Fair is foul and foul is fair

I make a low keening noise in my throat, a something between rage and pain, sounding for all the world like someone who has been beaten down. trying to draw the fool in

"A trap, a trap, I did hear you earlier... and Hans wouldn't be in any position to moan; his grafts never did take like the rest of ours, eh Ignacy?" He smiles from his vantage on the top of the stair. "But if you truly wish to moan..." he touches his blade to his throat before thinking better of it.

Come on, come on! I find myself repeating in my head, come out of your nest and into the open, get where I can see you...come on already....
The hair along my spine is standing on end, and my whole body is tense as a bowstring in anger, in anticipation. Just a few more steps...

"Really blood magus, you are a fool" my voice is tight as if with pain "you can't see us and therefore loose potency, though with your graphs that might not be a problem much to the chagrin of your lovers"

i shout "dahl you ugly fuck! youre just mad cus im stylin on you! oh and by the way ive grown clevererer over the years!"

I smile at ignacy's comment "Listen you Lop-eared, Jug-headded, Flea-Bitten, Thrice cursed son of a mongrel Bitch" I yell at this Dhal "Two Bit Blood magus would-be" each word raising in volume "Are you really that Pathetic, Oh wait i know what would work on you, using a Ken doll as a poppet at least then it would be anatomically correct"

"Good to know that my old charge hasn't changed his taste in friends; still as savage as ever." Dahl sighs, touching the two minds and striking his sternum with the hilt of his knife, cracking three ribs. Gasping with the pain, he smiles as similar grunts of pain come from the door down the hall. "Impotent am I?" he mutters grimly.

i cough blood "you know you cant kill me without killing yourself!"

"Killing is not the motive, corporal. I'm not ready to die yet, nor are our commanders ready to see an end to the experiment. Besides, unlike your friend, I believe we two are completely recovered." The smirk can be heard in his voice down the hall. "So how about we cease playing and you face your sergeant like the man you claim to be, rather then hiding behind friends that can, and will otherwise, die for you?"

i pull a molotov cocktail out of my coat and light it "of course sarge" i mutter shortly followed by charging dahl

Grinning, Dahl ducks the cocktail as its comet's tail swishes inches by his head and rolls beneath the scything blade, tufted tail swishing as he rises to his feet, elbow raised into an unsteady Liam's chin, causing him to slump against the door frame.

I gasp as Liam falls, but though that will hurt the colors in his head are clear. I need to focus now on my part of the work. Quietly, so quietly that I can barely hear it myself, I sing. My song is to the light that moves about us like water. But it doesn't have to move around, I sing. It could simply move through. Move through, you'll have no trouble, I tell it. And so it does. This is the simplest sort of glamoury, the glamour of simply not being there. Now, now I only have to wait for him to come close enough... I hold my breath, waiting....

Wincing inwardly at the intermittent thuds as Ignacy tumbles down the stairs he just abandoned, punctuated by the high notes of shattering glass and ending in a final "Whump" of igniting gasoline fumes, Dahl turns to survey the room, a low circle of green tinged flames casting weird shadows over the three occupants, two prone, one standing defiantly, eyes hard. Glancing down at Liam, he checks the steady rise and fall of his chest before pacing causally into the room, looking left and right, probing with his mind. Cukcoo huddles on the mantle, just in the shadow of a bust, ruby red eyes peeking out from between the feathers of his left wing.

I draw a breath. Finally. He's in the room. The man peers about. He is a man...but a terribly odd one. His skin is mottled, like the skin of a goat, and behind him twitches a cow's tail. And his eyes...sharp and hawk yellow in a hungry face. My gut tenses. Blood mage, you'll be preying no more. Just a little closer...

Pacing the circle, Dahl probes with a knuckle, causing sparks to dance across some unseen surface. Staring at Kaija, "To intricate for Ignacy, must have been your savage friends work," he murmurs. "Crude, but effective. I can't feel your minds, though I doubt you can feel mine."

