Can you see the Darkness when the Sun shines?

[Ryn]

"She has my attention." she admits. "But I don't have hers. Not the same way."

[Samantha McManus]

"I don't think anyone can focus on someone or something quite like you. That might be something you'll have to live with."

"But being the object of that focus isn't... entirely unromantic."

[Ryn]

"But how do I show her? She has made me dance, I have taken her to see the stars, I chased her along the beach. She did not understand. I tried to... to... be close and she was so scared." she says, clenching her fists. Even thinking of that moments makes her want to throw herself against something until it or she breaks.

[Samantha McManus]

"Have you ever just... said it?"

[Ryn]

"Yes, but I'm not good at words and I don't think she understood." she growls, trying and failing not to be snippy.

[Samantha McManus]

"How did you phrase it?"

[Ryn]

"That I wanted a song she sang to be about me. That it made me want to catch her but not to harm." It sounds even more like non-sense to her now. Somehow it had made sense at the time.

[Samantha McManus]

"That's not a very straight line if she doesn't know what you are."

[Ryn]

"I've never felt this way! I don't know the right words!" she says and punches a tree with enough force to splinter the bark and bloody her knuckles. She follows up with a kick that's a lot less impactful and a lot more aimlessly frustrated.

[Samantha McManus]

"You're falling in love with her, or at the least you've got an infatuation you can't shake because you've had no bloody outlet for that before."

"And that scares you, and the fact that it does makes you feel worse because you don't get scared."

"I think if you told her that, she'd at least know where you're coming from."

[Ryn]

"It's not that easy." she says. In fact it's the hardest thing she's ever imagined. "The words don't come out right. Or at all. They're stuck like burrs in my throat." she says, tapping her chest.

[Samantha McManus]

"Because love trips us all up. Sometimes that's just how it is."

[Ryn]

"That's stupid. Love is stupid. How do I make it stop?"

[Samantha McManus]

"Ah, you don't. That's it. You're up against something nothing's ever stopped: yourself."

[Ryn]

That couldn't be right.

But she can't find fault in the Morrigan's words and for the first time she recognizes the feeling that had driven her from Katarina's room and that grips her even now. Fear. Of failure, of loss, of not being what Katarina wants. She grips the trunk of the already punished tree and screams as bark and wood crack underneath her fingers until the whole thing snaps and she slams the entire tree flat on the ground with a thud. She stands over it, breath panting, and it has done nothing to dispel the feeling of lightning-ice crawling over her back.

[Samantha McManus]

"Starting to see why you've got so much pent up. I know how that feels."

[Ryn]

Ryn looks up at Sam and it's clear she is not done.

"Show me then. How weak being human makes you."

[Samantha McManus]

"That what it's going to be like, then?" She asks with a smirk.

"I was going to take you someplace you could really let loose, but in hindsight that might be off the list now."

[Ryn]

"The woods." she says, glancing south.

[Samantha McManus]

"What did trees ever do to you?" She chuckles, shaking her head but walking for the woods regardless.

[Ryn]

Ryn hurries past her, stopping to wait, then dashing ahead again. The woods aren't the densest and the light underbrush doesn't impede her as she moves, occasionally jumping to kick off a tree and clear a boulder or scale an incline. She's not even showing off but it's graceful and she makes it look simple to dance through the woods like the wind. Albeit a sharp, angry gust. Anytime she pauses she watches Sam.

"Move faster. You're Morrigu, your stride should be more than those of mortal women and men." she taunts? instructs? from where she's perched on a low-hanging branch.

[Samantha McManus]

"My stride is whatever I want it to be," she says, stepping out of her shoes on wolflike legs as a matching tail extends behind her. She picks up the pace, not quite matching Ryn, but well enough.

"Still, if you expect me to straddle a river like in days of old, at least buy me a drink first."

[Ryn]

Ryn scoffs. "I want to be sure to fight The Morrigan. Not Samantha." she says and disappears in a thicket, only to lunge at Sam from several feet over and ramming her shoulder into her side to fold her in half.

[Samantha McManus]

As before, Sam is harder to blindside than most mortals, perhaps harder than she has any right to be, though what the Morrigan has a right to be is up for debate.

