Knight's End
13th of November 2006 A.D.
"How long has it been since you have seen one of the Princes of the Earth?" The syllables that come out of your mouth are certainly not English syllables clicking together, tones rising and falling. The sword in your hand is as leaping flame bidding into the arm of the once-vampire, a blow that should have send the limb flying but instead only hisses as balefire turns gushing blood to steam and smoke.
"Long?" the thing gurgles, you can understand if clearly now like some faulty connection inside your head had clicked into place. "Is time a spear then, cast from the warriors hand, to be judged by its haft. Tine turns 'round and round, hurl the spear hard enough, watch it sink into your back. Ever building, ever breaking, ever changing ever striving."
Lord Skavis takes 2 Aggravated Damage -> Now at 3/7
Perhaps your question had distracted it, the next strike of the dream-blade would have bisected you at the waist sure, but only if your hands ere tied behind you and your feet nailed to the floor. "Men, unlearned and forgetful carved up their names like like they carve flesh, all the hallowed is now dust. Ra grows weary westward-passing, Ra grows old the river crossing. You'll die different, you'll die bloody, far remembered by the lucky as the one who
tried." Again the bloody hands clap thrice as the form of the man, the vampire and now the Walker wavers with the strain of his working.
You hear the silence call
You see shapeless colorless nothing
You feel the breath of Empty Night
Where it touches you it parts, it cannot touch the Crown that came to you, the power out of Ages lost, that much you know for certain, but in this time and in this place it lends something of its fortitude to Molly Carpenter. It feels a bit like ducking behind a bookshelf to keep from getting shot, an almost disrespectful misuse, like you should have learned to do this with proper elegance. Even the thing lurking behind the dead man's eyes seems mildly offended to have its power so rudely denied
The frustration of that realization catches your blade and twists it such that you 'only' manage to graze his abdomen. That is when you smile... and press the blade home in and up until the body of lord Skavis is a pyre of green flame. As you had once before you reach out into the flames, for they are yours and from them you pull like a thread unraveling the essence of the Walker.
Lord Skavis takes 4 Damage -> Dead
Instead of the screaming and the cursing and pain you might have expected all you hear is a weary sigh, if sighs tasted like like the dead cores of neutron stars.
He Who Walks Unbowed Slain
You recover 2 Essence -> Now at 13/15
He... the Walker had goaded Lord Skavis into calling him, the eater of despair driven beyond despair because the one he had sold his soul to wanted to face you, to face a worthy foe after who knows how many centuries, to vanquish you or to perish. Only then,
Sympathy for the Devil playing way too loud in your head that you notice that the guards were not fighting you anymore, two of them had fled and the third one, the one who had never raised their weapon against you, had thrown himself at your feet. From what you can see of them the vampire looks young, as most of them do, hair bleached white and shaved in geometric patterns that reveal his pale skin. Alas you cannot just wander in peace
What do you do about the guard?
[] Accept his surrender and some responsibility for his fate, you will save who you can
[] Refuse, this is Lara's show that you agreed to dance in, dramatic as your part has been
[] Write in
OOC: And that is the other part of why Skavis devolved to, better feed myself to a Walker because the thing basically promised him the moon and meant it, if he handed over the reigns because He Who Walks Unbowed really wanted to fight an Exalt. Which is its own lesson for the budding Celestial Exalted, things from the deep past, things that remember are going to want a piece of you one way or the other. 
