• Mature • I. It Can't Be (Max)

[Kasoria]

70th trial, Ymiden, 719

One could get used to anything. That's what he'd always been told, and on the whole, it was true. No hardship or atrocity, no despair or hateful existence couldn't be acclimated to, given enough time and a strong enough mind. He was living proof of that, and how had he learned? By seeing it in others. Men and women who'd lived in squalor and constant, quiet desperation, all across the Oh'Pee. It wasn't quite so much being used to circumstances, however, so much as it was your mind just accepting it. This is reality, this isn't going to change, so deal with it or let us go insane and not have to.

Kasoria thought that could apply to anything, but he had to admit... he couldn't see this place becoming pedestrian to him. Not at all.

The Veil was an ocean, stretching into the horizon and beyond. A great and endless lake of molten silver, not quite water, but not solid... yet still he walked across it. Each step of his boots sent shimmers rippling across the surface, growing smaller and weaker as they echoed silently away from him. The Dreamwalker could look up, and see the suggestions of reality in the cloudless sky. They were the clouds, he realized. Faint, formless things, whispers of reality in the form of cities and woods and nations and-

Fuck me. How do people not go mad doing this?

He chuckled and kept walking, only his eyes were cast down this time. That, he was learning, was where the real wonder was to be found.

Under his feet, everywhere he walked, were the dreams of countless other souls. He couldn't see them, couldn't just observe their Dreamscapes from where he stood in this, his own interpretation of The Veil. But he could see the entrances to them. Dancing under the surface of the ocean, edges quivering, but doors nonetheless. Some were just that, in fact. Gateways ranging from tenement block doors, the same cheap wood Idalos over, to grand ornate apertures of castles, to seaweed- or feather-ringed doors that could only be homes for the minds of Mer and Avriel.

Those strange ones, they made Kasoria smile. He'd never had thought this... talent, this skill that Zarik had taught him, could be enjoyable. It was a means to communicate, and to travel, nothing more. A utility, that the practical, deadly little man made use of, much like his blades or his fists or his senses. But like any skill, the more he practiced, the more pronounced his ability... and like any skill, once it improved, new possibilities opened up. Like the trial he discovered he would not wake into his own Dream, but in this place. For a while he was worried, thinking he'd been cast out... until he looked down, and saw the door to his old home floating under his feet.

He'd reached under the surface, arm tingling and cold yet not wet as he immersed it... and once he twisted the handle, he was back in his own dream. But now, he could leave, and come here...

And go wherever you want. Or, more accurately, to whomever you want.

"So, where will it be tonight?" He asked himself, talking out loud as he usually did within his dreams. "That'n looks fancy. Rynmere? Maybe. Nah... nah, that one looks better. Sandy as shite, Yaralon, but still-"

He stopped walking. He stopped talking. For a while the little 'walker just stared down. It wasn't a doorway. It was barely even an entrance. It was cold, wet iron set into a rough ring of bricks and cobbles. Kasoria bent down and frowned, steadying one hand on the surface of the ocean. Memories, so hazy in his waking life, came rushing back with renewed clarity in the sleeping world. Sharper. Surer. His mouth parted. He... He knew this thing. He'd seen it before. He'd chosen it. Not anyone else. Him.

And not for himself.

"... fuckin' impossible."

The words came out as a whisper, breathy and disbelieving. But there it was, squat and black and ugly. Kasoria swallowed hard. There were only a handful of possibilities for this. Only one of them was good... but he had to know. Bad odds or otherwise, he reached under the surface of the Veil, grabbed onto the sewer grate, took a breath and heaved himself under-

-and beyond-

-and into.

[Max]

Maxine's dream.

This Emean bout wasn't the typical dream she wandered. None of her dreams were very...typical. For a long time they were always nightmares to be avoided by any means obtainable. More recently, they had been recurring, but that had been because of the shit storm she'd experienced before the Fall of Emea. With the help of a familiar..mask...Max had managed to mend what was broken. Now it seemed she'd been ready to move on. This change wasn't one she expected.

Darkness swallowed her. This wasn't an experience that was new. For some time she'd been forced to master an existence within the shadows of some of the worst places in Idalos. Her survival had literally depended on it. At first she was quick to write the thick blackness around her off as another rendering of Level Seven of Slags Deep. That didn't feel right though. The smell of this cavern was rancid, but it wasn't the same as the mine tunnels that imprisoned her. Her nose scrunched. It was a known smell though. That of excrement. The ex-convict took a few sloshing, cringe-worthy steps forward through the new landscape.

Like a fuckin' sewer.

She stopped dead in her tracks, eyes closing as a groan escaped her. Max pinched the bridge of her nose and shook her head.

Like a sewer. Because it fucking is one. Lovely.

She dropped her hands to her sides and let her eyes flutter open again. With a shake of her head she continued onward, aimlessly beginning to wander the dim world of some city's underground. It was a place best left unexplored, but unfortunately, the sort of refuge she'd been coaxed into venturing twice out of necessity. The first time had been enough. Slipping and falling in this type of sludge had been a scarring experience. Dreamscape or reality, Maxine wasn't keen on repeating that clumsiness twice.

