A/N: Those are invaluable tips for future chapters, my only reviewer. Much obliged.

For your first tip: I am not going to reveal that yet, until it's ready. But rest assured, it'll be mentioned.

2nd tip: punctuations: I'll give it a good re-read again, for future chapters. I find myself liking the long sentences. It's my way of making it flow. I dislike frequent short clipped sentences. I think, it may be a stylistic issue and personal taste. I started writing this for elegiac and wild poetic images-- not having a plot in my head. I'll tighten the sentences for you, for easier reading. Can't promise that I won't be making small errors in the future. Thanks for having the courage to say something.

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Rigald & Miria:

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Too much. Too much. It's what's going on in her head as she tries to get ahead, get further, faster and strengthen the ever-growing velocity. The calming of the storm's chill has gone and left them with nothing more than a blanket of immaculate snow—their deep footprints impress haphazard patterns in their battle wake. And when she's got herself between a rock and hard place—him being that hard place, her lungs burst, as if it's been knocked out from under her. Rigardo pulls her tighter against his chest, as he secures his steely arms around her deceptively frail body.

His lips graze, tantalizingly slow against her skin. She half heartedly attempts a small struggle, but bites her lip as she's pushed up against his solid frame. Miria's eyes flicker close against the biting cold. The swirl of blue and white smoke--clouds puffing from their breaths fill like a melting balm in the atmosphere, drifting above, haloing them in temporal obscurity. The claymore's focus is blurred, surrenders to feel the hot caress of his lips.

"Had enough?" He asks, his fingers pull at the leather ropes around her wrist and sword hilt, the ropes that bind her to him—they fall like a coiling snake, slowly towards the deep snow. Her lips parts under the melting heat, as he takes her chin to raise it towards his open mouth. Miria tastes him. It's not the first time, but each and every time, she shakes, feels a weakening in her knees. She understands this is between death and an infatuated yearning—he could kill her with one fatal strike—and he could also give her more in life as he sucks her tongue into his mouth.

She trembles in silence, tolerates his strong fingers at her neck—his forefinger grazing, thumb at the base of her throat. Just those soft touches to send her over the brink of confusion; her sex is dead to the world, dead, but her inner yoma is creeping in response like a hungry child, in need of nourishment.

He lifts her into his arms. How easily she succumbs into them, and how easily she falls into the easy manner of his dark brutish seduction. When he climbs back into the house, leaving a trail of deep footprints, Miria's sword is left behind, buried within the white mantle.

It is dark inside the room, where he usually takes her, and the hushness of the atmosphere makes her breathe low, afraid of what he would hear.

"I thought you were going to touch me here," he tells her as he pulls away her claymore armour—not to see her naked in the darkness, but to feel the contours of her body with his growing fluctuating power. His hand moves her fingers over his chest, where now, naked against her palm. She trembles against his lips.

Miria slides into position—hating herself, trembles with the knowledge that she can survive this, because he won't kill her. Rigardo is good at this, but her mental prowesses can provisionally freeze the rise of her awakening powers. It's her aptitude to phantom: to cause a tiny juncture of modification where her inner yoma instinctively attaches to where it wills; while yoma's itself have no thought, a slight change where it synapses and fasten to-- as a rule--flowering the process of awakening. Instead, she disguises like the ghost of presence, even as Rigardo's hands alter slightly. She feels the fur and the muscles rippling beneath as his thighs hoist her up; and above her, over her. She spreads her thighs for him, and in place of what she expects, the crack of his growing muscle and flesh stills. The scent of quiet permeates the air with his feral lust; the smell of sex between them is the rise of his powerful yoki and her dormant one.

In the darkness, his sharp nails doesn't puncture her skin where it will cause her to scream, cause her nerves to tighten, and fire the inner sanction of charity to minimize. Instead, he breathes hard above her, poised like a darkened omen with his hips against hers. Her groin pulsing like two heartbeats as she feels the edge of something hard—growing in size and strength; she doesn't fear this, nothing fears her more than to awaken wholly in damned abandonment, betraying her humanity.

