The old woman keeled over, her thin hand spidering out against the stone wall of the staircase. She wheezed, choked, and suddenly erupted in a violent shuddering torrent of thin, reeking vomit.<br/><br/>“High Inquisitor!” Malinora cried, nearly losing her balance as her foot slid through the growing pool of sick on the floor. Only luck prevented her from falling and careening down the winding limestone stairs, potentially to her death.<br/><br/>Arkimandras shook her head and waved the younger woman back, retching and trying hard to speak between struggles to swallow her emesis back.<br/><br/>“Go- the barbarian- something…. came through.” Another shuddering explosions of rancid-smelling bile and digestive juices, and Maliora saw<i>things</i>squirming in the spattered fluid. Whatever had come through, whatever the barbarian had somehow summoned or called or allowed in, was causing this in the old woman. Whatever it was, it was causing not simple nausea but something very akin to…<br/><br/>To what? Maliora frantically thought. Decay? Putrefaction?<br/><br/>“My lady-“<br/><br/>“GO!” Arkimandras screamed through a mouth thick with twisting grave worms. Blood welled up in the Inquisitor’s eyes and as Maliora watched, one of those eyes swelled up like a bubble and popped, sensing forth a tiny shower of foul fluids and writhing maggots against the breast plate of Maliora’s armor.<br/><br/>The Grand Justiciar did not wait for the command to be issued a third time. She understood Arkimandras was dead, and her body was simply catching up. Whatever this grinning savage had yanked through the wall of sleep was too much for the old woman’s expanded consciousness. Arkimandras too far too open, and far too unprepared.<br/><br/>Thank the gods I have not her Talent, Maliora thought as she turned and practically flew down the stairs forwards the gaol. You cannot deafen the deaf, no matter how loudly you scream.<br/><br/>Part of the Grand Justiciar wanted to stay, to try and help Arkimandras, but the soldier, the tactician, the crusader in Maliora knew better.There would be time to mourn her old friend and mentor soon enough.<br/><br/>Maliora’s tulwar hissed as she drew it from the scabbard<br/><br/>—————————————————<br/><br/>Ferrox stood a moment in stunned silence at the apparition in front of him, disbelieving. He, like everyone else, had heard tales of sorcerers and shamans being able to conjure forth demons and spirits to actual appearance, even to physical tangibility, but he had no idea it was possible to do it without the training and tools granted to an apprentice by an arcane master’s teachings. He certainly had no idea one could do it almost by accident, with nothing but fury and desperation.<br/><br/>The huge youth cocked his head, his storm-blue eyes, like a northern sea raging in winter, narrowing. The terrifying beauty before him was at once alluring beyond anything he had ever encountered, as well as being somehow viscerally<i>wrong</i>. An unnatural thing, an alien presence not meant for any place in this world.<br/><br/>Most disturbing of all, however, was what Ferrox saw as he looked at her. It was as though she contained every woman he had ever felt a positive emotion for in his young life. He saw in this being the loveliness of his mother’s face when he was a child, the soft swell of a breast offered for nourishment, but he saw her too as his father must have seen her, with that loveliness having a marked different cast and her breasts offered for a much different type of sustenance. He saw his sister on the day she was wed, glowing and radiant in the crown of purple thistles and ivy. He saw before him Eletheta, his friend from childhood, a lovely and sad little girl who had been taken by the wet-lung before her sixth winter- yet here he saw her grown up, the wife she might have become for Ferrox. He saw every woman he had lain with- not many yet, but they seemed legion when contained in the face and body of the creature before him. He saw even his grandmother’s wisdom in the spectre’s eyes, and found himself assuming the old woman’s kindness and playful capriciousness dwelled there too. His mind and heart dressed the demon with the very concept of femininity in its totality, and found the fit to be perfect, as though he was constructing her. Yet when Ferrox tried to focus on her, she was undeniably someone- something- he had never seen before.<br/><br/>Ferrox growled, exposing the slightly pointed filing of his teeth. He realized, bizarrely, that he was erect, and indeed beneath his buckskin breeches he was certain he had never been so aroused in his entire life; turgid to the point of pain.<br/><br/>A kiss?<br/><br/>He found himself drawn forward to her, the idea of kissing her seeming like the only thing that mattered, the sole item of any consequence in the spiraling madness of the universe.<br/><br/>Still he hesitated, his big, dirty hands clenching and unclenching.<br/><br/>“Who- what- are you?” He snarled out, the vast muscles of his neck and shoulders bunching into tense bundles.