This is not the end. (Tristan)

[Megaera]

Wrinkling up her face in irritation she might have growled a little. "Hit me.."

Backing up, measured step by measured step, Megaera dropped a quick glance to the floor at their feet, then looked up again to clarify. "Hit me, if you can. Go on, Asherah and Arikos both trounced me all around here many times. I will not break."

[Tristan Alastor]

There were warriors amongst the Hapan people but no conquerors, not in a society whose ruling class had been in power for as long as anyone could remember. When they fought, their combat was an extension of their political games and ultimately an expression of their vanity. Had Tristan Alastor challenged a fellow noble to a duel in the sight of Ta'a Chume'Dan, he would have won whoever his opponent was, simply because he was Tristan Alastor.

"On what terms do we fight? Are there rules?"

He remembered a younger version of himself asking those questions, treating combat as a sport, not a necessity.

The answer he had been given was as valid now as it had been then. Mandalore's words echoed in his mind:

"When a young warrior trains, there are no rules."

Without hestiation, Tristan lunged forward with an overhand swing.

[Megaera]

As Tristan took the initiative she had hoped he would, Megaera almost felt sorry for him. She was already steps ahead of his intent, this was what she had to teach him. Anticipation. Instinct. So if she had to do the same horrible, unworthy, spiteful things to him over and over, she would. He was going to hate her, and she had to accept it.

As he stepped forward, she slammed the heel of her boot down into the unstable floorboards, to the one he was presently resting half his weight upon, unsettling his stride with a surprise. She watched the fall of the club approaching her and moved at precisely the right moment, to crash her shoulder into Tristan's chest, bearing him backward, right toward the muck beneath them.

[Tristan Alastor]

The club was a distraction, he realised, though a second too late. It flew from his hands, as useless as the sword had been before it.

His balance shaken and the full force of Megaera colliding against his chest, Tristan staggered backwards. Panic burst inside of his chest and though his mind raced to try and plan some way of escaping the fall, a moment of clarity suddenly hit him as hard as Megaera herself had. Once again, he heard Mandalore's words as if she were standing beside him.

“Standing up and fighting is effective, but being able to take your opponent to the dirt quickly can be just as deadly.”

He threw his arms around Megaera, one around her neck and the other beneath her arms, and held on to her as tightly as he could.

If he was going down, she was coming down with him.

[Megaera]

She could not have been more surprised if Tristan had suddenly sprouted wings and flew off. Megaera had not figured this conclusion into her equations of what he might do. That was her error and she was pitching straight toward the cost. Her own momentum, and his arms, pulled her down. He landed back first, cushioned by several feet of damp compost. She landed cushioned by him, but the squish of their impact had sent up a spray that had peppered her pale, shocked face in mud.

Utterly speechless for a moment, she just stayed as she was, dazed and not entirely uncomfortable. When she tried to sit up, her hand squished ineffectively into the muck, and she only slid more firmly against a flattened Tristan.

[Tristan Alastor]

The mud clung to every part of him that had collided with it. Wrapped around Megaera, his arms and hands had been free of the muck but soon they were covered too as he groped about for some way of pulling himself out of the mire. It wasn't that she was heavy; more that he had to fight against the mud to move even a little. Bringing Megaera down with him had been a fortunate turn, but that good luck could quickly turn to bad if she managed to pin him in place.

Megaera's shock played in his favour. Though he was floundering some, Tristan managed to twist from beneath her onto his side. Dirt smeared one side of his face. He hooked her leg with his own and slapped one mucky hand against her shoulder, trying to force her further into the mud and pushed himself out of it in the process. He grunted with effort.

“What was that.. about trouncing?”

[Megaera]

The way he spoke!

After an entire lifetime of living among submissive, enslaved men, bred to understand that they were there only to serve the witches, hunt for them, protect them as fighters, and perhaps if they survived long enough face violent trials to be worthy of a witches attention as a potential mate, Megaera was truly blown away. It should not have surprised her. This was why Tristan would become c'nros qu'ess eventually. He was more than just an equal. He could very easily be their superior..

