thought didn't exist.

Renne struck first and let his talons do the work for him. He'd gone beyond human-aspiring fighter and reverted back to the old ways of survival. He was an animal now and survived, fought like one. Animals fought for survival of themselves and their kin. That was all. Animals knew nothing of betrayal, disappearances that ended in thunder or scathing words hissed out on a beach.

Animals held nothing back either.

The Hunter's bony arm swiped. He didn't have talons but briny, dead bones were well enough a weapon. The line between living and dead things was very thin, after all. It took so little to turn the living into the dead. It took so little to put a man off his guard and topple him from his pedestal.
Teeth grinned at the blue creature from a face Davy Jones himself would think twice at -- teeth were filed down to Hessian points. Skin was dry, leathery and barely clung to the bones it sat on. Hair was scant, falling in scraggly little wisps.
The teeth bit deep into the leg of their prey.
Never had a living thing borne such a sweet flavour.

The Hunter was on him. Teeth dirty with years of decay and brine sank into the flesh of his right calf. He twisted his back and retaliated with sharp, clean talons of transparent-silver. The animal in him almost growled. The almost-human in him held his tongue.
So long as you remember
Renne grit his teeth and ripped away from his foe. He knew it took a decently-sized chunk of flesh out of him but the matter was, he wasn't being held like a chew toy anymore. Renne ignored the fast-flowing blue that ran down his leg as much as possible. His tense walk became a marked limp as he tried running through the Tavern and out the back door.
He stopped when he heard the first thunderclaps into he sky.

"Squall on the way. Why not go home?"

Renne said nothing. Dizziness washed over him in waves of nausea and he was thankful for his blindness -- only the gods knew what vertigo did to someone with sight.

"It isn't here."

The Hunter gulped down the chunk of lean, almost gamy flesh he'd taken off of the blue abomination and began to mold the shriveled bone-staff remnant in his hands like clay. Standing directly behind Renne in minutes, one hand came to rest gently on Renne's shoulder in a mockery of a mentor's touch.
He laughed when Renne pulled away and limped out into the gathering rain.
He laughed when the creature shivered in the cold.

He didn't laugh when the illusory place melted like ice, turned to dust and blew away in the wind.

The Hunter watched Renne keep limping away -- watched Renne turn his back on the Hunter and quietly denounce him. He watched as the ritualistic battle gained a calmer note. It wasn't surrender. It was wordless rebuke. It was faith being held onto. It was hero worship that shone faintly in the blue one's blood-drenched posture.

------------------------------

He didn't say anything.

Not a word of shame. Not a goodbye. Nothing. He ducked away, revolted, from the Hunter and quietly walked out into the intensifying rainstorm. He shut out the thunder as the storm grew in its strength and moved unsteadily onward. Southeast. To home. It may be bare earth to the rest of Rhy'Din but home was always there in his mind. It was this thought that allowed Renne to walk away and trace southeast. Port South was where he was sent months ago for a deed he never remembered committing. Port South was where he learned about human justice.
He walked slowly southeast in the rain-topped snow and refused to give the Hunter another thought. Faith and hope were still with him.

The Hunter smiled.

He whispered but his whisper carried across the rain and thundering air.

"No god will hear you."

Renne heard it but paid no heed. Several times, he fell when his bitten leg gave out but he never stopped. He couldn't afford to stop. Rain and snow soon caked onto him in icy sheets, soon making crackles and crunches as he moved. He almost smiled with each step further away from the Hunter and his dark voice.

He heard the thunder crash above him.

For an eternity of seconds, he didn't feel the sharp, fiery edge of pain through his back.

He never saw nor heard the skeletal beast he'd fought to destroy dissolve into nothing.

The thunder did well in masking the sound but nothing masked the sharp sensation that rammed through his back and out through the scar his chest bore. The rain washed him almost-clean of the gore he'd accumulated earlier and its cold was nearly to the numbing point.
Renne didn't feel the ground meet him.
He didn't know if the voices he heard were real.

All he did was smile as his body hit the ground.

Somewhere, above the thunder, beyond his unspoken voice, Renne heard a whisper as he closed his eyes and walked off his own battlefield.

Ffyniant.

And he prayed.

Danse de Danio a Chysgoda
Going Out Quietly II: Walking Razor's Edges

"Friendship. Brotherhood. Family. Without that, what is to keep a soul such as I alive?"









It felt everything.

