<i><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#ff0080">“Inais is gone and that’s all I have to say. If you want to kill the human Emperor, I think you are insane.” </span></i><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#ffffff">He nodded with a bright smile. Perhaps he was insane? Perhaps his sanity had fled him when his body was broken by lash, flail, and rod? Maybe it had fled when he had seen the last of his people die on the hot sands of the arena? Or maybe it had been more insidious, sloughing away from him in small increments? He could not know for sure. All he knew was that he was mad. Utterly mad. And all that he had left to him was a red hot burning rage of vengeance and now a life debt to a woman that had no use for him at all. But such was the life he had been afforded by the Mother Goddess.</span><br/><br/><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#ff0000">"Perhaps I am."</span><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#ffffff">He said, very quietly. He broke eye contact with her to stare in to the fire, his mind thousands of leagues away. The collective loss that they had suffered at the loss of so many of their kind was a death scream still echoing through the cosmos, no doubt to keep being heard for thousands of years after their death. The humans had not known what they had done when they had obliterated so many of the elves. It had not simply been a people and a way of life. The humans would pay for their terrible transgressions, even if Ry'kanos was foiled in his attempts at killing the Emperor of the Kaldean Empire. They would taste the ashes of their victory within a few generations.</span><span class="fixed-color" style="color:rgb(255, 0, 128)"><i>”it’s a suicide mission.” </i></span><span class="fixed-color" style="color:rgb(255, 255, 255)">she continued. He looked up from his gazing in to the fire and looked at her as she stripped off her armor. He tilted his head to the side and with a small smile, with just a hint of madness revealed in it's depths, said,</span><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#ff0000">"<i>So is life."</i></span><br/><br/><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#ff0080"><i>“Just don’t get in my way.. we can part ways once your debt is paid.”</i></span><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#ffffff">He nodded in acquiescence as he began to strip off his armor. With the pauldron's removed, it was simple really to grab the straps at the sides of his breast and back plates and unclasp them. He pulled them over his head as she continued speaking,</span><i><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#ff0080">“If you kill him another will take his place it’s s never ending cycle one no one can win I’m just trying to get by one day at a time and to live in peace, there is no winning.”</span></i><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#ffffff">With his torso revealed, the extent of the damage done to him was full evident. His body was lean and hard, full of rippling muscle. But it did nothing to hide the patchwork of scars and bruises that covered literally every inch of his body. It served only to accentuate the blue woad tattoos that spiraled across his chest and flat stomach.</span><i><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#ff0000">"I will not care one way or the other what comes next after the Emperor's blood has stained my spear." </span></i><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#ffffff">He watched as she removed a few things that he couldn't readily identify and moved over to him. He leaned away as she came closer, a frown etching across his face,</span><i><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#ff0080">”I will be gentle just tell me where it hurts I will give you a good nights rest after tending to you, it’s not much but it’s what I can offer,”</span></i><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#ffffff">How could he tell her that the pain was everywhere? That it extended beyond her ability to heal? Instead, he swallowed and shook his head.</span><i><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#ff0000">"I thank you but I am fine. You have already done more than enough for me."</span></i><br/><br/><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#ff0080"><i>“Well you are useful in a fight, so I guess having you around might not be so bad, I need some help with a group of bandits who have taken up residence in my forest and I need them out,”</i> </span><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#ffffff">He grimaced as she walked over with healing supplies and settled in front of him. He gave a clipped nod and stood up suddenly.</span><i><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#ff0000">"It is my back.."</span></i>,<span class="fixed-color" style="color:#ffffff">if he was to help her with the bandits and, if tending to his wounds made him more effective in combat for her, he would abide her tending to his ills with a stout heart. He turned around and lowered himself so that his back faced her. His back, broad and powerful, was much like the front. A network of scars and bruises of varying colors covering the entire surface. His back was exceptional in that the scars were mostly whip scars criss crossing his body like an obscene road map. He was grateful to have his back to her, so that she might not see the shame flooding his features, or the welling of tears.</span>