"A plane is a - realm of existence. You can live in a single one your entire life without ever knowing that there's more, but step to the side with magic in just the right way, and you can move to another. I'm from Coveya Kurg'annis, allegedly, but they abandoned me in the woods for being too pretty." He smiles prettily, as demonstration. "So it's quite debatable over if I'm from there at all."

"Magic, hm? Not like we saw with that girl."

"I don't know what gave you the impression that in an infinite multiverse there was only one kind of magic," he says, patiently. "Mine is more like yours than hers."

"Before now I had no proof that there was an infinite multiverse or that any of that was more than a dream."

She pauses, and a predatory smile slowly spreads across her face.

"But you are here now." She stalks closer. "Do you recall," she purrs, "what I said I would do to express my gratitude?"

"I do," he says, mirroring her purr, and leaning closer to smile fetchingly, "but surely there are better uses for my tongue than - what would you do with it once it was out, hang it upon your wall as a trophy? Come now, talking's not all it can do."

And meanwhile, he reaches for his spirits, draws up a plan of attack for when this attempt to talk her down inevitably fails.

"But oh, dear sweet poet, the taking would be such fun." She runs a finger down his cheek and along his jaw.

"Of that I have no doubt, but if you haven't experienced all of my tongue's talents, shouldn't you expand your horizons before the chance is lost forever?" He reaches up to caress her hand gently, still smiling. There is no way this isn't going to turn into a fight, now.

As such, he'll start it on his terms. "For example: Yona."

His hand tightens on hers to a vice grip and his smile turns vicious, and he promptly slams the bear telthor into her. Bears aren't really creatures of finesse, so all of the finesse involved here falls to Gann himself, the bear providing the power behind it. This much power under his direct command is a rush - usually he delegates, sets a spirit to a task and supervises. He corrects and prevents mistakes, keeps the spirits from devolving into in-fighting, or straying off task. This is not delegating. This is commanding and steering a hurricane, a barely controlled cyclone of power that flows through him, dangerous and unstoppable and invigorating. Everything is under his personal command, no foolish spirits to muss anything up - but also no distance with which to spot mistakes before they become a problem. As much as he personally enjoys the rush of power, he prefers the satisfaction of a job well done. He prefers living up to his own expectations of skill.

Outright killing her is probably possible, and he wouldn't feel even a flicker of guilt if he managed it, but quite frankly, he's not sure he could. There are clearly variables here that he isn't familiar with, and even those he is familiar with make the prospect a daunting one. Those spirits she has bound to her makes directly killing her tricky, filling her body with energy even long after it should collapse. He could rip her spirits away, but then he has several wild and probably angry spirits to contend with, and the butcher herself. He doubts any of them would feel particularly grateful towards him. Maybe he could use the chaos to plane shift back to the Rashemi wilds, but that seems like giving up. Abandoning a fascinating dilemma in favor of safety, because he couldn't handle it.

He'll not admit that until it's actually been proven to him. The problem here is that her mind is clearly being influenced by her spirits. If he solves that, solves the thing that makes her so ridiculously and senselessly murderous, maybe he can actually talk her down. Maybe he can have some kind of guide in this world, instead of a corpse to join the other two outside, and a lot of explaining to do to any local authorities. Which sounds like a chore even if he does successfully talk his way out of it. He finds prisons tiresome, at best.

So he begins disentangling this knot of hers, rending open the mess of a connection with Yona's might. This effort is two-fold; it gets everything out of his way, and she's going to be reeling from the backlash of too many spirits, her ghosts and Gann's bear and Gann himself, in a messy, confusing, chaotic free for all in her mind that Gann only nominally controls. He sets the bear on the other spirits, and gets to reforging the connection properly.

She jerks backwards and lashes out with a wave of concussive telekinetic force. It's not as strong as it should be. Something is interfering with her ability to draw upon the ghosts' power. That should not be possible.

"What are you doing? Get out! They are mine and you will not take them!"