Apart from the shock, she was proud of him for taking her down. She should have been better prepared. Already he was forcing her down, it was all very impressive, but there was no way she was giving up that easily. Closing her eyes, she let the anger his taunting caused roll through her like a coming storm. She pushed again, this time with all the magic she could summon to her, forcing herself up and him along with her.

[Tristan Alastor]

Like a puppet whose strings had been suddenly, violently yanked, Tristan was torn backwards by a force that he was powerless to resist. He hit the earth again tail-bone first, sprawling backwards into the muck once again. The loamy earth cushioned him against the impact yet he was still breathless, the air having been whipped out of him the moment Megaera's magic had so effortlessly plucked him into the air.

He wobbled to his feet but kept his centre of gravity low, crouching instead of standing, watching his opponent with anxious need.

“Teach me to do that.”

[Megaera]

Megaera landed on steady sure feet, her booted toes curling into the mire beneath her, keeping her balance. She eyed the platform above them, high to jump, but perhaps...

"Teach me to do that."

Turning her muddied face toward Tristan, Megaera scowled at him a bit, still rippling with the lasting chill of her anger. "So now you're giving me orders?"

Without taking her green eyes from his, she reached down to the contents at her feet and scooped up a liberal portion of muck into her hand. Squashing it into a packed ball, she lifted her hand palm up before her.

"Teach you what? This?" With a superior smirk at him, she pushed again, this time at the muddy ball in her hand, which hit him squarely in the chest. The look on his face was so priceless, she couldn't help it, and burst out laughing, anger forgotten for the moment in favor of mischievous enjoyment.

[Tristan Alastor]

The splatter caused by the ball hitting his chest flecked Tristan's chin and cheeks with dark mud, like a particularly patchy beard. As dollops fell from his jawline, some of the anger in his expression began to slip away too.

“I'm.. so glad that I amuse you.”

[Megaera]

Covering her face with the equally muddy back of her hand, Megaera got herself under control. She couldn't remember the last time she had laughed like that. Mouth closed, she forced the last of the laughter away, realizing she had probably really needed that.

"Yes, actually you do, but I'm sorry. That was badly done of me."

Surveying the ground between them, she picked a careful path, grimacing at the way her booted feet were being sucked at by the mud. Stopping just before him, Meg wiped her hands on the still clean areas to be found upon her under dress.

"Close your eyes.", she commanded, about to give him what he wanted for a change. "In the Mist you could sense me, find me."

Before his closed eyes, she lifted a hand, reaching out, but not touching. "What do you sense now?"

[Tristan Alastor]

Tension coiled in Tristan as Megaera approached. When she came to a halt in from of him – not slapping him with another palmful of mud or tossing him to the ground – he peered at her with a healthy amount of caution. While she wiped the muck from her dress, he straightened to his full height.

“Close your eyes,” she said and, having grown so used to the orders of the witches that surrounded him on a daily basis, Tristan's eyes slid shut almost instantly. “What do you sense now?”

He remembered how it had felt, grasping for the first time at that intangible connection that ran through everything. It had been like trying to seize hold of a smoke. Maddening, elusive. With his pulse still thumping faintly in his ears, it was easier now. The connection between them was galvanised by the remnants of his frustration, his emotion somehow amplifying his awareness of the world around him, both seen and unseen.

“I sense... you.”

Without opening his eyes, he lifted one hand and touched his fingertips to hers.

“Here.”

[Megaera]

While Tristan's attention was on the task before him, Megaera took full advantage of the chance to simply admire him. Watching the concentration on his face, and how he didn't hesitate, knowing right where her fingers waited for his.

"Good. Open your eyes, now that you have the feeling. Both hands now." When he had complied, Megaera used a much gentler application of pushing, resistance from her nearby hands shoved lightly against Tristan's.

"Push back.."

[Tristan Alastor]

Push.

What was unspoken but what he understood nonetheless was that it wasn't his arms that Megaera wanted him to push with. A warrior's true strength lies not in muscle, but in anger, he repeated to himself. When she pushed him, she had barely moved. Something moved through her. There was no empirical explanation for it, but no denying what he had experienced.

Push back, he told himself. It was as simple as that.