The woman wasn't alone down there. Every so often she could hear the squeal and scurry of a rat or the buzz of an insect. Each step, no matter how quiet, seemed to echo far beyond the path she walked. After a couple bits Max grew frustrated. Her walking had been aimless. Each twist and turn of the sewer system was one she followed with blind faith. Forks in her underground road were taken with thoughtless guesswork. Damn did she hate Emea.

At least there's no asshole Immortals dragging me into their shit. Or some gatekeeper dicks demanding I pawn off a trial of my fuckin' life or make some bullshit sacrifices.

Max knew she should've smoked more Ambrosia rather than succumb to sleep. It was an unfair choice each time. Either she was forced to endure Emea and all the Immortals and monsters that lingered in it, or she stayed awake for trials at a time. The former always resulted in her being placed in some sort of unnerving peril. The latter usually entailed her being the chaotic orchestrator of unnerving peril for others in reality. Addiction alleviated the choice from her hands most of the time at least.

She was getting ready to resign herself to wandering the pointless dark of an inescapable sewer for all eternity. Then she heard the noise. Max stopped dead in her tracks and lifted her head. She quieted her breathing, listening to the echoes that thundered through the system. A smile graced her expression. It was the sound of a sewer grate creaking open. That meant one important thing.

There's a way out.

With new life to her once dragging walk, Max pushed on toward the hope of an exit toward the surface.

[Kasoria]

"This... This is jus' like it was. Jus' like I-"

Remember?

Kasoria shook his head as if the motion could dispel all the evidence his senses provided for him. The cold, slimy texture of the stones under his feet. The stink of human effluence mixed up with centuries of rot and mold, a miasma that set a man to gagging without arcs of familiarity. The sight... the sight of these rounded tunnels. The sewage flowing down the middle of them. This was where the city of Etzos disposed of its waste. It was an engineering marvel, one of few such networks in all Idalos, yet it was but a fraction of the tunnels and passageways further beneath it.

The Underground. A whole world, a whole separate city, gouged deeper into the vast rock Etzos was founded upon. Submerged buildings, forgotten crypts, entire streets that had sunken or been forgotten, mines that had been run dry over the centuries and simply sealed back up. Kasoria knew this network. He'd walked countless miles, from his earliest trials of childish exploration to the last, hateful, confused breaks of his time in the city.

He knew all of this. But this was not his dream. Not his memory.

There was a great and terrible wailing above him. As his head jerked up, he saw the roof of the tunnel shake and dust sprinkle down like flour. It even stuck onto his face like it would if he were down there. He wiped it away and found sweat smeared against his hand. What was it about this place? Why was it setting him on edge so much?

You know why.

You remember, don't you?

Kasoria swallowed. No. No, he would not give credence to this... this... pointless guilt. He closed his eyes but there was no refuge to be found there. Not in the Dreamscape. Memories came back stronger here, mingled with the substance of the Emea, untrammeled by the myriad of bodily interruptions the waking mind had to deal with. He saw a black blade, lovingly chosen and purchased, wrapped in cloth and waiting on a table, never to be gifted. He saw a street from a window, going darker and darker as the suns set, a feeling of rising panic and anger choking him as he watched. An old man, gnarled and wrinkled but alive with the power only the feared and cunning could produce, talking him down, convincing the Raggedy Man with clever, careful logic that it wasn't him, he had nothing to do with it, with-

Her.

"Fuck!"

The word hammered off the wet stone walls like a bone breaking. He shook his head again and started walking. He just had to keep going. Keep moving. There had to be a reason why this place was so familiar. A whisper gnawed at him, chewing at the back of his mind, telling him he already knew why it was so familiar. He ground his teeth and batted it away. No. There had to be another reason. It was... just another Etzori. Another child of the gutters, like him, who made these tunnels their kingdom, just like him. There were thousands, tens of thousands of minds who could hold all these smells and tastes and sights with exactly such clarity.

Not her. It can't be her.

He stopped again. Inhaled deeply.

Cow blood. Big guts. He looked slowly up... and realized he was under the slaughterhouse. That slaughterhouse.

Movement at the end of the tunnel. Before his mind was even consciously aware there was a threat, his body was already reacting to it. He turned and drew in the same moment, gladius coming out of his sheath and held high and tight at his shoulder. Pointing directing down the tunnel, ready to thrust or block or slash if he had the spare half-trill to manage the movement. His wide-brimmed had hide his face from the figure, tall and lithe and well-formed, by the looks of it. They couldn't see his eyes, just the bare suggestion of his features... but he could see hers.

He knew it was a her. Features change. They stretch, shrink, become corroded by age or marred by experience. But the eyes never changed. There was always that gleam to them, that window into the soul few things could bar entirely.

Kasoria's jaw dropped as he saw eyes he never thought he'd look at again. The gladius wavered at his side, and he tilted his head just enough for her to get a flash of a look at half his face.

"... girl?"

He bolted.

[Max]

Max moved with thoughts of freedom firmly on her mind. In this dark, vulgar, grim setting, one might've been more inclined to let fear and panic settle in. Why shouldn't they? The sewers were a dismal maze of filth. The sounds of unseen creatures in the shadows squealed and skittered about. Subtle sounds seemed to echo much further through the tunnels, making deciphering its direction of origin a challenge. Yet, other than the abysmal stench and muck, the ex-convict wasn't out of her element.

