Out of the Shadows - 8.326

[Lilaena De'Ville]

She blanched, Salem drawing nearer. Though he was not choking the life out of her this time, she felt no more able to move than she had earlier in the day. "That may not be wise," she said, adding quickly, "not that I question your judgement. I... you know I have no telepathy..."

Lilaena licked her lips again, her master taking another step closer. A'na seemed to have disappeared again. "My mental blocks, to protect me from attack... if they fall it will take me a long time to... build them again." Not to mention the blinding headaches she would have to deal with in the meantime.

"If you wish to - I will not stop you." She met his eyes steadily, though her chest felt swollen with fear. Lilaena took a deep breath, regaining some control and quieting the excess of emotions.

[Salem Ave]

Salem halted, his lips pressed into a hard, thin line. It was as though his nearness to her had caused the cacophony of emotions she was broadcasting to rise to a crescendo and then, quite abruptly, the noise subsided. Lilaena's chest rose as she sucked in a breath and fought to hold the turmoil at bay.

“If I can draw her out of you, like venom from a wound... it would be painful but a confrontation may rid you of her presence permanently.”

[Lilaena De'Ville]

De'Ville nodded slowly, her face impassive as she regained a semblance of control. "Then do it," she said, huskily. "I would be rid of her if it is possible."

[Salem Ave]

The kitchen was not a suitable venue for an exorcism. Although Salem was not a man inclined to become attached to furniture, he had always been of the opinion that if you could avoid making a mess – whether literal or figurative – you should do so. He lead the way from the kitchen out of the back door onto a flagstone terrace, overlooking the moors. A storm lantern hung by the door spilling sulfur-yellow light onto the paving slabs, doing little to hold back the darkness.

The door clattered shut behind them, the breeze tugging at Salem's night-clothes as he gestured to the illuminated flagstones.

“Kneel.”

[Lilaena De'Ville]

She hesitated only a moment, staring out at the shifting night, then knelt at Salem's feet. The stones were cold and hard under her knees, and she bowed her head.

No, child, look upon him! Your savior and your destroyer. A'na grasped Lilaena by the back on the head, wrenching her neck with ice cold hands, and forcing her to look up. Lilaena couldn't help the wince at the sudden movement.

"Hurry..." she whispered. "She is getting stronger...I think."

Her dead master laughed at her, the sound dancing across the moor and then swallowed into the fog.

[Salem Ave]

...savior and your destroyer...

Salem heard the words as if they were a whisper against the back of his neck. He pushed the boundaries of his senses outwards to encompass the entire patio and the deep shadows shrunk away from his gaze, receding into the cracks between the brickwork and flagstones. There was nothing there – and yet he had been certain he'd felt, if only for a fleeting instant, a third presence on the terrace, the source of that rasping voice.

A second later, Lilaena's head jerked backwards and a grimace flashed across her features as she urged him to make haste. Flexing his fingertips, Salem laid his uninjured hand against her forehead and drew in a slow, deep breath. This wasn't going to be easy, for either of them. She had built up safeguards to protect herself against psychic intrusions and although Salem knew she would willingly lay herself bare before him, there was no way of simply turning off the defences she had built up. Not when they'd been so difficult to construct in the first place.

“Prepare yourself,” he said – and then their minds collided.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Lilaena's eyes bulged a bit at an imaginary pressure against her skull, and she felt nearly split in two by a sudden blinding pain. Instead of being confined to her head, the agony rippled down across her entire body, and she clutched involuntarily at Salem's legs to keep from simply collapsing to the ground. She opened her mouth in a soundless scream -


- and then she was sitting on Salemescro's bunk on A'na's ship, feet gently kicking back and forth above the deck plates, her hands folded neatly in her lap. He was gone. He'd always said he was going to leave, and then he finally had.

A shadow darkened the open doorway, and she flinched, looking up and expecting the disapproving gaze of her master, ready to hop off the bed and fix breakfast... Only it wasn't A'na. A tall man with white eyes was looking at her. She shrank away from him with fear, pulling her knees up against her and pressing her back to the bulkhead.

[Salem Ave]

The tall man slid further into the room, not so much walking as gliding. His narrow arms hung stiffly at his sides, his tapered talon-like fingertips teasing the air, as if itching to flash into action. He craned his long neck forward, rolling his head first to the left and then the right. His gaze swung back to the little girl and he blinked his white eyes once, twice.

“Where... isss she?”

[Lilaena]

She shook her head mutely, covering her face with her hands. "I don't know. Please... don't hurt me."

Lilaena peeked from between her fingers, but the scary man was still there, looking like he wanted to eat her for dinner. She shuddered behind the safety of her hands, and then said, "Maybe in the common room."

Things seemed to muddle together, and then she was standing against a bulkhead, small hands pressed against the wall behind her, looking into the area where A'na conducted their training. The white haired Jedi was not in sight, but the monster-man was standing next to her and Lilaena couldn't help but stare at his strange claw-like hands.

[Salem Ave]

The sound of footsteps approached, clanging angrily down the hallway to the training room. The tall man rotated his head slowly to the left and looked at the open doorway as a dark-haired boy stalked over the threshold. With a hiss of breath, he hurled a hydro-spanner across the room. It bounced against the bulkheads on the far wall then clattered to the floor, a short distance from Lilaena's feet.

