Welcome to Gaia! ::

At the bite of the sickle against his fear shield, he snarled, she hit harder than he might have anticipated, sending him reeling back a few staggering steps.

"You can ******** try." the redheaded hunter snarled furiously, every line of his posture defiant. He couldn't summon his weapon, but he was fairly confident he could take on a mere woman in hand to hand combat. At the very least hed have made a damn good attempt to stall them from attacking killzone - it would buy the other zenquest defenders time.

"But its not quite as easy as you'd think."

In a show of pure bravado, he swung out to try and punch her barehanded.

Insults from a horseman were the most aggravating of all insults, especially from one that put on the guise of a female. He laughed, the sound entirely devoid of mirth, more like a bark than anything else. His own movements were controlled, lithe, thoughtful but far from graceful as he waited for her to move within range once again.

All he could do was tolerate her attacks, hoping Tracey could somehow absorb them enough to keep him alive.

"No ******** thanks. I like being alive, the longer I'm alive, the more bastards like you people I can kill - because there is nothing I enjoy more than seeing you suffer." it didn't matter at all he was unarmed, just the back and forth of battle, the spikes of pain and adrenaline were enough to give him a thrill, to keep him fighting.

He cracked his knuckles and once again swung out in a punch.

"But maybe I can help you with that face."

"Leave my ******** hair out of this." he hissed, his hair always a sore point. The day someone managed to cut it would be a dismal day indeed for him.

Tracey hissed his warnings in his ear, too close, too dangerous, not enough shield left - that this was crazy.

He found he didn't care. Pain was fine, he felt like he was doing something. Even when he missed, even when he hadn't managed to harm the horsewoman even once. He was a sun hunter, fighting was what he did, even when he shouldn't have been doing it at all, locked down for his inability to control his own anger.

But sometimes anger was all you needed.

"S'been nice dancing with you b***h, but I gotta dash." he leaned in briefly as close as he dared before shoving away from her in a single fluid movement, slinking off into the jungle once again.

Something was happening, something that did not actually fit their battle.... Heidla felt as if the world was getting filled with fragments, white and glowing, occupying all the breathing space.

Could it be that again voices were filling her head, telling her what to do and where to go. She felt tired - as if slowly all the willpower and fear were taken from her. Was it the revenge she thought about with such sweet resolution? Could it be that revenge meant just slowly dissipating into nothingness. Voices? Could they give anything but void oblivion?

It was a weird sensation of being fertile soil to new existence. Slowly and inevitably Heidla felt her life going out of her body. No more whims. No more wantonness. No more empty wishes and empty fulfilments. She felt her desires rushing out of her together with her blood, creating crimson flowers on her body. She wondered whether she still could move, or was it... ? No more movements. No more jumps. No more battle dancing. No more getting on her knees, bending her arms, shrugging her shoulders, stomping her feet. It was all going into stone - capricious moments, captured agility, beautiful pas. She remembered her dancing with Calder at the prom, and tried to guess which of the flowers reflected their whimsical tango.

No more sorrow. No more pain. No more regrets. These were adding colour to the flowers growing out of her: dark purple, brownish scarlet, colour of blood and misery. Sore spots of her life. Her miscalculations and her misbehaviours. Her misunderstandings and her inability to accept.

Those stone chrysanthemum growing out of her body made all her interior emotions public, and their timid, pale colouring showed lack of so many things in her life. Has she ever been loved? Has she been in love? Has she ever pitied someone? Has she ever wanted to be close to someone? It all robbed the crystals of their beauty - and for a moment Heidla wished that her life had been different. Was she sorry for what was lost?

She lived in a golden cage in the middle of a dark frozen forest - a pitiful creature, just to think about it, a double entrapment. She thought about her past - were they lying to her all this time? Was she kept in ignorance? Could it all have been changed? Could it have turned out differently?

She imagined herself being an Amityville student - a carefree scareling neither burdened nor embarrassed by world domination. She grinned. She was brought up believing that such a life was meaningless and useless - but now, turning into a stone flower she was longing for such simplicity. Who would care about death without knowing life first, but did she know why?

It frightened her. And she did what she had always done when frightened - she called for her mount, and clutching its soft silky fur she murmured and soothed her troubled self to dissipation.