At any rate, she's reacting well before she should and the hit doesn't quite land the way Ryn wanted. The balance isn't right, and though she forces the breath from Sam she finds herself gripped with a hoarse grunt and a fair bit of her momentum diverted as the redhead tries to fling her unceremoniously toward a stout tree's trunk.

[Ryn]

For all she is, Ryn doesn't weigh much and is easily flung. She hits the trunk a good five, six feet up but instead of falling her hand grabs the small crags and ridges of the bark and she swings upright, letting her feet find purchase. "Good!" she snarls and swings herself around the tree like a pole, tearing a gouge in her wake. She comes to a stop on the opposite side and one sudden kick snaps the trunk and sends the entire top of the tree flying at Sam.

[Samantha McManus]

Sam isn't entirely ready for the sudden escalation, but she's fought bigger things before. A physical flock of ravens pours forth in all directions, leaving her clothes behind as they're pinned by the incoming tree.

They circle around above Ryn at several heights and multiple directions, trying to leave the Fury guessing as to where the next attack will come from.

[Ryn]

Ryn tenses, crouched on top of the remaining tree-trunk and kicks off of it, throwing herself backwards and up towards another tree. She catches herself on it's trunk with one arm and one leg and pushes off again back towards the swirling murder of crows. She twists herself in the air and seconds seem to stretch longer and longer as she hurls herself into the flock. Her arms jab out, picking off birds as they come into reach with elbows, palms and the edge of her hand, faster than anything short of a speedster has any right to move. There's only so many birds within reach, but as she reaches the apex of her jump and begins to fall her foot finds a bird passing underneath her and she somehow finds enough purchase on it to jump, darting back up into the flock.

She's grinning wildly and at some point she must have lost discarded her glasses. The bone-chilling terror that sleeps inside her lightning-blue eyes does little to the Queen of Nightmares, though.

[Samantha McManus]

While Ryn can tell the whole flock reacts when she hits even just one of them, it's not all that different from when they were just ghosts back in town. They're all Sam. None of them are the "real" one per se, but none of them aren't, either.

So there's no real telegraphing what angle the right hook aimed at Ryn's jaw comes from, backed by a quite naked, somewhat bloodied, but otherwise human redhead.

[Ryn]

Ryn twists in the air but with her only footing being the flock of her adversary there's only so much she can do. Sam's fist strikes true and sends Ryn spinning head over heels. She plummets from the cloud of birds and but inches from the ground she suddenly stops. Her dark shirt has unraveled into hundreds if not thousands of fibers that flow from the six slits on her back, lashed out onto the branches and trunks of the trees around her to break her fall. And then fling her back into the air, trailed by the billowing cloak of her 'wings'.

The Morrigan is the flock and there's no striking the one spot she's hiding, but that cuts both ways and Ryn has struck elusive prey before. She tears through the flock on her ascend and her arm catches Sam. The Morrigan is everywhere within the flock, all Ryn has to do is strike her presence and pull her along, arm around the red-heads stomach like a steel cable as she flings her up and out of the flock into open air.

[Samantha McManus]

Ryn manages to grasp some semblance of Sam's astral presence, which is no doubt an odd feeling for them both. Tossing that presence up into the 'air' drags some of the flock with it, and the surprise of it all melds them together into the physical redhead again long enough to have the satisfaction of seeing the look on her face before she breaks apart into black birds again.

There's a feeling of something shifting within the flock, a telltale that Ryn might be starting to get the hang of, but perhaps not before Sam reforms much lower in the flock, grabbing at the Fury's legs, and suddenly becoming much bigger and heavier as she tries to drag Ryn to the ground.

[Ryn]

Ryn is yanked down and though she's still anchored to the surrounding trees, the force snaps branches with a series of loud cracks before Ryn hits the ground. Followed by the strands of her kanaf bringing the splinter branches they're still clutching down on Sam like so many clubs.

[Samantha McManus]

Quite a few of them hit home, raising weals on the giantess' flesh, and though the science of men would say there's nothing unusual about it Ryn knows the smell of divine blood. Even after centuries it's unmistakable.

Still, savoring that would be unwise, as an immense arm sweeps along those shadowy fibers, a hand grasping in multiple realms as it gathers them together to fling Ryn away.