“How am I supposed to learn if she's always too tired to teach me?”

His white eyes flashed at Lilaena, not seeing the gaunt figure who stood looming at her side.

“It's because she has to spend so much time with you, laser-brain!”

[Lilaena]

It took the girl a moment, confusion on her face as the boy who'd left her appeared, then she slid easily into her role.

"I don't want her to spend more time with me," she said in a small voice. "I'm too dumb. Maybe next time she will put me in the airlock, then you can have her all to yourself."

Lilaena stuck her tongue out at the boy, and bent down to pick up the hydrospanner. Straightening she held it out in front of her, and then after a moment she let go, the 'spanner still floating in mid air. "I'm getting better though!"

[Salem Ave]

“Better at failing, maybe.”

Salemescro swiped a hand into the air and the 'spanner was ripped from her grasp. It flew across the room and slapped into his open palm. The tall man moved at the edge of Lilaena's vision, drifting towards the doorway, his claws never still. In the second she'd taken to follow his progress, Salemescro had crossed most of the distance between them. He wasn't much bigger than her, but he managed to look down on her nonetheless.

“You don't even want to be a Jedi, do you?” he asked, shaking his head, bitter disappointment twisting his lips.

“We should have left you at the temple to burn with the rest of the weaklings.”

[Lilaena]

"I'm not a weakling!" Lilaena stomped her foot, and shoved the boy. He stumbled backwards, and she followed him, catching his ankle with her foot and tumbling him to the deck.

She jumped on him, scratching and punching. "I am strong! You're the weakling! Coward!" Lilaena landed a solid punch on the boy's nose. "You left me! You left me! You frelling coward!"

[Salem Ave]

The tall man paused and, as if he wasn't sure that he had heard some noise near at hand behind him, turned his head a fraction. There was a wet crunch as Salemescro's nose broke, vivid red blood splattering across his lips, teeth and chin. He fought to suck in a ragged breath as Lilaena struck him again, her tiny fists beating him with one wet smack after another, each strike eliciting a strangled grunt or gurgle.

As he moved into the darkness that lay outside of the training room, the tall man heard a drip drip dripping. He trailed one long-fingered hand along the metal of the corridor walls, until metal became clammy stone and the air grew dank and close. Faint blue and green lights pulsed softly ahead, like ignis fatuus to draw a careless wanderer to ruin. In the gloom of the crystal cave, there were covetous figures huddled.

[Lilaena]

"Don't go in there."

A small hand clutched at his, and Lilaena looked up at him, her face spattered with blood. A drop of it trailed down her face like a tear. "Please," she whispered, "No..." and her clothes were torn and tattered in the back, and the blood covering her was her own.

One of the cloaked figures in the cave raised its head, hood falling back to reveal a shock of white hair. The girl released his hand and fled down the passage into the darkness beyond.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Inside the cave she sat, naked and hobbled by ropes that bound her in place. To her right sat A'na, holding an end of the rope and tugging on it painfully so it pinched and marked her skin.

On her left sat Callidus, his deaths head mask more horrific than ever, complete with curling bone white horns that sprouted from his head. He too held a rope, and both of them turned to look at the intruder.

[Darth Callidus]

The crystals studded into the caverns walls bathed the trio in a chilly blue-green phosphorescence but there was no light in Callidus' eyes. The brow of the death's head mask had become a frown. Where his mask ought to have ended, the skull had grown roots which had burrowed like the gnarled tubers of Wroshyr trees into his distended flesh. It strained his flesh, corded and grotesque. He lifted the tail of the rope he held and looped it over the back of his hand then across his palm, taking painstaking care to ensure that each coil sat perfectly straight alongside the one before it. Inch by inch, the slack of the rope was becoming taut.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Bound by knots that others had tied over her, Lilaena lifted her head as much as she could, just barely able to meet the baleful gaze of the stranger in the cave who regarded her. Her face was streaked with black under her eyes, muddled by tears that had stopped falling but still glimmered wetly.

A'na yanked on her rope, and Lilaena tipped toward her, only to be halted as Callidus had brought up the slack and held her tightly. The pain... was excruciating. The ropes around her shifted, rubbing her pale skin raw beneath them. How had she let herself become so helpless?

[Salem Ave]

The tall man's fingertips went snick-snack like the blades of scissors as he watched the sad pantomime. The bound woman was tugged first this way then that, with only a silent grimace in pitiful protest. His white eyes shifted from Lilaena - and the familiar gargoyle to her left - to A'na, who he slid towards with soundless steps. The boy had not been able to see the tall man but A'na was looking right at him and in the cave's dim light she would be able to see him smile - that bloodless, liars smile - as he held out one hand, palm turned upwards, to her.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

A'na met the visitor's gaze, ignoring his outstretched hand, and yanked on the rope, its end coiled loosely around her hand and arm. Lilaena cried out as the balance was swayed toward her dead master.

"She is mine," the woman hissed. "She will always be mine."

The other Callidus, the dream monster with horns, pulled relentlessly on the ropes, and then suddenly disappeared into a thick mist that seemed to simple erase him from the cave. The ropes that bound Lilaena similarly dissipated, leaving her bloodied and gasping on the ground as A'na rose smoothly to her feet and approached Salem.

She let her eyes run up and down him, and she licked her lips. "Such power you have..."