It didn't have to be attached to feel everything -- it was, after all, the thing that held Renne together. It held DNA. It held recorded learned behaviours. It held memories and when its housing felt pain, so did the stone.
The stone, had Renne's heart not been taken out those many years ago, would have been relegated to remaining as just that -- a storage compartment lying dormant within the manifested physical body. Anatomically speaking, the stone if left inactivated, was like an appendix.

Renne's stone was the exception -- it had been triggered to activate.

It had been called upon all that time ago to fulfill more than its dormant duty of storing biological and chemical information.

The duties of the stone now lay in survival and it had one final method of reaching that goal.

The blue-green swirls of colour that warred so strongly against the shadowy black began to intensify; soon adding another hue into the stormy mix. The blue and green swirls blended madly with a bright streak of silverish white -- white-hot soon became a very apt term. As the colours grew both in number and intensity, the stone itself grew hot enough to slowly rise up, away from its holder's beloved grip.

It pulsed, thrummed and flashed desperately within the waves of searing pain it felt. Pain was a thing, Humans said, that let you know you're still alive.

The Humans got that one dead right.

Now, as the silent prayers faded from Renne's mind, the lifestone that had kept him alive for so long began to pull a gamble as desperate as the Dance had been just hours before.

Its pulsing, flashing light shone desperately against the night sky. Its owner lay slowly freezing in the snow. The stone kept flashing on, containing its searing heat as much as possible. Cold was a killer and while the stone too had its limits, it was like its owner.

It did whatever it had to in order to survive.

Danse de Danio a Chysgoda
For Faith's Sake

"Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most human."
--William Shatner, Spock's Eulogy; Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan







The stone had begun flashing and burning hours ago.

It was a desperate, instinctive gamble and in all honesty, it did not think that logically, a prayer to a foreign deity would be answered. Logically, it backed Renne's desperate and possibly vain plea with an ancient, risky survival-game of chance.
Logically, this gamble was the only option left.

Surprise then, was evident when it noted the presence of other life-forms. It reacted with a low, steady hum and a brief colour-change from the wild flashes to a mellow bronze. The stone and its owner seemed in quiet synch with each other as a swift prognosis was determined.
The holder could not speak.
The Stone could.

It did not speak in words but that meant nothing about it being a mute gemstone.

The stone shone now with a reflective light, much dimmer than what it had just moments before. It didn't have a voice of words. It spoke with emotion and image.
And the first thing it released was the shock and the shame that fell upon Renne's mind at the Ides so many months ago.

It was a strange thing; this emotion going from a golden moment and falling into a darkness only met once before. It spoke of pain. Shame. A misdeed unnoticed until it was far, far too late.

The speech did not change this pattern for a long while. The shadows did not recede -- they only grew despite attempts to remain sane and rational.
It spoke of letters; a great, long chain of letters consigned to the seas in a childlike, wishful hope of reaching a dead man. It spoke of naive innocence, foolish innocence and a definite spark of years-long hero-worship victoriously burying a few moments of uncertainty under the dust.

And then the speech changed.

Shock melded with guilt. Guilt bore the fruits of an old/new pain. This pain drew like a parasite upon the guilt and the older shock. It was, in essence, a wound that was fast becoming a festering disease.
And the infection spread like wildfire.

It was something the stone could not handle for too long but needed to convey. It could not dare leave anything out.
Even the dreams.
This is me, for forever
They began like a shockwave, sparing nothing and no one. They spawned the rotting, wretched visage of a man stalking out of the waves to haunt what had become of Renne's mind as a poltergeist.

The stone didn't stop there.

It spoke of this wound of grief-shock-denial-guilt growing beyond what could be handled and a subsequent flight to the North. It whispered a brief harmony and spoke of a lady that had ultimately become a love.
And then it spoke of the unremembered killings of the Dockside Slayer.
Violence turned the gem red as human blood as the stalking dream/nightmare grew into a living/not-living tangible beast of twisted lies and temptation. It was something that Scratch himself might have been proud of.

Then on its last notes, the stone whispered the plea.

Justice. Redemption. Understanding.
And maybe one day, healing.

----------------------------

He felt the cold no longer.

Dark blue flesh had steadily gone into a sickly, haunting shade of pale white-blue like something right off of Jadis' own winter face from Narnia. What was left of his hair crackled and crunched with frozen snow. But he heard/felt his stone. He knew what it was doing.

And he was grateful, for he no longer had a voice to speak with himself.