The Seventh Level and all its dark horrors were worse than this, and had prepared her well for this comparably harmless journey through a city's underbelly best forgotten. She didn't become squeamish at thought of the rats and bugs that crawled about her feet. Then again, it was never those pests that provided themselves a threat to her here at all.

There was something worse.

Over her head she heard the scamper of frightened hooves and the gasps of people who found themselves in the herd's path. Her brow furrowed, distant memory becoming more clear with every passing tick. Etzos. The herd. The sewer. The dreamscape was a bastardized replica of something that had happened long ago. A mission the Old Man had sent her on to help him complete an assassination. There were mixed feelings that came with the revelation.

She could remember her younger self in that exact time. Young and dumb. Ambitious and stubborn to a fault. Pride and defiance sent her running from the orphanage and into the reddened hands of an aged, accomplished killer. She'd sought independence and a sure-fire path to survival in the streets. She'd thought she'd found it. Blood, sweat, and stinging tears had made her an ever-improving student under the Old Man's watchful eyes. From him she learned some of her worst qualities. Lying. Cheating. Greed. Deception. Violence, anger, and blood.

She was earning her keep by the time this memory rolled around. She was earning her way. The orphan was breaking her chrysalis, slowly becoming what the raggedy killer was grooming and molding her into. At least that was what she thought. Then this day came. This wretched, wretched day. She didn't want to remember anymore.

Just get to the opening and get the fuck out of here.

With the roar of stomping hooves and screams coming to an eerie end above, she was eager to make her exit. She knew what came next. A fire began to burn within. She was no longer the scared child forced to flee through the streets for her life like a fawn with hounds at the heels. She'd barely escaped Etzos with her life all those arcs ago. Oh, what she'd give to face those hunters in the open now. The Old Man's people would quickly discover what mistake they'd made letting her slip from their fingers.

Betrayal and hardship had chiseled her to stone. The only language she spoke was violence. Her list of crimes preceded her in Scalvoris, and the hard time she'd served in Slags Deep showed in the scars on her skin and the hatred in her gaze. In an ironic twist, Max had become the accomplished killer the Old Man had tried to create. Albeit perhaps not quite the one he intended.

While one dreamer saw a ghost elsewhere in the tunnels, so did another appear for her. Her feet came to an unsettled halt in the muck. Her brow furrowed, eyes staring into the dark where she knew something to be. Something that stood in wait. Slow, deliberate, wet foot steps edged toward her until the silhouette entered the light cast by a slim opening in the ceiling. Max took a half step back. A flash of emotions crossed her face in quick succession and she processed.

Pain. Longing. Betrayal. Fury.

"You," she snarled the word out with fists curled. Her deep brown eyes were settled sharply on the bearded, raggedy figure resting in her path. He was not marred by time, this ghost. He was not aged to match reality and the time that had passed. Emea had cast him in the exact image she remembered him. "Well?!" her shout filled the tunnels. "Here to finish me off, finally? Now? After all these arcs? Come on then!" Max took a couple defiant steps toward him. "I'm not that little girl anymore, Old Man! Go on!"

He didn't strike. Instead he turned from her and vanished back into the shadows from whence he came. Rage bubbled in her brain, silencing everything else. Somehow that gesture, turning his back on her once again, was worse than raising a sword against her. She wanted revenge. What she didn't realize is that she wanted something else from him too.

Answers.

"Hey!" she growled after him. "So that's it?!" The echo of slowly retreating footsteps continued to sound in her ears. "You think you can just turn your back on me again, Old Man? Hey! I'm fuckin' talkin' to you!"

She raced after him into the dark.

[Kasoria]

Why did you run? Why did you fucking run, you stupid old man?!

He ran from the voice as much as he did her. Far and fast and heedless enough that he seemed to leave the words trailing behind him. His own mind unable to keep up with the frantic figure. Fear seized him now, real and turgid and acid in his throat. In a place he never expected it. The Emea, the dreaming world... here a man could not die. Not really. Not as far as he knew. He could explore, see far places and peoples he never could in his mortal form. Here he could be... someone else. Something different.

Another deception. And this time to yourself? How cowardly are you, really?

Kasoria rounded another corner and then it started to happen. The acid shifted. The glaze cracked across his eyes. Prey instinct was suddenly met and matched by something equally as old, and far more feral. He was running. Fleeing. From a shadow. From a ghost. From a girl. Memories started to flash into his mind as his sprint turned into a jog. Handfuls of moments from arcs ago, when he'd sent her out and she'd never-

"-come back, an' what's that t'do with me, Kas?"

"I know it wuz youse. Youse or this fuckin' roach-"

He kicked a crumpled peacock at his feet. Ilos groaned and Vorund cocked an eyebrow at him from across his desk.

"Ain't shit t'do wiv' me, Kas."

"Bollocks! Nothin' happens without-"

-knowing what this meant, or who she was, he was running. The blood on the walls didn't seem to dim or thin. It glowed, thick and fresh as that day. When she'd unleashed an ocean of maddened bestial flesh. But would she have been there, would she have even found the will to do so without him? Unlikely. Another light darkened by him. He shook his head and kept running, gladius-

-held to the throat of a woman, terrible to her tiny charges and now a quivering mess before him.