[Ryn]

Not all of the gods that went forgotten did so naturally. Some, though Ryn now struggles to recall their names, had found their end at her hands and it has been so very long since she tasted divine blood on the air. The Morrigan is hardly deserving of this fate but Ryn still savors it all the same. Even as she's grasped and hurled like a puppet on strings she is laughing, at least until she goes crashing through the trees and the air is driven from her lungs.

She tumbles, finds her footing and slides backwards into a crouch, looking down the lane of torn undergrowth and the gouges on the trees where she failed to grab on to. Still she is grinning despite the cuts and bruises. She gives one swift shake of her head to dislodge the twigs and leaves from her hair and sprints towards Sam, zig-zagging, pushing off of trees and leaping along. She got flung maybe thirty, forty yards but she covers the distance in seconds. Most would struggle to keep their eyes on her as she almost instinctively seeks to dodge and weave through the glaring blindspots inherent to all eyes, but Sam isn't most and the eyes she has on Ryn are myriad.

Still, she is fast as she leaps, lashing her kanaf around Sam's waist and yanking her down at the same time as she pulls herself into the air to make her fist meet Sam's face with a punch that has felled bisons.

[Samantha McManus]

Sam is shifting down by the time Ryn rebounds, though she's not quite able to make it down to her human proportions before the Kindly One closes the ground. She doesn't quite take the full force of that buffalo-punch, but Ryn can tell she felt it.

This time the Morrigan doesn't retreat, and soon they're trading blows without pause. For her part, Sam's face is much less serious than when Ryn attacked her in town, frequently laughing as well and favoring the Fury with a borderline feral grin. Up close like this she's come alive, and it honestly feels like a dance. Everything flows, strikes are answered, openings feel natural. There's a rhythm here beyond what mortals could discern, and for all that it's a dance, Ryn can't shake the feeling that the Morrigan is leading. It's nothing so clumsy as feints, nothing so insulting, but the creeping suspicion is that she's striking where the Battlecrow wants her to.

That comes to a crescendo as Sam overextends herself in a kick and Ryn finds herself inside the redhead's guard.

[Ryn]

Much as she'd be loathe to admit it, the Morrigan holds sway over battle more than she does. She's no warrior. So while Sam leads, Ryn seeks to undermine, slip the rhythm as she flows from blow to block. She's like the wind, wild but never quite escaping the shape of that against which she rages. And eventually, as the undergrowth lays leveled around them, she ducks underneath a kick and she rams herself into Sam's knee. In one final flurry of movement she's carried the motion through and spins. While Sam is still hanging in the air her leg snaps out of the whirl and catches the redhead with enough force to send her crashing into the nearest tree.

[Samantha McManus]

Sam lands solidly sprawled against the tree trunk, then skids down it with a crimson smear. For a moment she looks all too human, and Ryn might wonder just how mortal this Morrigan is.

But then there's a series of wet, nauseating crunches as limbs put askew and cracked ribs are wrenched back into proper shape and she stands, battered but alive.

Then with that grin returning, she gives Ryn a slow clap.

"Oh, you are fun."

[Ryn]

Ryn for her part, does not have the same kind of tricks and remains at least a little bruised and battered as she picks herself up from where her spinning kick left her crouched to catch her breath. No one has ever called her fun, though she's also never really fought without intent to maim and kill. She's knocked the Wyldclay around, but that's more to shut their incessant jabbing and hardly something she'd call a fight.

"It has been a long time since I've fought anything but monsters." she says and even now she still has to tell herself the fight is actually over without someone dead on the ground.

[Samantha McManus]

"You seemed to enjoy it a bit yourself," she says as she turns to walk toward the tree her discarded clothing is lodged under.

[Ryn]

Ryn nods as the dark strands gather around her and weave themselves back into her top.

"I've never fought someone who enjoyed it." she says a bit awkwardly. She's not entirely sure what to make of this, but it felt good to blow off steam after the metal tunnels.

[Samantha McManus]

"Well we've been over that, aye?" She says as she shifts large enough to dislodge the tree, then back down to start getting dressed.

"Most of the ones you fight deserve it."