R. Salvatore - The Bear

"Ishat!" the other man cried. The assassin went to his fallen friend, slapping at the flames and trying to roll the wounded man over.

And all the while, Cormack lined up his charge, for Milkeila had assured him that there were only these two.

The black-clad man lifted his friend's arm, then cried out and threw his arms up defensively as Cormack flew in sidelong, a heavy body block. He collided hard and took the smaller Behr man down beneath him, the monk scrambling even as they hit the ground to execute a deadly hold. Cormack was no stranger to battle. His fighting prowess had been the primary reason he had been selected to journey to Alpinador with Father De Guilbe's expedition those years before. He wore a powrie cap because he had, indeed, defeated a bloody-cap dwarf in single hand-to-hand combat, no easy feat for any human!

Cormack didn't know how he might measure up against either of these two assassins in a fair fight, though he suspected the answer to be not very well if either was anywhere near as proficient a fighter as Bransen. With that unsettling thought in mind, his focus from run to leap to body block and now, especially now, remained tight. All that he wanted to do was get his legs wrapped about the man's neck.

And he did, and he clamped down with all his strength. The man reached up at him, or tried to, but the grass grabbed at him once more, further pinning him.

Milkeila was doing that, Cormack knew, and he clamped down tighter, with all his strength, and dared glance back to see his beloved wife rattling her necklace in the air before her, bidding the grass to pull at the man.

"The other one," Cormack growled to Milkeila, for now his leg vise was set and he knew that his battle was at its end.

The downed assailant pulled an arm free and slapped at Cormack's leg, but weakly and too late, and Cormack just rolled himself to the side, bending the doomed man's head back with the turn.

And the former monk of Abelle squeezed and pushed aside his compassion with a continual reminder that this man was as dangerous as Bransen. The pain did not abate, though the flames were gone, for now it was of a different source, a brutal struggle of muscle against muscles, of muscles against themselves. Brother Giavno and Ishat battled furiously within the wounded body, Ishat instinctively countering every attempt by Giavno to garner any control of any part of the body that belonged to him.

Normally, a possessing brother in such a situation would be expelled; his own reactions to the horror of possession would weaken his willpower enough for the host spirit to throw him far. But Giavno knew the stakes here, and he fought harder and more furiously, pointedly sending his demands to parts of the body where he believed Ishat to be weakest. They thrashed and squirmed, rolled about and kicked and flailed wildly. Fists clenched and the muscles of one arm contracted, biceps and triceps, each pulling against the other to their fullest, so disconnected to each other, so lost in the singular determination of separate wills, that the fibers tore and blotches and bruises erupted the length of the upper arm.

A second battle erupted in Ishat's jaw, with teeth grinding and pressing tightly. At one point, Giavno gained the upper hand, and Ishat's mouth twisted open just enough for Giavno to stick out the man's tongue. Ishat regained control. Hardly conscious of the movement, he clamped the jaw tightly again, biting off the end of his tongue.

And so it went, thrashing and squirming, pain mixing with strain, sharp and dull and weaving in and out as each of the internal combatants wrestled back control. Through all of it, Giavno fought blindly, blackness and pain and his sense of self somehow mingling with, being lost to, the identity of Ishat.

He managed to gain control of the one eye that was not swollen shut just in time to catch a glimmer of Milkeila's form standing over them, of Milkeila's staff fast descending.

A burst of senselessness, an explosion of white fire that quickly dulled to nothingness, sent Giavno spiraling uncontrollably. Again, though, he did not exit the corporeal form, but instead felt a contraction, a pointed tightness and grip in his, in Ishat's, chest.

Then he felt a sudden cold sensation and saw a flood of light, distant and surrounded by blackness as if he was looking through a dark tube. And growing, rushing toward him and he toward it. He felt nothing, he knew… nothing.

Brother Giavno-the collection of memories and experiences and thoughts that comprised the consciousness of the man known as Brother Giavno-felt a rush of freedom as his soul flew from Ishat's dying corporeal form.

Then nothing. Emptiness. A void.

Nonexistence.

Brother Giavno's eyes popped open wide, and he reflexively threw himself to the side, crashing into the wall of the small meditation room at St. Mere Abelle. He tried to make sense of what he had seen, to put it in the perspective of Blessed Abelle and the promises of eternity. He tried, but everything jumbled too quickly. He tried to call for Brother Pinower, for Father Premujon, but the sounds that came out of his mouth made no sense, the garbled nonsense of a spirit-walking brother gone insane.

In a brief moment of clarity, Brother Giavno understood the source of his malady and from that deduced the source of this too-common loss of sensibility that occurred with brothers who dared use the soul stone to such dangerous extents.

He couldn't cry out clearly, couldn't form a cogent phrase, because he wasn't alone.

Ishat-some manner of the being that had once been Ishat of Behr-had come back with him and now reflexively, instinctively, battled Giavno for control.

Giavno stood, turned toward the door, and pushed his way into the corridor. Other brothers were around him, he saw through fast-blinking, flittering eyes. They grabbed him and supported him and called his name.

He tried to respond and did manage to call out the name of one brother, but when he tried to expand on his sentence, only gibberish came forth.

He knew, and those around him knew, for they had seen this before.

The struggle was not the same as the one that had occurred in Ishat. There was no fight for control of Giavno's physical form and no danger that he would tear himself apart, muscle against muscle. But Giavno found his every thought stabbed by the raw emotion and unbridled terror of the utterly lost soul of Ishat Parzun.

He had sacrificed his sanity to save Cormack and Milkeila. What was that?" Milkeila asked as she stared wide-eyed at the very still form on the ground below her. She glanced over at Cormack, who finally dared to unwrap his legs from the assailant's neck. "I did not hit him that hard."

"Brother Giavno," Cormack explained. He climbed to his feet and bent over the fallen Behr warrior, bringing his fingers to the man's throat to see if his blood still pumped. "Alive," he said to Milkeila. "Barely." He walked over to join his beloved, then similarly bent over the burned and battered body.

"Brother Giavno," he announced again after a quick inspection, including pulling aside the man's shirt. He nodded as he searched and pulled the shirt down lower, revealing the bruises on the man's upper arm. "He waged an internal war. Brave man. We owe him our lives." Every word came hard to Cormack, for he understood the implications here and knew that Giavno's efforts had likely cost the monk greatly, perhaps irreparably.

He stood up and closed his eyes and was very glad when Milkeila wrapped him in a tight hug.

The other man stirred. Milkeila broke off the hug and moved toward him as he began to cough, and then started to sit up.

She moved to restrain him, but Cormack cut in before her and kicked the man hard in the face, laying him low.

"Cormack!" Milkeila cried.