The man's face is taken in a flush of scrunched nose and bridling wrinkles; a peculiar expression that writes of awful smells and sights. The docks: a putrid row of shoddy planks and shoddier people. Val had spent his years in this city thoroughly apart from this portion of town; in truth he held no particular love for any secular region of the place, but inside he always held a fermented hatred for the port. Bushels of deep brown sway in the salted air, cruel, knotted bangs scissor across his eyes as his final step marks an arrival at the waters-edge. Hands are sunk in either pocket, that clean and sternly pressed white overcoat his love took rightful care of?it was enough to have her image stamped below the lid, but the scent of wash and detergent she favored strummed something awful in his belly'something of butchered chords and inverted scales; rojam-ronim.

Images collide behind the eye; a paltry consignment of highs, lows and loose ends—those which make him, and, with a grin that spells disaster, those which will dissolve him. The click of Val's cigarette case echoes upon the sterile night air, paired along with sips of stirring currents. It's a ghastly sigil, a certain nothing that doubles the knot of twisted organs roiling within the man's belly. Next he smokes, after he waits. He lumbers towards the piers edge and plants his rear upon the boards, letting legs swing free below in a silly, kiddish way.

"No," the rangy ancient sighs, rocking his knuckles upon the wooden surface, lifting his chin to the stars as he speaks.

"I haven't come to roll-over at your feet. You should know better, my Nazareth. Besides," he groans, lifting his lengthy frame from the boards. Two buzzing rotators of red glimmer inside his head, accentuated by pilfered moonbeams and unnamed suns.

"I've a lot more to live for than you, hmm?" He slides his head off to the same side as she, rightfully mocking the girl's cant. Val's smile is buoyant and charmingly stretched to the borders of his jagged face. A casual flick of his cigarette follows the funny remark, the hand then returned to his pocket as he offers slow, casual steps in her direction.

"Go!"

A starting mark for the dance; Val was neither tethered to sentiment, nor dramatic. She came for his life, so now was the time to barter for it with turn-table politics. The Shaper tears his necktie from its loop and applies to it a new technique; instead of forging the entire strip of fabric into a blade, he keenly edges only the final several inches, giving it a kunai-and-chain appeal (though a rudimentary crescent blade fastened by red fabric). Val whips the bladed end forward, swiftly gesturing the razor, a horizontal slice that wagers to tear-open Neth's throat.

Val eludes the mathematics of his sister's vertical split, dandily swaying his lanky bits from the incline of Neth's swift blade. Val retracts his whip, encasing his fist in red fabric as it spindles about the knuckle, only the scythed-tip hangs, an inch-or-so of given as it dangles. Val was occupied in formulation, knowing the monumental task that rests at his feet"Neth was powerful; a knife-built edifice of bountiful spirit energy and lightning-quick attacks. The only factors that wait to tend the scales are split between his cerebral mark and her eloquent swordplay.

In measured power, Nazareth would be favored—-a crown joule" We shall. However, despite shared blood(in race and kinship) Val held no fellowship in accordance to Nazareth's—-his abilities were esoteric in other's understanding, sometimes esoteric in his own understanding. He was known as a Shaper; a rare sect of his race often written off as either the squabbling's of ancients, or paraphrased prophesy; the usual bloated banter to get the little ones in bed. Like a chemist of the damned, the man could add, retract and mix the physical elements using the tender threads of his soul as a bridge and catalyst alike.

An easy task it was not; mastery over the elements was elusive, along with limitations to the ability—-hence the fact he didn't simply liquefy Neth, turn her clothes into lead or her blade into sausage—-but successfully living within those boundaries most-often penned victory. An uneasy grin from the rangy hellion is proof of his apprehension in accordance to a victory this day.

Val digs in, knowing it's a choice between turning his heels on girl and running, or ordering up an attack to slow or perhaps even wound the yellow-headed witch. Val's fist, still wrapped in the necktie's red fabric, punches forward—-there's nothing but air to meet the knuckles—-that, of course was only to build the inertia of the true attack. The red tie unravels from the man's hand, and in one curious instant, the material of the accessory seemingly explodes into a hundred red threads, every little stitch and seam branching out from Val's clenched fingers, moving at his will. Nazareth was falling quickly, had arced her elbow and begun to lean into a fevered slash towards the man and his little cotton worms. The red threads open like a cornucopia and harden—-so instead of one-hundred little cotton fibers, Val had one-hundred iron barbs, opened like a shell to collect the falling angel.