"I-I-I don't know where she went! She-She just vanished, I swear! You-You can check her room-"

His hand was around her throat. Squeezing hard enough to let her know he didn't need the blade.

"Don't. Fucking. Lie. To me."

"I'm not! I swear, I'm not-"

-a coward? Was that really what he was? He'd tried to find her. He'd tracked her like a hunter would an elk, by smell, by trace, by the memories she left in others. But the trail had run cold. Outside of the city, in the endless, ever-changing mass of bodies coming to and from Etzos to the coast. Like a deer crossing water, it hid her scent. He couldn't go after her. She was gone, and now she was back. His legs started to slow under him. The gladius was held in... less of a death grip-

-more of an appraising balance. So his hands could see all of it. The straight, sharp edges. The triangular head, tapering to a killing point. The bulbous pommel, slightly weighted so it could be used like a club.

The Old Man sat on his bed and turned the gladius over in his hands. His were the only ones who would ever touch it, yet it was not meant for them. He'd decided to throw it away, or return it. Zeb would be sure to give him his money back. But now... now he caressed the steel, and thought of past days. A face he'd never see again. Who would have loved this.

He started to wrap it in cloth. Kill the shine with drab fabric. Bury it. Forget it. Forev-

"You think you can just turn your back on me again, Old Man? Hey! I'm fuckin' talkin' to you!"

"NO!"

The Raggedy Man whirled on the pursuing figure so fast she almost skidded to a halt. The gladius was up again, not in the guard he'd taught her, but a straight-armed point of accusation. Fury was on his red face now, but diluted by confusion. He breathed heavily. Took her in. Grown up well, she had. A beautiful young woman and yet none of the frippery or limp-limbed fragility of nobility. Hers was a quality that was gorgeous in spite of her life, not because of it. She was taller, far taller than him, and even her paused stance reeked of a brawler bloodied and proven. Ready to lunge or retreat or jab or kick. It was her.

This is not a dream. We're just in the place where those happen.

"I... wasn't the one... who fucked off!"

The first words he'd spoken to her in eight arcs. Truly he had the heart of a poet. He threw the gladius to one side, uncaring of it as a mummer would be a prop. Everything was such in this place, after all. Everything but her. He strode towards her, fists as balled as hers. Words stinging and befuddling still ringing in his ears. But he did not yet pay them heed. He had so much he'd wanted to say, and now-

"I looked fer youse fer fuckin' trials!" He roared, sheer outrage echoing off the bloody walls seemed to make him loom as large to her as he once did. "I broke skulls an' gave coin' an' spoke t'every cunt youse ever met, an' all I got was a rumor! A whisper! That you'd left! Been seen leavin' the city! Goin' to the coast!"

Kasoria's jaw torqued for a moment. An emotion unfamiliar to them both sent ripples across his face, but didn't surface. He blinked and in but that shattered trill, he saw himself again. Burying that sword under his house as if it were a tiny corpse. Feeling that aching, treacherous, mocking agony in his guts again. After he'd sworn he'd never allow himself to be so used by the Fates again. Now she was here, and he could settle that hash. He had a hurricane of anger in him, and now he could blow it all-

"... wait." Recent events backed up and rearranged themselves apologetically in his mind. "F... Finish you off? Fuck... Fuck does that mean?!"

The girl gave him an answer. After trying to kill him, of course.

[Max]

The apparition swiveled with a glare of fury and a shout of denial to match his ire. Max's advance paused, a foot moving back as she caught sight of the gladius pointed threateningly toward her chest. She looked from the tip of the weapon to the contorted face of the man who wielded it. Her hands balled up into those knuckle-white fists he'd seen a thousand times. His face was red, and in her vision, red was all she saw. His chest rose and fell with heavy, emotional breaths. Her lip curled while he took her in.

Turning your gladius on me now? Alright. Have it your fuckin' way.

Max's right hand jerked to catch the hilt of her sheathed sword in kind. Instead of a charge, Kasoria met her instead with tense accusation. It was enough to give her pause again from thoughts of cutting him down. Her brow furrowed. Delusional was what he had to be. Completely and utterly delusional. What Emean trickery was this? What game was her mind telling her now? What use, what truth, laid in casting a non-existent accountability onto her for what happened in Etzos? His unforgivable betrayal was not her fault. It was he who forced her to flee or die. He was responsible for her leaving Mina behind to suffer the consequences of what life had in store for her.

Kasoria moved toward her and Max reacted like any animal backed into a corner. She ripped her gladius free of its sheath, baring it before her just as she was taught in a ready guard. Then his gladius was gone, cast aside to clang curiously against the hard sewer walls. The splash of his feet through the muck as he came closer echoed like thunder in her ears. The ex-convict rapidly compensated by backing away from his approach. His voice ringing through the tunnels, his confused and wounded heart bared on his sleeve in roaring rebuttals, it was Max's turn to let perplexity enter her expression. Then it hit her.

This is no ghost or Emean trick. It's...him.