Ow. He keeps his grip on her by force of will and liberal application of bear spirit. Thank you, Yona. He is not going to be able to call on Yona much after this confrontation's done.

"Oh, do get over yourself, I don't want them," he snarls, "I just want to clean up your mess. I'm helping you."

"I don't NEED your help!" Lightsaber out and alight and raised for an overhand stroke, she charges.

Eep.

"Noted!"

He reads that as his cue to drop what he's doing and get far away. He leaves Yona to her spirit mauling duties, quickly bidding her to keep them under control but not to waste her power, then releases Occlus's hand to sprint away.

"Cetanwakuwa -" he hisses, raising a hand to send his hawk off to retrieve something from the elemental chaos.

A pool of water appears and rises from the floor, violently growing in size and engulfing Occlus in a tidal wave of sentient water.

The water hisses and flashes to steam where it touches the red blade, but it still stops her swing and knocks her back again.

Oh, good, he's glad to see he made a good choice with the water elemental. It seemed like the one most likely to do what he needed it to do. Fire would be better for outright killing her, earth would maybe hold her better but make one impressive mess, and air would just toss her around a bit instead of doing anything.

Unfortunately, he needs to be touching her to continue his finicky, delicate work work of fixing her damn mess. Which means getting within range of that charming red blade. This is inconvenient, because he does not want to quartered. It would be easier to just kill her -

(But you know you can help her!! protests Kele.

It's kind of hard to do that when she's actively trying to kill me.

She's sick, hurt! You can help her, right, that's what you do, you help spirits and people!

Wonderful. He wonders if Kele's slinging guilt on purpose, or by accident. But - yes, injured wolves do lash out, even when it would be mad, out of pain and desperation and impotence.

... I'll try.)

- but his sparrow is hardly going to let him hear the end of it if he just kills her outright. So he needs to figure out a way to solve this problem. He has the water elemental attempt to disarm her, as he tries to think of a better solution.

Her grip on the sword is quite tenacious, and rather impossible to dislodge. She swings it around, attempting to vaporize as much of the water as possible.

She's making steady headway against the water elemental; it'll be reduced to steam and innocuous puddles soon enough -

- but also drenching her as well. Hm.

"Cetanwakuwa," he murmurs, calling on his hawk again, this time to summon a bolt of lightning to strike at her from above. It won't kill her. Probably.

More energy, yes, just what she needed. She absorbs the bolt without flinching and immediately redirects it outwards, pushing the mass water off her to splash the walls.

And that is his cue to run.

Note to self: do not attempt lightning, it only makes her stronger.

She lashes out with the Force to trip him up.

"You can't run from me, pretty poet."

Down he goes, with an undignified yelp. Well, that's embarrassing.

"I think I disagree," he says, pushing himself back up. Clearly it's time to stop messing around, before she catches up to him and stabs him. "But if I depart entirely, Yona will eventually lose a handle on your spirits, and you'll have a delightful mess on your hands."

"I had them under control, before you decided to interfere. What do you even know about it?"

Eyeroll. "You have a different definition of under control than I do. You overtaxed the pathetic and meager connection's protections that were in place with too many spirits. It would perhaps do fine with one spirit, but with many, the entire system begins to slowly disintegrate. You were drawing power from them, certainly, but so too were they influencing, even controlling you. Even if the connection didn't eventually drive you mad - which, as I see, you're well on your way towards - you'd be dead within the year from the power rotting you from the inside out."

"You-" Her first instinct is to kill him for his temerity, his insolence. Her saber hand twitches.

But-

He's not wrong. Not entirely. The voices in her head have not been her own. She thought she could hold them down long enough, stay on top, have her goals served, not theirs. She should not be so quick to be killing this man, not when she might be able to squeeze his magic out of him. It would be something Thanaton could not predict. That she lost perspective enough to let that slip is troubling.

As for the last point- perhaps. She is as strong as ever, though the bolstering of the Force makes that difficult to judge.