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Some responses transcend words. There was no explanation, no preparation no more words save for the writ. For Lady this writ had great meaning because for her, and her alone it was final.



Such power, in the hands of darkness? The idea itself seemed folly. Teira had blood lust. She not only enjoyed fighting, she enjoyed the most twisted and gruesome aspects of it. But that was darkness. She was her element. And was not the ability to end life necessary to fight those that would do worse? Must you not be willing to give your all?



Lady took a step back, and off the ground hovering in the dead center of the magic circle. Her hands clasped over her breasts and Lady Glammour the blade could be seen hovering within her.

There is no blade as strong as I.
The strength of my every cut, is the power of your resolve.
There is no blade as bright as I. In the darkness opposite illumination you shall be as no other shadow.
My power is infinite. As infinite as the space in your heart.

Lady's voice was booming. It had to be booming because the clamour and banging echoing all around them was damned near deafening. But she spoke, loud, clear, the voice which uplifted a thousand armies and set them a thousand crusades. The strength opposite the soft heart.




---

Outside, two figures stared at the gymnasium wall as if it was a television screen. One figure had both arms folded behind his back, the other hand them crossed in front of him and had taken to biting his fingernails. The first figure was stoic and still. The second figures lips were taking on a reddish stain because his fingertips were beginning to bleed.

The second figure spoke.

It'll never work. Not with something like this. This is ridiculous. I'm going in there.

He said, as he turned for the gymnasium door. To which the second figure calmly responded.

Lady Teira trusts you.

The first stopped in his tracks, his hands just inches from the door handle.

Can you not trust her?
Its not that, its that the--
I know my collection. This will work.

---



Lady's hands opened, her arms extended wide in front of her as if she was offering a hug to a rotund fellow. From her chest, the sword hovered forward as she spoke. Her first few words were lost, the banging had become absolutely unbearable. It was so loud one could barely hear themselves think. Anyone with supernatural hearing was officially being introduced to hell.

And then, one blast of white which once again illuminated the whole room and yet seemed to surround Teira and Lady in a flash instead of flooding them. It was almost like a magical "Be QUIET!". Lady spoke again. The room fell immediately deathly silent.







Lady Glammour now hovered before Teira, mere inches from the ground. She need only stand and grasp it to complete the ritual.

Teira's eyes reflected the light, glinting in the shadows that surrounded her, helped her stand on these new legs. She stood tall, even as her legs trembled with strain, even as her head pounded, an echo of the endless banging. She was still, statuesque, save for the slow rise and fall of her chest. Her golden gaze was fixed on Lady's own, as if there were nothing else in the world.



The room was alive. It was as if the whole room, no, the whole manor waited on Teira's decision. History itself would be rewritten with the tale that started here. Light and Dark together? Lady's writ was near it send and quickly the cusp of legend was approaching, and everyone wanted a say.



Black blood dribbled down Teira's chin as she bit her lip to keep from screaming in agony. Her body demanded she seek refuge from this racket before she was driven mad, but she could not, would not, move from this spot. Sweat stood out on the shadowling's brow as her whole body trembled and by will alone she remained standing.



Lady would like to think that the silence that followed was her doing. That the house quieted because she flared herself and ordered it to. But it did not. The house also did not quiet because of reverence from the moment. But it did, infact silence, silence so quiet it was defeaning and blinding. Silence which made everyone of Lady's words carry extra weight, and meaning.



Silence, before the storm. And finally the moment was upon them. Lady finished speaking. Teira was left to make a decision and without hesitation it was made.

Teira's heart skipped a beat, even as she took a deep breath, exhaling as she reached forward.

Accept me, and you shall be...



And then someone, some inconsiderate b*****d of a being, at the very cusp of the speech. In what could arguably be said was the "Speak now or forever hold your peace." Someone, made a bang.

It wasnt a heavy bang, instead it was a quiet, dull noise. It was so dull and low infact that its lowness was the reason it stood out. The room had fallen utterly silent, if anything moved it would be heard. And what would be heard was this.