Dark brown eyes surveyed every inch of his fury-filled frame, noting the gestures and subtle musky smell his skin carried. It was the same smell that lingered in his home, albeit with a stronger stench of feline attached. Arcs passed, but the familiarity of the scent brought her racing back. Max shook her head slowly. No, what he said now couldn't have been true. He didn't look for her. He didn't waste coin on her name or bash the heads of those who might've held a lead on her whereabouts. Not unless he was hunting her. Not unless he was doing what his predecessors could not.

"You liar!" she hatefully snarled her response, warding off the uncomfortable uncertainty she felt when he expressed his lack of understanding. The gladius remained firmly in her grasp. "Dirty, rotten, scheming bastard! You think you can let my guard down with fairy tales? You think you can turn your anger and fake regret on me? Like I'm still a fuckin' kid you can play games with? Like you can fill my head with more bullshit?" No more backing away. Max closed her distance earned with all the murderous intention of a soldier on a field turning sword on an anonymous enemy.

Turn it off. Turn it all off and do it.

With face contorted with righteous fury and contempt, she raised the sword. Muck splashed violently away from her heels where her steps displaced it. Her arm shook, and when she brought it down, the diagonal cut clanged roughly against the sewer wall instead of severing flesh from bone. She invaded his space, expression cracking from its firm, stony boil to reveal the wound betrayal had left underneath.

"I did everything you asked!" her shaking, vengeful yell was too loud for the short distance left between them. An appropriate volume couldn't hold the arcs of raw, unbridled emotion. "Everything! Ever since the first trial in that court yard, I gave you everything! And what did I get for it?!" She hurled the sword down at her feet, never breaking eye contact. "Nothing! I was hunted like a fuckin' dog in those streets by your people! You used me and took advantage of me. Then you sought to cut me down like another lose end needing tying." She scoffed bitterly, looking him up and down. "But I survived them. I survived you."

She'd never forgot what it was like to run with those bastards on her back. They were faster than her. They were smarter than her. The night air she greedily sucked into her desperate, heaving lungs had burned. The sweat on her skin had turned cold, the blood spilling from her cuts warm. Her muscles ached and her body was limp with exhaustion by the time it ended. There was no heroism in her plight. Max didn't go free by killing them. She was a little girl back then. She hid on that humble fisherman's bought all night until she fell unconscious, sleeping through the next trial, only to awaken to the sensation of the boat gently rocking on the waves out at sea.

"I was just a fucking kid, Kasoria," the iron in her voice grew brittle, cracking with a hurt softness. "I idolized you like you were the sun. And then you went and fuckin' burned me."

[Kasoria]

He could see the realization dawn in her eyes. The same that had struck him moments before. The disbelief. The doubt. Both followed swiftly and overtaken by shock. This was not a dream, or at least, the being they stared at was not. This was but the stage for where they met, no different to any place in the waking world. Mayhap he could have lamented this was not the reunion he'd secretly hoped for, before hope had died in him she was even alive. Now rage and hurt had taken the place of that, in both of them. Recriminations and accusations flew fast and barbed and frequent.

She realized who he was, and it only made her angrier. Kasoria didn't care.

"I filled yer head with' nothin' you didn't want in there!" He snarled, heedless of the sword in her hand, or the way she clearly knew how to hold it. "Wadid I teach yeh? Everythin' youse wanted t'know! You wanted t'be tough? Be smart? Be a killer? I taught yeh, an' when the time came fer youse t'kill?" The bark of laughter was so rich with contempt it would have made a weaker soul wince and cringe. "Youse fuckin' choked. An' over what? Some shit-spewin' Morty-lovin' cunt?"

He held out his hand again, movement seeming slower this time. More deliberate. As if all the weight of her history was being leveled against her, springing from the path this lethal little man had started her on arcs before. Only both of them knew, that was only half the truth.

"I gave yeh what I knew. I taught yeh. Youse coulda' walked away, a hundred times, an' I told yeh as much. But did yeh? No. Because you wanted it."

Something dark and hateful purred in his chest. It had been so long since he'd had an argument like this with anyone. One of those stormers where every shitty, vicious thing you could dredge up was deployed without mercy. He marshaled his words to hurt, to wound, not just make his point. Yet he could barely enjoy his petty victory before the conversation lurched a different way. He shook his head as she spoke, alluding to pursuers, treachery, flight from the city, and as he shook it his eyes clouded and he didn't see her, he saw-

Vorund. I should have fucking known you were lying, you old cunt. I hope you never cross the sea.

"I never turned on yeh. Youse think I'd pay some cunts t'do what I coulda' done meself? Why?" He skipped back a step as the gladius came slashing down, but nowhere close to him. Then it was tossed aside and he stepped back into the gulf it had left, arms spread wide. "Why? Why'd I go t'all that trouble, jus' t'take yer fuckin' head? When youse were a kid? I coulda' talked youse down into some tunnel an' ended yeh in a break. No... No..."

His voice... didn't exactly soften. But it became more permeable, so to say. Seeking the listener to understand, not just hear to be hurt by the words. The anger soaking his words seemed to dry off, replaced by the gruff pragmatism she'd known before.