Val cringes as he's pushed back by Nazareth's collision with the opened net of steel, taking a moment to reclaim balance. In the occupied moments, Nazareth had cleaved through almost two-dozen iron threads, fast on her way to dividing her way free. The concentration needed to keep himself upright, contemplate a new strategy and hold the massive iron-cage up with just a single hand was flagrantly maddening.

The crafty ancient's eyes whirl like clocks trying to make up time as he strains to keep focus. Several of the tiny iron barbs begin to lash at the girl while she's confined, whipping at her face and chest, tearing-away flesh and fabric as they land. Neth yelps, and with nowhere to go, she continues to thrash her blade, taking out as many spokes as possible. The beast's eyes explode in her head as she inclines her hand, readying the weapon for a thunderous strike.

Her hand doesn't budge; Val had the girl's wrist bound in tiny iron shackles, twenty-or so metal threads encasing the hand, keeping her secure in place.

Val's face sinks in obvious wear as he struggles to keep the girl tethered. Though sleeves hide his flesh, the muscles of the man's arms are buoyant and writhing below the skin. They feel aflame and only seconds from a burst as he slouches forward, his idle hand seconds the first and clasps the strained wrist, hoping to add the support he knows to be imaginary.

A grunt. It has no audio; nothing proves it to be such besides the parted lips and gasped expression. Neth had flickered from view, and by the time Val's lame sensorium had caught-up, she had skewered him with her blade. The tip of the girl's nose touches his own as the strangely warm steel invades his belly. Emotions cave within the man; the collapse of spirit, a "nothing" that would most-likely prove to be "everything?"a decision made, rather a realization: his life was forfeit in her hands.



Neth looks into her brother's eyes as she churns the blade in his chest, angling in way that asks the blood to spindle down the hilt and stain her hands.



Val can'smile. Blood had collected at the avenues lip, head lent back some—-he felt, and looked, relaxed.



"Very good," he calmly imparts. "Very' very, good."

Val's legs dangle. His fingers twitch. Lids mute pupil, lips allow blood flow. He's not dead. Not yet. Valcroix is Dominion: a complicated species, but not unlike humans, he is a vibrant soul tethered to physical slop; flimsy tendon, bone and muscle. He isn't as reliant upon the functions of organs, opposed to the more delicate sapiens, but should they all die within the confines of flesh....this query finds an obvious home in reasoning.

Let's say somewhere a lonely chump with a pocketful of change and half a pack of cigarettes sits at his piano and pushes a few keys. A morose scene"conditional, seen somehow as irrational in its formality, but applicable to the picture. Val can almost hear it' hear the plucked strings and reverberating hammers. Within, Martyr's image sits. Her tears flood the room, cleansing the marble of fat sorrow and pained melodies—-I didn't have to come here" I could have ran. Could have kept it all. You could have kept it all"heh...idiot.

"Hah," he laughs, blood along. The man's vision is hardly there, but from upon his impaled perch, he sees nothing living with in the blur.

She had left him there, stuck to the brick like a boring note on a corkboard.

'I don't have your blood in me anymore, Martyr" even so, heh' you couldn't hear me....I hope you're both far away from here. I spent my walk over here wishing I never met you. Because I've done nothing but hurt you since the first day we met. I ran the image over a hundred times" of me seeing you on the street and simply doing "nothing-. How much easier would it have been, I wonder"

'But now" I see Max's face. I see for the first time that I had created something perfect. And I created it with you. I'm sorry I won't be there" but, didn't we both know I wouldn't' I'm an awful man about to die a relatively easy death. But, by god" it's hard baby. I want to touch my daughter once more? it only feels like seconds. Damnit, I feel like I only knew her for a second! I'll never be anything to her but a photograph' if that.



I love you both so much.'



Tears dry on dead flesh, his right hand limply falling into the left pocket of his bloodstained coat.