[A Beautiful Lie]



Shadows whipped up, scared and protective, they came from the folds of Teira's close, from the darkness beneath her feet. They touched her hands and pulled at them just enough to stall them from the hilt of Lady Glammour for one moment.



What happened happened all at once and too fast for anyone to stop it.

Lady Glammour's eyes went from stoic and calm to representing something that they had never before. The very fact her spirit face had never shown this emotion, made it all the more profound it was like black thrown on a snow white canvas. It was fear.

Before Teira could touch the hilt of her would be sword, two black horizontal lines whipped through the image of the blade with a whirring sound similar to the sound you get when you twirl a knife. Suddenly there were two clean although slightly skew lines bisecting across Lady Glammour's hilt, and somewhere around her the middle of her blade. Teira was struck. She was struck hard, and she was struck twice. The force of blows was so intense, that it was quickly carrying her back and away from Lady Glammour. The whip so fast it came like a rush of drums and a powerful guitar riff.

It did not however allow her to be blind to swords last moments. Teira would see in all detail as Lady Glammour's hilt clanged to the floor one way, the bottom half of her blade another, and the midsection a third. In cue with the sword, the remarkably beautiful spirit of Lady was also bisected. Though as Teira had noticed the spirit was surprisingly real, and its death was every bit of that realism. Her head fell in one direction spewing beautiful gold and red blood like milky ropes, and her hips and legs fell straight downwards, no longer attached to her midsection. As they fell innards spewed in all directions as if dispensed from a can of silly string. Lady Glammour's spirit fell on the pieces of her sword in a wet heap.

With a violet, bone cracking thud Teira hit the wall of the Gymnasium directly behind her. The first thing she would realize, was that she was pinned. The next thing she would realize was that there was a line drawn across her vision. If she looked straight, there was a diagonal line in the middle of her view. That was because a blade had pierced her skull straight between the eyes and was pinning her to the wooden wall. Her body was no more responsive because a second blade was burried in the left side of her chest. Very quickly now, in literal spurts as if from a water gun, black and glowy violet was gushing from her, some splattering to the floor, some stained her dress, some dripped inside the fabric. It was warm, but already her finger tips were going cold.

Lady's last words would replay in her mind.

Accept me, and you shall be.....

And thats, as if cued, is when when they came. They came from the far wall behind where Lady was once hovering. Two figures zoomed as if tracing the path of the blades that had attacked and impaled Teira. Both were fuzzy as if completely out of focus. One wore a black hooded cloak, there was a face beneath but it was blackened. The other wore a blood red hooded cloak and was similarly blackened out. But even despite the blackness it was clear that that one was grinning hysterically.

Both figures rushed directly up to Teira. The one in black grabbed the hilt of the blade in her head. The other grabbed the hilt of the blade through her chest. They pressed the blades deeper, and then answered Lady's last words. In tandem they said.



Teira would be able to feel her blood vessels tearing open, veins gushed life blood, the wood behind her creaked. Everything was very real in this moment. Just as her birth moments ago, things were twice as real now in her death. Both figures were so very close ignoring any sort of idea of personal space, in leu of hot breath and stares from empty shadows were eyes should be.

Before she could say. Before the thought the question could even come to her mind, they answered it. They spoke separately. The black cloaked figure bore a voice as smooth as silk, as slithering as tar, as dark as night, and as cold as the death she would now feel creeping over her. The red bore a voice wicked as sin and vice given form, and as twisted as we might imagine hell. It did not speak so much as it screamed with a passion and rage, and desire. The question was whom, the answer?


The last bit was screamed by both brothers so loud it could deafen an elf. At the same time, both brothers moved. The one in black jerked to the left, the one in right to the right. The blade in her chest, made a <3 shaped pattern and then tore free out of her side. There was a wet plop as a once vital organ hit the floor. The blade in her skull, jerked horizontal like a lever. Its double ended edge immediately tore through one eye and then as the sword escaped ripped the other in two rendering them immediately useless.