The human awaited an answer from the stone. He shivered violently, keeping Renne's body shielded from the wind as best he could. Snow began to pile behind him, almost forming an igloo... but he didn't move, and honestly, it didn't make a difference. The Archangels were watching him silently... what did they want? Why did they wait? Azrael's presence made sense... he was the Archangel of Death... and he, well, he knew he was in trouble. He was soaking wet and waist-high in snow. No doubt if help didn't come soon, Azrael would have what he wanted. He didn't know, however, if Azrael would tempt him with the apple... or rip his soul out. He didn't want to think about it.

But Archangel Michael...? What was HE doing here? It kept his mind occupied, kept him from realizing just how cold he really was, kept him from realizing he couldn't feel his toes or ankles, so he focused on what he knew of the Archangel. His name meant, 'He who is like God'. Michael was as close to being the Holy One as you could get, below only Christ and God Himself. He is, rank wise, where, if Christ had not been born, Lucifer was, before the Poison of Heaven went rogue and got booted from Heaven. The human almost chuckled... booted. He wondered if Lucifer was shown the blue screen of doom...?

But Michael was the messenger, the leader of the armies of Heaven, he was THE Archangel everyone turned to. What purpose did his presence have? Did he intend to save Renne? The only way to do that was... was... honestly, the human didn't know anymore. He thought he knew, once, but here in the cold, still half-drunk and hypothermic, all he could entertain was one thought at a time... maybe two... and the one (maybe two) thoughts he had was to save Renne and riddle out Michael's presence. His body carried out thought #1, so thankfully, his half-a-brain could carry out thought #1.5... oh, how he wished he could have some hot cocoa... his last drink was week-old tequilla and sprite... was his mid-term due soon, he wondered...

And thus, the dangerous descent into darkness began. If help did not arrive soon, all was lost. For the human. For the Imp... and that was all the human cared about. The Imp...

"Elske du... Imp..." He whispered, before his lips, bluer than ice, froze shut.

It was BEYOND a delayed reaction. He was half-frozen, half-drunk and just about any other margin of anything else dibilitating you can fit in there. But after a while, he's got no choice but to look up. There is a saying, 'The cold bite of steel'. Well, even if the sword wasn't steel, the human DID recognize that SOMETHING was pressed up to his head.

He didn't say anything. He wasn't even certain he heard her talking... was that the cold's fault or his own? Renne was clutched tightly in his arms, and his own skin was turning bluer than the Imp's. But he looked at the woman with the sword... a sword? I had a sword once... or was that a dream I had? Rambling in his mind, his lips opened with a painful wrench, for they had been frozen shut.

"I... just wanted... to... protect him." He whispered, but would it be heard over the howl of the wind? "My story... is long... difficult to believe... but I know him... I know the Imp. Please... trust me..." He finally made it to Rhy'Din, he found the Imp (with some timely assistance from some Archangels), and he was doing everything in his power to save him, and he knew all too well Renne would not know him... and this woman, whoever she is... very likely wouldn't trust him at all. It was a fools errand he was on... but he, better than anyone, knew what a fool he truly was. He KNEW the Imp... he knew many things about the Imp most people could only guess at. Most likely, this woman knew as much... if not more...

But how could he let go of the Imp? How could he let go, after so long, after bearing the pain of being alone? In his own mind, brief flashes of two people reoccur to him over and over; a human(?) with overly-baggy pants and a perchant for coffee and scones, and a tall, tree-like human with a bandana. They were laughing together, quoting Monty Python. They were digging, bringing up artifacts for school... it was obvious they were close. VERY close, because that tall human was the only one the smaller one would allow close enough to know what happened, shall we say, once in a 'blue' moon... Many years of joy, sorrow, shared tears, even strange, tuneless songs whilst running through strange hallways... followed by a period of silence from the short one. That silence was not directed at the tall one, but rather to PROTECT the tall one from whatever turmoil the short one thought he had to endure alone. Then... then... the enormous, ear-shattering thundering of a gun. The image of the tall one, in the middle of a classroom, unscathed, suddenly collapsing and coughing up blood, as if somehow linked to the shorter human... and then the human, after weeks, maybe even months of being drunk and depressed, threw himself into the ocean, in the hopes of reaching a land most people thought make-believe... and floating there, naming random coelecanths. And here he was, his life force fading rapidly... probably almost as fast as the Imp's.


Michael was looking into the human's mind, and he saw these things. With a wave of his hand, he displayed these fleeting images to the Eye-Holder. Perhaps this will provide some much-needed answers for us all. Because as sure as his name meant, 'He who is like God', he was beyond confused.