At least, it should have been. When he felt for whatever power Megaera had touched, nothing happened. Push, he repeated the word to himself, and again. Push. Louder in his mind this time. His fingertips twitched in anticipation. His brow wrinkled with a frown. Push, he demanded, indignation beginning to simmer beneath his skin.

Why wasn't it working? What was he doing wrong? Was it because Megaera's instructions had been so abstract or because he simply wasn't capable of living up to her expectations of him? It had to be the latter.

He had been raised amongst a society so vain and vapid that spirituality was an alien concept. It was all in his mind, sensing the Mists, sensing Megaera. All lies that he had convinced himself to believe because what other choice was there for both of them, other than to admit that he was a failure, not the warrior she needed and wanted -

-pushpushpushpushpush -

- and just like that, he pushed.

[Megaera]

Mud spattered lips twitched in a grin. "And still you doubt."

Shaking her head at his general silliness, Megaera turned back to trying to figure the quickest way back up. She talked over her shoulder to make wise use of their short time. "The same technique can be applied to pulling, lifting, pushing.. What I did before, that was a kind of push."

Looking over her shoulder at Tristan she nodded meaningfully at the out of reach platform. "Remember that, when we get back up there."

[Tristan Alastor]

Tristan stood watching her walk away, temporarily frozen in his place by the shock of what he'd done. It had felt like... he couldn't say. There was nothing he could compare it to, no comparison to be drawn. He had barely moved and yet something had moved through him as it had done through Megaera, a power that was invisible and intangible yet paradoxically stronger than any physical blow he could have delivered.

There was only one other group that he had heard of commanding such preternatural power and they were viewed as heretics by not just the people of the Consortium, but by the Galaxy at large: the Jedi. That was worrying.

As Megaera went on to describe the way that this power could be used for more than just hurling balls of mud, Tristan caught up to her, each footstep punctuated by a squelch in the mud

“You talk as if this is a simple thing... common, every day. Are you alone among the tribe in understanding it?”

[Megaera]

Megaera was not sure if she should be flattered that Tristan thought her that singular among the clan, or offended that apparently he thought them all simpletons calling down imaginary forces. "No, of course not. Much, but not all of the clan. Some are bred to their purpose, singled out young and trained, as I was. The others simply apply themselves to different skills. The shaman, the warriors, the hunters, all of them act as one with their abilities. "

"Tristan..", she sighed turning to him. "I know you have questions and I will try to answer them all, I promise." Megaera had been raised with these powers since she had been very small, they were second nature to her. Tristan's abilities had never been so developed, encouraged. Rather they had been completely ignored, as though they never had existed. Of course hearing this now would be hard to believe, disturbing even. She had to keep that in mind.

"Right now this is more important. Ah!", she spotted something that brightened her disposition, foot pegs hammered into the side of one of the supports. Picking her way toward them, she pulled herself up to the first one, standing just a bit above the level of the mud.

Tucking one arm around the post, she hung on at angle, meeting Tristan's eyes. "Trust me just a little longer.?"

[Tristan Alastor]

It wasn't the first time Megaera had made that request of Tristan, and what other choice did he have? There were so many things about this world – and himself, apparently – that he didn't understand. His skin still tingled with the echo of the energy that had moved through him, a palpable reminder of yet one more mystery that the mists of Dathomir continued to obscure.

“You have my trust,” he said, peering up at her. “As long as I have your honesty.”

[Megaera]

"I already promised that I would never deceive you.", she reminded him. Tristan already had enough people in his life that were bent on doing nothing but deceiving him. It was her intention to give him the skills to give them all what they had coming to them..

With that thought in mind, she supposed they had better get back to business. She continued climbing and waited from him once more atop the planked walkways where they had started.

[Tristan Alastor]

Now all you need is to learn to trust in the promises that people make you, Tristan told himself, as he pulled himself up onto the post and began to climb. Trust was such a rare commodity on his home-world, a place where sabotage and subterfuge were so common place. How strange it was, to think that he could trust Megaera much more than he could trust any of the courtiers that he had been raised by and with. She had done more for him than any of them could ever claim to have done.

Back on the walkway where they had started, Tristan took a moment to catch his breath.

“What now?”