Teira had lost too much blood, her feet would not hold her. She would slump the ground as both swordsmen pulled away from her in opposite directions, and then met at a point a few steps in front of her detailing a heart shape in the blood on the ground. Teira at the point, the brothers at the point.

Both swordsmen had their back to her, both held there weapon with its hilt backwards and aiming directly at the elf. Their grips were high on the hilt, as if offering another hand to grab each of them. Somehow, althrough blind, she would be able to see them. And clearly, there was definite cloth and shape under those cloaks, but her brain was, infact dying.

She had seconds. A handful of ticks on the clock to make one decision that the Brother Harite made painfully clear in a low spoken tone.

One man's hand was placed on the wooden wall in front of him as if it were a window. Its fingers were splayed out wide. The hand twitched, and spasmed and shook loose a few long pale threads of bandaging. Black splotches pooled beneath and through the white medical wrap, staining it. If could have, the hand would have reached through the wall, and grabbed and squeezed and comforted. But it could not.

Behind him, another mans hands were folded behind back. Though, in a moment one of said hands would be moving to adjust a monocle.

Yet neither set of hands was big, strong, or magical enough to grasp or hold the emotion being expressed and in that single explosive outcry. The raw purity of the scream and everything that drove it, burst through the wall, a palpable and tangible thing as it rolled over and through both men. It was a just rage, a deserved anger, for the loss of something and someone truly grand. And for a good moment no words were said, nor need be.

A great good had just been sacrificed for...well, perhaps alignment was not an issue worth discussing at the moment. The only constant was that in the heart of one man, the prize gained for the cost paid, was definitely greater.

Then there was silence. And then it was viciously broken.

- WHAM! -

The sound was loud and wet and followed by a series of pops and twisted breaks only all to familiar in nature to all members of its audience. The hand, pressed against the wooden wall snapped into a fist. Its knuckles white as they impacted the wood and sent small cracks and fissures through and against the grain. The hand's owner had a face like a macabre painting. It was a horror scene, a comedy all wrapped in one. The edges of his mouth were twitching and fraying, curling at the edges like loose threads to make an uneven and warped fledgling smile. But even as he smiled, his eyes said he felt atrocious, even guilty. His other hand, his left hand rose to the side of his face, its fingers softly pressing to his cheek, as if prepared to attempt to manually straighten the smile away. The Gentleman begged, how could he smile at such a horrible thing? How could he enjoy this? But something else, asked how could he not? In a tone both saddened, and yet also reminiscent of a maid who had just finished cleaning a room only to see it in disrepair he said.

Do they have to be so rough?

Meat hit the floor with an audible wet smack. He could see life draining away. The style, the execution, the direct flair of it all was vicious. Was that jealousy? His hand was only a few feet from her...and yet...was his tongue running along his lip. This was wrong. This was Teira...and he was...

"Nii-chan?'

It was not said, but it was felt. She reached out to him. She touched him.

Knuckles scraped sharply against wood, and the owner of a black stained and bandaged hand jerked himself away from a wall, disgusted. Behind him, hands moved to adjust a monocle.

With disheveled bandages hanging like vines, he vanished down the hall. The other man simply bowed, then silently waited.

Beyond a wall, inside the altar that was the gymnasium, a sacrifice had been made, and now Teira offered herself.

Her actions were eternally more than just an agreement. Her arms moved with the forces dwelling inside of her. She offered her hands which were her flesh and blood, but she also offered her power...the shadows the pushed and nudged her forward and the black-purple twilight flame that raged and whirled...but most importantly, she offered that which fueled her powers. That which could be taken in flesh, but never in spirit...she offered her rage, her hate...her emotions...her soul.

Teira's drained and weak hands, even paler than previous reached for the two offered hilts. And in the moment her fingertips gripped the cold, and burning melts respectively, both hooded figures released both blades and immediately grabbed her wrists. In a heartbeat the blood sprayed heart on the ground ignited in a brilliant golden.