"That was Vorund. He must've thought yeh'd be weak, turn on me, an' him. So he sent lads t'kill yeh, when youse were away from me. I beat the shite outta his man an' confronted the old cunt, but..." He hesitated. Did he believe him, or just want to believe? Like the old man had told him afterwards: he was still Vorund's man. No matter what he'd done. But still, Vorund had sold him the lie... and he'd allowed himself to be fooled. "... he lied to me. An' I believed him. I'm... I shouldn't've."

It was the closest to an apology she'd get, but it wasn't near enough. She tore into him again, words raw and bloody as open wounds. But all Kasoria could see were more accusations, more blame, more guilt foisted his way and Fates, he never had time for that shit at the best of times. Even as he voice cracked the little man stepped closer, rough beard and sharp features and black eyes just as she remembered.

"You went an' ran, instead a' comin' back t'me so I coulda' fixed it. You were stupid, an' it nearly get yeh kil-"

Something between a screech and a howl exploded from Maxine's lips. Kasoria's winced to hear it and that's what cost him dearly. A fist flew into the side of his head and it snapped back. Instinct had him roll with the punch, back up a few steps, buy him space for him to get his guard up-

Not a moment too late. Maxine was relentless, just as he'd taught her and experience had beaten into her. She surged on at him, another punch launched at his head spattering off his forearm-

-elbow coming from his left forcing his guard up there, too, and he knew what would come next-

The girl growled and kicked out at his belly. Keep their guard High, make them forget about Low, and that's where you nail them. Kasoria tightened his stomach as best as he could before the push-kick slammed into it. Tough little shit that he was, she was a good deal taller than him, a little heavier, and she had indeed been keeping up with her "training". Kasoria staggered instead of stepping. Balance fading for a moment, but still embracing the chance to get away. He came to a stop and looked up into her raging eyes.

"Huh." His tone was the epitome of disinterest. "Not bad at all. Been practicing?"

She came on again, rage of years speeding her limbs. But this time, he was ready for her.

I didn't teach you everything, girl, he thought a little smugly. Then, before he could stop the thought popping into his mind, it did, and what followed seemed all the worse because of it. I never had the time to.

[Max]

He argued, but her defiant mind saw through the logic of the Raggedy Man. She was an unwanted, orphan child. She was a prop to be used and discarded at the fancy of smarter, more devious adults whose world she hadn't yet matured to understand. Disadvantaged and kicked to the wayside, she was easy to manipulate.

Power. Strength. Cunning. Cutting into wealth. All of that was promised in the teachings of the accomplished assassin whether he acknowledged it or not. Max was never going to amount to much. She wasn't cut out for traditional work reserved for the lower class, and she didn't have the temperament to work among her betters. The dirty, rotten path pointed toward by the bloodied blade was the only one she could walk in a quest to avoid the inevitable.

Her lip curled at mention of the trial he pushed her to commit her first murder. Something hateful flared in her eyes. There was no rebuttal to be made on that point. Even she knew that. The weapon was cold in her hand. Wielded a hundred times against dummies and blooded in defense before, it felt heavy when she was faced with the blubbering sod. Nerves. Fear. She felt all of it surging in an irritatingly human way. After all their hard work, she couldn't do it. Max couldn't kill that man. It was in that singular moment the hard-training apprentice realized something about herself she never had before.

Maxine didn't want to be a killer.

Pissed off as she was, the ex-convict could see the struggle behind his eyes. Memories were swarming to the surface of the Old Man's mind just as they had in hers. He was remembering, putting the pieces together, and re-arranging the facts as the present reality had come to life. She watched the light of realization dawn in his hate-filled gaze. Her lips pressed into a hard line.

Vorund. She remembered the name. Hardly remembered the man. He was a dark silhouette against the night in her nightmares for a while when she was younger, haunting her after he'd run her from Etzos. The name no longer filled her with anxiety. Power and elite, Vorund was just a man. Just like Earth Mask had proven to be just a man, and all the overwhelmingly intimidating enemies that had followed him. The Etzos man had betrayed Kasoria when he sent his sellsword lackeys to return with her head. She might have felt like she had lost more for the experience, but both of them had been wronged. Her ire toward her old teacher began to ebb. Until he turned the blame back on her.

Quicker with a fist than he remembered, her knuckles cracked against the side of her head before he even saw it coming. It wasn't just a sucker punch. It was the first strike of a hailstorm. She moved forward with her attack, letting her momentum build while the furious energy was channeled through the familiarity of violence. Jabs. Crosses. Elbows to change the pace and keep him from learning a pattern as it was woven. Then there was the finality of that push-kick, removing him physically from her space in a short reprieve before the next flurry.

"Practicing?" she mocked with a scoff and a shake of her head. "Try prison." It was a grossly simple explanation for arcs of absence filled with trauma he'd never understand. Her first kill was inadvertently her whole ship crew. First intentional was her best friend, ensuring he'd never be able to share what she'd done. It turned out of control from then onward. She was a mercenary for a moment, but even then it went beyond coming with the job. She killed to escape. Killed to punish. And when they damned her to Level Seven of Slags Deep, she killed to survive. Violence was all she knew. Her great capacity for violence was a bloomed flower from which Kasoria had nurtured from a planted seed.