I can feel myself grinning, my teeth growing long. Now, my eel, I have you. Tensing my legs, I spring.
My hands wrap round the man's shoulders, fingers digging in. And then my sense comes back, like the blessed return of sight after being in a dark place. I can feel again. And most of all, I can feel his mind.
Grey. Grey and bloody black, like dried blood. Ad barbed. Everyone's mind reaches out, but this mind sends out tendrils like the branches of a thorn bush, vicious, lashing, looking for a way to cling and tighten and dig in to another mind. Vicious. This isn't what I had expected. I hold on with my body as he bucks, hold on with my mindas he lashes out. Just like killing an eel. Hold on, hold on until you can bite down. I've got to shut that power of his down, but not in the usual way. I don't have much time either. I need to do something now. Right now.
Then it hits me. Lack of touch. The terrible sense of being cut off in the circle. I can use that. I can use that memory!
Raising my power, I sing, more of a cry than a song. In it is the terrible loneliness of sensing nothing, the loss of connection, the blindness of the deepest darkness. Alone, alone and cut off from all else. I bind the barbed thing in silence and darkness, cut off, alone, completely alone. I give his body a push as it freezes, and he falls like a log of wood, clutching his head. I hold the note, weaving it into him, weaving it around him. He will never be free of this song. I sing it into his bones. From now on, he is cut off from all other minds. I smile savagely. The eel has just lost his teeth.

"Witch," he breaths between clenched teeth, "Cripple me? I have other talents." His tail lashes as he gets to all fours, then slowly, unsteadily to his feet. "This body remembers when the rocks were young and the earth renewed itself daily; the glow of the earth's fire runs through this body, as the mountains gave up their bones to give form to their young." He spits, pushing a tooth loosened in the struggle back into his gum. "I didn't come for you or your friends; I have more pressing orders to attend to." He palms a skinning knife from somewhere and grips it over hand. "I do not wish to harm you."

I grin, my own blade in my hand. "Water wears away rock. Water breaks it down. I am born to water, and I have the memory of the days when the first rains fell and shattered rock.And I have claimed Ignacy as friend. Touch him, you have quarrel with me. Don't fight against water, cud-eater. You'll lose. "

Shrugging, Dahl lashes out, dipping low beneath Liv's counter strike. Feeling a touch at his mind, he seeks a source and charges at the grim-faced standing askance, glaring at him. She send a kick to his head, glancing through his matted hair, causing stars to dance for a moment in his field of vision before he scissors his feet around her ankle and forces her to the ground. Taking advantage of her position, he brings the pommel of his blade down on the nape of her neck, laying her out before turning back to face the sharp-toothed demoness baring down on his unprotected flank.

Lily shifts groggily, eyes still unfocused but rapidly clearing as a fresh draw of energy mounts from an influx of adrenaline. Head throbbing, she props up on an elbow just as Kaija falls heavily on the other side of Hans, her attacker finishing her before she's able to rise again with a swiftness seeming almost unreal. Liv's darting attack lays open his thigh before he manages to drive her back again with a furious combination of thrusts and slashes directed at her shoulder and wrist.

I roll my head, damn the comment about the ken doll must have hit a nerve. slowly take stock, ok, few broken ribs, not bad with modern medicine, splitting headache and blood in my mouth, he must have clocked me in the chin. wow he was stupid. there is scuffling and a meaty thump, cracking my eyes there is a familiar form on the ground. who is. . . Kaija! oh bastard is in for it now. I sit up and glance around my surroundings We're in a cuckoo clock, what do they have? chimes. There the lever wow the world tilts worse then a storm tossed ship when I stand but no matter I took my first steps on a roiling sea a little dizziness isn't going to stop me. My hand closes on the handle of the chimes as i look up. good, old style bells, by the looks of them some of the earliest. at least Han's taste in brass is good, and they look well cared for. looking over Liv and him are in a knife fight. Liv graceful as the stream and deadly as the rapids, good job waterdancer. Dhal has all the grace of a half castrated auroch but that is understandable given his appearance, right down to the long ears. Oh this will be good. my hand Tightens around the locking mechanism as I pull the lever, the sudden weight comforting "Oh blood mage, Mine is the wisdom of age and the vigor of youth. what can you possibly bring to bear?" with that I release the bells catch. and begin charging the. . man? thing? what do i call it? Letting out a wordless cry of rage before the bells begin to crash above us