Where as mere seconds ago, the shadows were softly shoving Teira, and the flames were lashing and swirling, now the shadows exploded throwing her forward like the arms of large men as opposed to the hands of children. The flames combust upon themselves of their own accord, and launched her like a rocket, straight upwards, high up over the center of the heart insignia, still burning gold on the ground below. Both hooded figures pulled her by her arms as they soared, and a sickly twisted cackle filled the air.

Shadows rushed out in all directions, dancing on the walls in twisted shapes and forms, the sort of which fill children's dreams with nightmares and scar adults with a healthy fear of the dark. Monstrous shapes scurried across the walls, some two dimensional, while others seemed to be trying in their earnest to peel themselves free and force their nightmarish birth. At the same time, a conflagration erupted. It blast outwards in a chaotic maelstrom, a cleansing flame burning away at anything it touch and leaving in its wake a twisted and horrible darkness that spawned yet more terrible shapes and creatures. And above it, through it, and amongst it all, slithering through like snake, threading over and under like a needle, was laughter. Booming, vicious, and all together empty laughter. It burned the soul, and chilled the blood. A bit over a dozen feet off of the ground both hooded figures spun, caught in a spiral of their own making. Their forms blurry save for the matching red and black streaks they left in the air like tattered ribbons.

In a moment the room had become absolute chaos. Shadows danced opposite a kaelidescope of flame which left blackness in its wake, a blackness which warped into monsters which spewed flame and then all over again. More and more, until a sudden climax.

Then, suddenly they stopped snapping Teira still as they tugged her arms in opposite directions. The wound in her scarred and bloody chest was now gaping. Both Brothers, holding an arm in one hand, craned the opposite arm back, lining up their fingers with the heart wound, eagerness pouring off their shadowed out faces and then...

They stopped.



Said a violent screaming voice. To which an ice cold tone melodically responded. Both figures released her and shot off in either direction, lashing and whizzing past her, debris darting through a tornado.

I believe, its a seal. A complex one.

Its a bomb! SHE'S GONNA BLOW!

But if...

BOOM! Hehehe!

We could...

...We should!

Then all at once both coelesqued into one. Both hooded blurs criss crossed and hovered in from of her, at the center of the storm, and arourrounde and simultaneously they said.

What do you think?

Hesitation.

It was a concept foreign to these two. Any thoughts regarding the well being of another over their desires, were thoughts which belonged to someone else. The very instant an answer was given their arms stabbed forward like midnight black and blood red spears respectively.

She would not be able to feel the arms enter her, that sort of sensation was reserved for being of a physical nature. But she would be able to feel five scalding points, matched by five impossibly cold and twisted points as ten fingers wrapped around something at her core. Not exactly her soul, yet close. It felt as if they were scraping at the surface, clawing at something stubbornly stuck. It was almost teasing, they hadnt actually touched her, but something close to her, something just outsider her "skin". Fingers scratched and tore in the same manner one might tear at an annoyingly stubborn price label on a CD.

All the while, the tempest of shadows and blaze roared around her and them. It was a cyclone, with a heart shape at its center. It bent and arched and bucked at times, angry limbs reached inwards nearly touching, but never actually connecting.

Both hands had dug vicious furrows under and around the offending sticker, and together they began to pull. Immediately white hot veins of pain would shoot through her, it would feel as if someone were trying to manually remove her skeleton through her chest. Or perhaps even pull out her heart and her entire circulatory system with it. Vines and lines and connections snapped, and twist and broke, making exploding points of agony along the hot web of pain. And they pulled. If she looked she would see two arms previously buried up to their elbows pulling back, slowly but surely. She would feel like she would be sucked into their burning cold grip if not for her own skin which held her like a prison. Wrists were visible now, and they were dripping with some sort of sickly black goop. The base of two palms came into view, and the ichor was tainted with the fringe of something deep blood red...One brother said.

If we pull any farther, it will...





And in one sharp motion both hand wretched out of her, before pain, before cold, before discomfort, before anything else there was a...