In place of what's customary between their joining, he pulls her head closer, grips her hair into a bundle betwixt his furred and sharp fingers. He breathes into her partially open mouth, until she moans, fully opens them to welcome his demanding feral kiss, endures the sharp fangs against her lips, against her tongue. There--it punctures until she tastes the bitter flow of metallic blood, not fully human, not fully anything that's ever been sweet. It makes her wonder why he pursues this angle, instead of driving her to the precipice of awakening.

It is, frightening. This.

Where he's not taking her like a savage beast, where she can selfishly take in the act without dying. To live another day and find a way to trounce him. But this, where he's tender without reason, makes her suck in her breath as he steadies and braces her hips and ass against his, pulling her thighs up along the length of his body.

She's left there in the darkness; her head lolls over as he releases her to take her naked leg over his shoulder and suck slowly between her thighs, suck along the inner flesh of leg. She is still smooth there, like a young human female's taut skin, where the flesh-torn burns have not marred them. Miria grabs hold of his corded muscled arm—hardened and taut against her sweat-cold palm, gripping hard enough when he takes his hot tongue and tastes her. There is no pain. But this—this is more painful than the sharpest wound he could ever give her. This—this makes her scream. Her ears betray her as she releases a ragged cry of defeat, shuddering into his ministrations.

Where she would normally phase in and out, his fangs and nails clamp tightly down upon her sex, her hips, and waist; she quivers like a pulled and released string, quivering fiercely into him. And she's left panting hard when she feels the rise of her awakening powers shift and churn within, the manifestation of her skin and blood bubble and the nerves stretch like a burning extended cord.

"Rigardo!" She warns. Her eyes are wide in the darkness, her breath hissing through her teeth. The flat of her hand pressing and fingers spread out against his naked furred chest, the thudding of his heartbeat pulsing loud and vibrating against her hand. He stops only to give her satisfied growl—of a lion's triumphant sound.

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Raki & Isley:

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Isley looks at his ward, who is bundled up in the warmest wools and furs, is warmed by the blazing fire behind them. They had found a nice, cozier cave with no distractions. Even Priscilla is full tonight and hasn't been much of a nuisance with her constant hunger pangs. She sleeps easily next to the fire, her blankets pulled up close to her neck. She could have easily slept nude and it wouldn't have made any difference. To Raki, however, it still made the boy uneasy to surround himself with two nude awakened beings. But—he didn't know that.

"Are you warm enough?" Isley asks, his hand over his knee as his leg is propped up. His back is against the cave's solid wall, and the shadows are lengthy when the fire flickers and crackles.

"I'm good." Raki nods, and Isley notices that his eyes stray to his sword.

"Not tonight." Isley tells him.

"No," Raki shakes his head, "I wasn't going to ask you to practice with me, I wanted to know something…," he pauses and looks up at him, …. "—about Rigardo."

"My second in command?"

"Yes, what," Raki's brows furrow, "What army are you two speaking about?"

"Rest easy, we're not going to fight against the claymores." Isley tells him, which is partially true. If the claymores didn't get in the way of their fight between the Empress of the South and the child-like Riful of the West, then there would be nothing to fear that Raki's friend Clare would get into the battle, "However, it's not up to me, if we so happen to meet up with them."

He watches Raki's expression, and after a moment, Raki understands. He sees the slow nod of understanding, "yes, Isley, I just, I need to get to Clare, to warn her away."

Isley could almost laugh, "Really? A claymore wanting to be warned away?"

Raki's eyes are full of fire when he next meets Isley's cool stare, "Yes, she would do this for me! She just couldn't leave me, she promised me…"

"A promise from a claymore?" Isley asks in the quiet cool evening, listening only to their conversation, the slow breathing of Priscilla's deep and undisturbed sleep and the crackling wood against the licking flame.

"I believe you, then," Isley consents, notices the fidgety manner in which Raki shows agitation and nervousness. He doesn't want to alarm the boy's highly sensitive nature, not while Priscilla is asleep for once—without nightmares and blubbering out words of her dead family.

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