The ringing of the bells rushes down from the rafters, shaking the floor, forcing Dahl to pin back his ears to block out the sound. Lily presses her hands to her ears and watches as the Norseman charges from the sidelines, blood dripping from his chin and a near manic look in his eyes. Caught blindside by the attack, Dahl's slight figure is launched clear of Liv into the large stone hearth. Head strikes stone with a sickening thud and the hybrid slumps into blackness.

Inside POV: The meaty thunk of the two of us colliding is more then enjoyable it brings back a thrill i hadn't had in years, battle in it's most primal form, my mouth fills with the musky copper taste of mushroom and blood remembered from so many years ago, wait no that is blood, my blood. . . blood. .. kin... kith... Kaija! Liv, Lily, and Ignacy, he Hurt my Kith, Blood more Blood, not mine his. he needs to bleed, he wont die, all the better he needs to bleed more to pay for their hurts. The strike against the hearth is a start, oh he slumped to bad i am not done yet, needs to pay, needs to Bleed

outside POV after hitting the floor: Liam sits up, a manic grin twisting his features snatching the knives from Dhals nervless hands the dagger still dark with Dhals own blood is jammed just below the prone Nazi's sternum and drug down, the skinning knight snicks out taking both ears off the sod's head before being jammed pommel deep into the supersoldiers eye. The dagger now used to split him solar-plexus to pubic bone is wedged into the bone just inside the hip as liam stands taking a double fist full of coiled intestines and dragging the unconscious Nazi to the middle of the floor where is begins using said organs to bind the prisoner. both hands and feet bound to knee and elbow in the still attached entrails before them being looped around his head and pulled taught to keep him from being able to move. The end of which Liam stumbles, covered in filth and gore over by Kaija and slumps to the ground sensless

The world is made of noise noise noise! I lay where I fell when the terrible SOUND hit. Head pressed to the floor, ears closed, hands pressed into them, I try, try to shut out the SOUND in my head, in my bones. But there is no escape. It keeps on beating beating against me, and the world is made up of this noise, NOISE, the terrible onrushing roaring of SOUND that never ends, never ends, never never ENDS!

The silence that follows is deafening.
For a moment, I wait for the world to stop whirling and clanging. Then I open my eyes. My enemy is gone. Why didn't he take advantage when I was down?
Then the scent hits me. Blood. So much blood.
I stand, dizzy, shaking my head, trying to clear the terrible ringing. Unsteady, I glance up. And what I see makes the hair on my spine stand on end like needles.
Liam is covered in blood, covered, gore dripping from him. And he is grinning like something from a nightmare. The grin falters, and he falls to the ground, senseless, beside his sister. Then I see where the blood is from. My stomach lurches. I swallow hard against the bile in my throat. But with the bile is a hot, hard satisfaction. Liam and I are alike in this. You touch our kith and kin, you pay. That man, that thing, has paid dearly. As he should.
I drop to my knee, studying first Kaija, then Liam. They'll both be sore, but nether needs immediate healing. Lily is sitting up groggily, and Ignacy...he must still be downstairs. Good. We're all here, and safe, for the most part.

Shakily Lily stares first at Dahl then at Liam, a look of peace disturbingly out of place on his blood drenched face, as if choosing which to be afraid of before drawing her knees up to her chin and slowly rocking. "Is he dead?" she points at the mutilated figure on the floor little less then four feet from her slender frame.