"You think you're the worst monster I've met?" Max kicked a hailstorm of muck toward his sneering face and charged in its wake. The first punch was predictable: straight for the face. He'd see it coming a mile away, even if the filth robbed him of sight should he turn his head or shield his eyes. That had been the point. The jab stopped short, a right hand launching through a raised guard for an upper cut toward his chin. The feigning hand followed to search for a rib. Then it was a strike toward his face. She had learned. Learned from him, and from the harsh lessons the world after him had taught her. Now, like a bad joke, she sought to let the old man reap what he'd sown.

In between the splash and the skirmish, there was a glinting light as Maxine's hand plunged into the sewage to retrieve her gladius.

[Kasoria]

"I 'ave. Dint take."

She didn't waste time on a witty response. Already showing she was taking this more seriously than he was. Instead of banter, a clod of stinking muck was kicked his way, and instinct turned his head away before it slapped wetly onto the side of his head. Protecting his eyes, keeping them clear... but taking them off the target. Easy way to die in this kind of fight.

Is that what this is? To the death?

She was on him again in a blink, but Kasoria was ready for her. The feint was identified as such before it was halfway to his head, but he played along. Only way to draw out the real play, the true assault. Ah, an uppercut. Ballsy. Very ballsy. Required you getting close, and she did. He stepped back sharply, head following the motion, striking fist flying upward and missing his chin-

-but not the "feint" from moments ago. Recalled and redeployed, slamming a hook into his ribs that jangled them like beads in a shaker. The little killer grunted and absorbed the pain. Huffing out a breath and then yanking it back with a hiss, waiting for the finale.

You stop swinging when the man's down. Not before. You remembered.

Another straight, and this one meant business. Kasoria had maybe a quarter-trill to decide what to do. It was more than enough time. He ground his teeth, squared his jaw, and let the blow sail over his guard and hammer into his cheek. Stars and red suns exploded and died and reformed again before his eyes as his head was snapped back... but only for a blink or two. That and the time it took to stagger back a pace. Yet no more followed it. His own ploy of weakness hadn't worked, because... ah. Of course.

She's not bothering with a fist fight. Not when there's a blade right there next to her.

The girl darted for the gladius and Kasoria slid across the wet sewer stones like a rat. All agile limbs and quick, fluid movements. She dove for the winking silver hidden in the mire. He knew her hand found the hilt with the first plunge; she'd taken easily to the short sword when she was a girl and he first introduced it to her. If she was still carrying it around, she'd had plenty of practice to get even better. Kasoria ran through the list of lethal devices he had on him. Karambit, dagger, knives, his own gladius only a few feet away...

None of them graced his hand. He didn't have time to draw that. Yes. That was why. Not enough time.

Careful. Lie to yourself here, and the world will hear you.

Max came up from her crouch with the gladius already swinging. The little man darted towards her, shadow seeming to loom and grow around him like a cape as he got closer. Not giving her time or space for a proper, controlled thrust. No, he wanted her moving now. Letting her see the ringer to his face hadn't even slowed him down, so now she had to swing-

-and he was already within her guard, leg swinging up and out-

-boot heel lashing out and slamming into the underside of her forearm. Quick, but precise. Just as he'd always tried to teach her. The girl yelped as the nerves below her elbow went dead and the gladius clattered, but the little man wasn't done, spinning kick stopping, reversing-

-heel of his boot, this time, cracking her across the jaw and sending her stumbling-

One move grows into another. Everything flows. No pause between each, for hesitation is death in a brawl.

His own words to her rattled through his brain, far louder in this place of memory and fantasy than in the waking world. He blocked them out and brought his foot back down as she stumbled, left hand snapping out-

"Nah. Not the worst, girl-"

Maxine felt his hand snap around her wrist, the sensation in it coming back. Enough for her to realize it wasn't holding a blade... and he was holding her, instead. Not letting her fall, but yanking her back towards him, throwing her further off balance with the quick, savage movement.

"-but I wuz the first."

Kasoria slammed his forehead into her face and then he let go of her. He watched her totter like a stage drunk until she smacked into the back wall, but didn't get any closer. She was as rabid as a frothing hound now, rage and hate for him making her lethal in a way... yes... in a way he wasn't ready to be. Not with her. His admission, solely to himself, was betrayed in his hesitation. The one thing he taught her never to allow in a fight. She would recover from the vision-shattering blow and see him still standing there. Not moving in to finish her, or launch a new flurry of attacks.

He stood there. He was smaller and older and now he looked like those things to get, despite the efficient brutality of his counter-attack. He seemed to age as she looked on him. Resembling more the man he was in the waking world. Past the middle of his fifth decade, with more lines and creases and scars, eyes hollowed out by what he'd seen and done. Any longer, and she would see what else had happened to him. How he'd changed. How his body had been twisted by his Spark. The price he'd paid for power that he couldn't even use in the Emea.

Kasoria sighed and shook his head. Too much thinking. You shouldn't do that in a fight, either. Not beyond the fight itself. Between each blink, the statuesque woman before him was a girl again. Angry and pugnacious, chin and lower lip forever stuck out and defying a world bent on breaking her. Now she had turned those tables, and he saw that same hollowness he knew from his own gaze. So much time had been lost. Taken. Stolen.

