The elf reacted just as quickly, dark eyes widening in horror at what the man did - among their own people, Priestesses of Diune were a link to the sacred and treated as such. One would never have been used as a shield, let along put in such a path of danger.<br/><br/>His sword could not be stopped, but his hand twisted, the flat of it grinding against her skin; the metal hung up, lowed, and the razor edge of it opened a slim line of red along her moonlight-pale skin, drawing a cry of pain from the woman and one of horror from her would-be protector.<br/><br/>Instantly he stepped back and knelt, sinking the point of his blade in the earth with both hands and bowing his forehead against the haft, crying out in their strange dialect something that sounded from his tone like apologies and... pleading?