Teira had experienced the feeling of suddenly becoming very small as she moved between bodies. She had also experienced the feeling of becoming suddenly large and filling every nook and cranny of a space. And this was something like that, only, as she suddenly expanded she would quickly come to realize that there were no nooks and crannies to fill. There were no borders to this space but still she was expanding quickly across it, pulled outwards by some unseen and unrelenting force. She would be pulled until it felt like she was about to tear, but tearing was a release she was not granted she only stretched farther and faster. And then like a pane of sheet glass unceremoniously dropped, she shattered.

All at once Teira was no longer one mind, perceiving events from one location. She was a thousand, thousand, small fragments seeing from a thousand thousand different angles, feeling from a thousand directions, in a thousand ways. Teira was countless sparkling points of lights like stars which now dotted the vortex of fire and night which had surrounded her. Teira was countless pinches of light borne along by a spinning storm and carried across the room. She saw from every angle, she felt as every shard flipped and turned, she felt the touch of warm embracing flame, and the darkness around and behind it which shielded it. She felt it all but lacked the consistency to turn it all into one feeling, instead it was a sudden overwhelming rush, with no brain to process it. It was chaos. It was agony. And yet, for a moment it was also liberating. It was temporary freedom from the agonies her flesh was undergoing.

Now the storm seemed to take shape, as if given life by her presence within it. It arched and waived, lashed and convulsed then focused into one stream like a giant undulating snake of twisting fire and deathly black. It swirled around the gymnasium, around both brothers and Teira's floating, seemingly lifeless body as it hung before both cloaked figures like some sort of inanimate and broken doll. She would see this all from countless eyes, shards of herself which dotted the storm like stars dot the sky. The storm was a single swirling serpentine coil encasing it all. Its head was shaped like a roaring maw. It rushed for the brothers and then past them, its flaming black jaws opened as if to swallow Teira's body whole and then...

Nothingness. Silence. It seemed to last a small eternity.

And then in the silence two voices were whispering to one another. Something so faint and distant it bordered just on the edge of her hearing. Almost taunting. There were chuckles, and giggles like small children at play, and slowly Teira's eyes began to open.

Her body would ache no longer. The wounds given by the Brothers Harite had been removed, healed, her form it appeared had been restored. Copious amounts of blood however, remained, temporarily blocking a view as to what extent she had been restored. Scars? No? It was impossible to tell. What she would be able to tell was that she was lying down. And that the awkwardness, and clumsiness that had accompanied her new form, previously, still remained. Also that in her hand were two blades, one red, one black, that at her back were two sheaths, one red, one black, and that on her wrists were two bracelets. One with a black band, and a large red gem, the other with a blood red band, and a large black gem. They seemed far too large for her wrists and yet just small enough not to fall off. The blades, the sheaths, even the bracelets all carried a sort of gold trim, as if delicately gilded by a master craftsmen.

There were more chuckles and then.

Oh, oh, she's waking up.

Quickly, no, not like that, hold it properly.

Teira's eyes would open. While she could not see them, they were changed things. Jet black with a burning blood red core. Not so much a pupil as it was a single spot of blood red that seemed to shine through the jet black outside. She could see, and what she would see first, was...Lady Glammour. She was standing several feet away from Teira, her arm outstretched.

The Lady did not glow as she did previously. She did not hover, and she did not seem to be breathing. Her mouth was slack and open, and she spoke.

You did well little elf....

She said, in a voice which sounded absolutely nothing like Lady Glammour but instead like a snickering child doing their best impersonation of a uptight parent. It was then that Teira's eyes might adjust enough that she might notice the flaws in Lady Glammour's image. Namely, how her lips did not move when she spoke. And how her upper body seemed someone uneven with her lower body. And how her midsection, seemed almost disattached...and upside down. A cut in her dress revealed that her belly button was floating around where chest began...A someone annoyed voice whispered in a tone, only an elf could have heard.

Your holding it wrong again.

Tehehehee. Shh, shh, she can hear you!