"S'what we're gonna do 'ere?" He said with a mocking spread of his arms. "Go tearin' at each 'uvver 'til we're both red n' dead? In a fuckin' dream?"

Negotiation. Reasonableness. Compromise and compassion. These were alien things to her from him, and she did not trust them. Fortunately, he knew that. He took a careful step over. Respectful, almost. If only of she he knew she could do to him if he got too close. He didn't offer a hand. Wouldn't insult her by doing so. Instead he clasped his hand over his middle and leaned forward slightly.

"Got enuff killin' waitin' fer me in the Waking, girl," he said with a wry half-smile. "Figure yous've got the same. S'what say we talk, an' if yer still mad as badgers, we finish this shite later? Here-"

Without looking down, his food slid out, and kicked her gladius back towards her. He'd never lost track of it, and its hilt stopped just at it touched her hand.

"See? Good faith gesture an' all that shite..."

[Max]

Her fingers wrapped around the hilt of the sword, but Kasoria had seen too much to be caught completely unaware by the blade. He moved quicker than one would expect for a man his age. A well-aimed strike killed the nerves in her arm, and her fingers uncurled from the sword involuntarily. The weapon sunk back into the filth at their feet. There was no time to conceive a way to return it to her grasp. In the next instance, the heel of Kasoria's boot smashed against her jaw and sent her reeling backwards. A grunt of pain escaped her, feet working to stay upright as they sloshed through the sewage toward the wall. She didn't get far. His hand snapped out to catch her wrist, yanking her back to drive his forehead into her face.

"Motherfucker!" Max growled out, head pounding from the impact instantly. Her back hit the wall but it wasn't on her mind. She hated this familiar feeling: eyes watering and tender nose running with blood. There was nothing like a classic strike to the nose. It was like the equivalent of kicking a bees' nest. If she wasn't before, the ex-convict was rightly pissed now. At first she braced against the wall, using it for support while she shook the rattle from her head. Her hands were protectively up, legs working to get firm ground in anticipation for the next attack. It never came. Through the involuntary tears, she could see the Old Man just...standing there.

"That all you got?!" she challenged him, quickly brushing the water from her tear ducts to open her vision back up. Her chest was heaving and muscles fed with fury. Her eyes focused on him, and when they did, though they did not quell the fire within, what she saw gave her pause. That deadly, blasphemous pause. Max looked upon her old mentor as he looked upon her. Memory no longer formed the conjured figure before her. Reality seeped in. His reality. It hollowed his face and diminished his stature, adding new lines she didn't remember to an aging face. Her brow furrowed. The only thing that Kasoria was not invincible to appeared to be time itself. How unkind their time apart had been on them both.

The shift of a false sun had changed the angle of the dim sunlight that streamed through a grate above. Bathing in its dull glow, reality too seeped in to reveal to him the blessings and cruelties life had bestowed upon her. The eyes remained the same: dark and angry as always. She'd built muscle but earned scars. Many scars, new and faded. The most notable were the two long ones she'd acquired in Slags Deep: the one that ran along her cheekbone and the other that ran horizontal from temple into her hair. A tear in his clothing from their scuffle revealed a subtle image hidden beneath, gently rolling upon her skin.

Kasoria spoke like he was looking for her better nature, one she was skeptical she still possessed. She listened, wiping the blood dripping from her nose with the back of a hand. She didn't know what she wanted. Kill him? Beat him to a pulp? Cuss him out and leave him to this darkness, hopeful to never see him again? She didn't have the answer. This meeting in a dream did little to curb her grasp on reasonableness. There was just that churning combination of rage, pain, betrayal, and sorrow all wrapped into a confusion best released through her fists pummeling something worth her wrath.

"Talk?" she scoffed bitterly at the idea though her brow rose when the gladius was skittered back her way. The toe of her boot lifted to stop the sliding weapon, trapping it under the sole of her shoe. She adjusted her jaw, waiting him for a moment. After a couple moments she let out a sigh and retrieved the gladius. Good habits willed her to clean the weapon before she remembered the whole experience wasn't real, and shoved it lazily back into the sheath. "We talked plenty just now. The fuck else is there to say?" The hand returned to wipe more blood from her lip. She crossed her arms and leaned back against the wall.

More time. More reality seeping in. It manifested in what they saw of each other and what outside-the-dream knowledge returned to their heads. No longer did their meeting feel so isolated. She could remember things, like what was currently going on in the waking world and where she'd been. Just as those awakenings were returning, so were more details. What she saw tightened her jaw so hard it looked like she might snap the joints from clenching it shut. Her lips pressed into a hard line, threatening to curl with the disdain that touched her gaze.

"You're a fuckin' mage now, I see," she observed tensely. It was an easy fact to identify. Like Blackwood's, Kasoria's eyes had clouded into a deep, opaque blackness that swallowed the emotion she thought she could read there mere moments ago. The mere glimpses of the stars on his hands when they battled were clearer now with every gesture he made, and the chains his skin wore subtly came to the surface. After hunting them with the Mantis, and reluctantly protecting a profoundly select few she knew, she knew a mage when she saw one. The discovery felt like another piece of her life had withered and died. People she cared for, tainted by the hateful Spark.

"When did that shit happen?"