?I could,? Dawn answered slowly, tilting her head as lashes batted in mock-contemplation. ?? but I?ve no wish to.? Her right hand snapped up and index finger extended toward the elder woman. In the trail?s wake whipped a thick shadowed rope, lashing Jaycy?s sword hand harshly and sending the blade flying. Dawn?s finger sliced aside and the whip arced toward the fallen weapon. Tendrils curled around the black hilt at Dawn?s closed hand and it slithered along the floorboards toward the dragonelf.

Jaycy yelped with the sudden shock of pain that coursed through her arm and she rolled, belatedly, too late to recover the precious weapon. Psly drew the right-side knife from its sheath. ?Jaycy!? he warned before tossing it underhand in her direction. They both gaped, though, jaws falling open, as they watched the knife?s blade drip silver in flight, the steel liquefying before their very eyes. ?Drek!? he shouted while his wife echoed the sentiment with a number of more potent curses. He shifted to find cover from Dawn?s angle of vision behind the rail and drew one of his pistols. He got so far as to extend it around that corner before the barrel suffered the same fate as the knife; it melted into huge metal tears almost to the trigger guard. He swore again and flung the useless thing aside.

Dawn laughed softly, eyes remaining on her opponents as she gracefully crouched to retrieve the weapon settled at her feet. ?Mmm, my dear, this is fine craftsmanship,? she approved, running a fingertip lightly over the flat bone. ?Your lover shall appreciate the smooth action as it gets rammed into his midsection.? She smiled, coldly, and eased the sword into rest, tip barely touching the boards she stood upon.

?**** you,? Jaycy snapped, rising to her feet and grabbing the closest chair. She hurled the seat toward the winged one. Dawn glided an inch left, turning from gut up in the process, and laughed softly as the thing sped by. ?Oh, dear, Jaycynda?? She tsked, waving that one finger admonishingly. ?You could have hurt me!? The dragonelf gave a perfectly practiced air of innocent effrontery. ?And you,? she shifted focus to a sneaking, baton-wielding Pslyder, ?? can wait your turn.? Flicking her finger, she mumbled and a short spike burst from the dark behind her and targeted him.

?NO!? Jaycy screamed and spun, pushing both hands out suddenly directly ahead. A rainbow wave of light come to life sped the shorter distance to the man and cocooned him just in time for the incoming blast. It burst into a thousand black sparks upon impact. Dawn sneered briefly and then screeched, too focused on her failure with Pslyder to notice the subsequent blast from Jaycy. A wide bullet, almost a club, of painted energy slammed into Dawn?s shoulder and sent her staggering back into the bartop. Wings crunched against the unforgiving wood and she gasped with the secondary pain.

?**** you, bitch,? the dragonelf snarled back after righting herself. Fingers of her free hand splayed as she drew it back and then forward. Shadow arrows flung from shaded bows sailed toward Jaycy, volley after volley, as the dragonelf strode toward Pslyder, raising the blade in readiness. He scrambled toward his wife, distracted by her danger, reaching out as she barely managed to shield herself from the onslaught. Her visage flickered for him as the arrows exploded upon impact with the shield.

In his haste, a foot failed to find a proper hold on slick floor and he tumbled, twisted ankle beneath him. Dawn smirked and lunged forward, arcing a short slice toward his hamstring. He turned, though, gasping as she sliced the air centimeters from his prior position. Dawn spun in place to bring the sword down toward his arm but found his hastily-drawn baton in her way. She growled and backed a pace, red-gold eyes flicking to Jaycy briefly. Her attention on Pslyder lost, she proved an easy target for his sweeping smash with the baton. Her ankle cracked with the impact and she toppled. Wings mantled as she sought to stop her fall at the knees.

?PSLY!? The redhead leapt into his field of vision, shadow-arrows trailing after, ever closer until they drew too near the shadow mistress. She pounced upon Dawn and set her flat on her back, scrambling to grasp the woman?s wrist that held her sword. Dawn let her claim the wrist, her free hand seeking contact with the redhead atop her. She hissed through the pain until she managed to touch flesh. A soft syllabic chant of three words diffused in the air between them a moment before their own flickering echoes of dark on the ground wisped away and up, blanketing Jaycy. They constricted, binding her ever tighter.

?Jaycy, get offa her!? Psly warned, dropping the baton in an effort to disengage his wife from the dragonelf below her. His hands grabbed at her shoulders and pulled close but proved to be futile as Dawn?s fingers pressed into exposed flesh, clamping down as she peered up at her ?mother?. ?Jaycy! Stop!? He yelled again, both in her mind and out. She finally paused, blinking, and yelped as she realized the predicament. Shaded cords wrapped around her upper arms, forcing the redhead?s hands from the dragonelf?s wrist. Shadows slithered across her back and brushed sweetly over the tips of his fingers before curling up his arms. His attempt to jump back and break contact proved ineffective; his hands remained glued to his wife?s body, no matter how long and hard he struggled. ?PSLY!? she screamed. ?STOP!? Jaycy pleaded, whimpering, as the force of his defection seemed to threaten to rend her skin from the rest of her. He instantly stilled, allowing the shadows to bind him close as they formed a full sphere about him, compressing elbows to draw him closer to his wife.

Frozen and bound as they were, finally, Dawn released her clenched hold upon Jaycy. She shoved against them, pushing them off of her enough to scoot out from under them before she stood and retook possession of the blade. ?Ah, dear,? she chided. ?Perhaps that was not your best idea.? She shook her head slowly, tsking. ?You are so obsessed with saving each other that now both of you are lost.? She rolled her shoulder, wing ridges riding in circle, and leaned down to whisper to Jaycy. ?Spread your pretty little wings for me, bitch,? she drawled.