And quickly Lady Glammour's midsection spun and corrected. Though even if that was not obvious enough, the two sets of hands holding the three dead mutilated parts of Lady Glammours body, and holding up a limp arm were now about as clear as day. Still, the snickering mocking voice said.

Rise elf, rise!

You are not very good at this.

The arms of Lady Glamour, which just so happened to both be part of a midsection chunk of her torso extended out as if to embrace Teira. Of course, inches above her shoulders was a crooked head, and inches below her breasts was a dangling midsection. The Brother's tried to make the best of it, but it was bound to be sloppy.

"Heh."

They grinned, though for one the grin was indistinguishable from the black of the hood save for black smoke that exited with each breath. From the other it was a burning red line from which embers poured. Teira leaned forward, her face inches from their hoods, she would still see nothing but blackness and smell nothing but her own gore on the gym floor. The Brother's seemed mostly unaffected by being stabbed. Perhaps at a later date, when the trio was most closely nit this would have been threatening. Perhaps even after she had learned their names. But for the moment, beyond what she saw the swordsmen did not exist. Her swords hung in the air. Black breath moved evenly from one unflinching hood. Embers rolled from the other, as it looked down and up and down again. Seething with the outrage he felt toward being stabbed with his brother as opposed to with himself.

"You wanted me? Well you've got me. But know ye'now, the strength of will of those who bear the name Dark."


Silence, this is the important bit.

"I will NOT be ruled. It is YOU who are the wielded. If this is a fact you cannot accept, then it is your own folly that you twined your fates with mine."

The body of later Glamour fell to the ground with a splat. The gauntlet had been dropped. Teira had laid down her terms, her laws, and now both the brothers stood perfectly erect and still. Their mouths curled into grins.



Your name is borrowed...

Your soul is borrowed...

We are borrowed.

You have earned nothing on your own.

Certainly not freedom.

I for one have learned the strength of tongue, belonging to those who hold the name Dark.

And your maker talked forever.

You will have what we give you.

You will be given, nothing.


At once, with unpracticed and yet flawless choreography both brothers grabbed the respective swords buried in their respective chests. At at once both brothers vanished. One in a violent but silent swirl of shadows. One in an explosive burst of flames. How such things were visible in Shadow Island there was no light, and for one who had no eyes...no one knew. But as the brothers vanished, they left a single echo.

We shall see.


There was only silence, and darkness. And then the door opened to the gymnasium, and in its open doorway stood Walter. The stately butler looked the same way he looked when he served dinner, or tea, or planted plants. He was calm, reserved and proper. If he noticed Teira's gore...as she was the only one capable of making gore, the Lady Glamour was only a spirit, he said nothing about it.

"Ah, excellent. It seems all went as planned." The Butler finally said, breaking the quiet. Instead, very calm, very discreetly he crossed the gymnasium floor to come to a stop beside Teira. He bowed. "The Master has continued on ahead, he requests you three join him in his personal training room down the hall, and three doors to your left."

Walter paused, remembering how Teira had wobbled into the gymnasium earlier. "Will you be needing assistance?"

The Skellion did as Skellion's do, as they are programmed to do. It bowed, a motion made visible only the drop and rise of its two glowing eyes, and then it flattened. Its entire body turned almost completely two dimensional, flat as a board with a flat mask, and deflated gloves. Like this, it fell backwards until was flat on the floor, and then as fluidly as a snake it slithered away toward and under the large manor doors and out of sight entirely.

It did not take very long, not very long. Before Joshua could close on the double doors, the Skellion's flattened form slithered out from under the door, propped itself erect and then, in all almost comical way it popped itself back into the third dimension assuming a humanoid width and form.

It bowed, and then offered up both white gloved hands which held in them a small black necklace with a charm designed to look like a stylized swirling eye. And then its mask face split, right where its jawline should be. Which is to say that the top half of its face leaned awkwardly back like a pez dispenser, and the bottom half stood mostly in place. And from the black space in the middle a calm, proper, and aged voice came through. It was Walter's voice, a bit grainy as if being played from a record. "Will you be needing a bath drawn Sir?"