Jaycy merely spat in Dawn?s face. The dragonelf laughed softly, not bothering to wipe the spittle from her cheek. She encircled the pair, pausing behind Psly. A subtle flick of her wrist sent the blade darting against his back, a short, shallow cut across the spine drawing a red line but not composing much more lasting damage. Twin howls at the sudden injury echoed in the Annex as both felt the harsh bite.

?You will,? the dragonelf promised, leaning her body into the man?s back, soft purr a caress for both of their ears as she spoke to Jaycy. ?And then I will?? She paused only long enough to sweep the flat of the pale white blade across Psly?s shoulderblades, a feather?s kiss against clothing, ?? enjoy removing them. Slowly.?

Jaycy whimpered and bowed her head.

Something outside of Dawn's view, around the corner, down the hall, so very far away, smashed the door shut on its hinges and locked it into place. Those spines beneath the scales continued to strain against hide and scales. "You dared to craft these monstrosities? To bring them near our child? What if those mongrels had broken loose? Taken one of them? Or that-" he waved with his free hand at the blade on the ground, spitting out the words, "accursed thing? What disgrace would tarnish their blood with such an act?" His grip tightened, enough that Dawn could feel her wrists on the tremulous border between becoming dislocated or shattering.

He took the dagger from her hand, and dragged her along with him to the center of the room after his tail had plucked the second dagger from the ground. He released her in there, and flame engulfed him as he lifted the sword. All three blades held in the too-long fingered grip of the Nightmare as he wheeld around on her; as the walls closed in and there was nothing in the world but Skid, and Dawn, and darkness. "Of all Dragonkin, Dawn Shadowsbane, I had never expected you to be just the same as them; to disgrace yourself, to disgrace me... To disgrace the name of your Father as Dragon." A fourth pupil began to split across the eye's surface as the fires burned gold. "What do you have to say for yourself?"

The dragonelf whimpered in eerie echo of the woman who, until seconds ago, had been confined to the metal, shuddering with a fear borne of the monstrosity come to true life; flared into a form she'd never truly known. The Skid she knew was kitten compared to the devil before her. She staggered in the release, surely finally fracturing the wrists as they fell prey to her own self-preservation, using them to stop her tumble to the floor. A short scream, bit off, and she scuttled back, raising the damaged wrists in supplication before his wrath. "I ?" But she couldn't seem to form coherent speech beyond that. At least for many long moments. "She mocks his memory! I meant to honor it by relieving kin of her!" The words came not defiant but wheedling, pleading.

"She mocks, what you had resolved to do was tarnish." The weapons clinked together softly in his grasp. "You would tear apart the final tatters of his memory by murdering the mongrel with these?" He brought his fist up, the blades enveloped in the flame. "You would have yourself, his own child, disgrace your name and your blood by stooping to such disgusting tactics as this? No," The ground split at his side, the unseen force acting as an extension of his maniacal will tearing it apart long enough for the weapons to fall into its chasm before the rift was roughly smashed back together, "you do not deserve to exact anything resembling vengeance upon those two half-cocked Draconic mongrels." He stalked closer, the heat unforgiving. "What do you deserve, Dawn?"

Each cruelly true word brought another jolt as she flinched again and again beneath his verbal onslaught. Wings furled tight, close to her back in visible sign of the contrition his tirade brought to her. "Please?." she heaved, hands drawing closer to her own stomach as she slumped over them. "Please," the dragonelf repeated in a mere puff of breath. "You ?. Suturi ?" Eyes turned downcast, unable to raise them to the thing towering over her. "Forgive me," she finally blubbered. It might have been to Skid, too, or merely her long-gone father.

".." The Nightmare stopped before Dawn, fires burning lower and lower the longer she cried. Two pupils slid shut on the eye's surface. His fists unclenched, fingers limp. "You will redeem yourself and your pride, and through that repent for what damage has been done to the memory of Furyion in your machinations from this day forward. Abandon this pathetic vendetta, and be worthy of his memory." He lowered himself, the fires dead, and lifted her chin with thumb and curled forefinger; the one solitary pupil focused on her, eye swirling with love, regret, rage and betrayal. "Be worthy of me; will you?"

It was his gentling that caused her to truly break. Even as she meekly, weakly, nodded just a bare fraction, her eyes clamped shut, great sodden drops squeezing from the corners to fall into fat puddles onto her own smoky leathers. "I will," she promised with the softest sigh, punctuated by an ungainly sniffle. "I? forgive me," she begged again. When she finally allowed her eyes to flutter open again, they stared back at him, flat and listless. "You are right." The upset caused a major slackening of her speech patterns, the whole of heart, her being shattered in his hellish rebukes and built again in the sudden quiet of his last request. "I ? forgive me, my love." Finally, she truly asked it of him. "My ma? everything." It seemed another word almost passed her lips, but she bit it off before it could come to true life.

"My everything.." He wrapped her in his arms and held her, giving just that hint at the cracks in his armor; that the seed of forgiveness had been in him since first he'd learned of her treachery but that now, at last, the thing could begin to grow.

Her shuddering sobs subsided only upon his true contact with her body. She did not reciprocate, however, arms kept close with dual fragmented wrists. There was no withdrawal from her absolute submission, however, giving a curious un-Dawn-like mew as she melted against him. Finally, she gave the last release, acknowledgement of his mercy. "Thank you," she said. I love you, she meant. I'm sorry. I'll be worthy of you. I promise.