Yelena
“Lovely night, eh?”
Yelena looked at Marius blankly, still hearing the words of the Lightbringer ring in her ears.
With a snap of my fingers I’ll help you all kill this Don Revok or Blackbird or whatever. Does that make me evil?
“I snap my fingers – click – and they are gone…”
“You really gotta stop coming out with creepy little asides like that, y’know.”
Marius jumped up to stand on the thin battlements beside her, clasping his hands behind his back and looking out into the dark desert horizon.
“Why are we here, Marius?” she asked.
He scoffed. “Is that an existential kinda question or a more literal one?”
“Does everything have to be a joke with you?”
“Only the funny stuff,” he replied. “And lately, life’s gotten a whole lot sillier.”
She let her head fall, exasperated. But he seemed to take up the point like a blade drawn for combat:
“Think about it: only – what – ten days ago? I was just a lowly thief on trial for larceny, aggravated assault, kidnapping, embezzlement – and a bunch of other inconsequential stuff. And now I’m standing here on a giant sand-castle run by a bunch of hyena-men ready to head off to war against a tyrannical bird who rules a golden cage.”
Yelena smiled. “I suppose when you put it like that…”
He smiled down at her. “How would you put it?”
“We’re just in another chapter in a world full of pointless suffering,” she responded.
“See, right there, that’s your problem: too negative an outlook. Is suffering really all that bad?”
“You’ll defend it?”
“I’ll defend nothing and no-one, and expect no defense in return,” Marius retorted. “But suffering’s just as important as joy, right? After all, you must have suffered up there as a Firvak. Even among the Argents, they probably hated you, right? But it didn’t make you a victim. It made you strong. And coming down here’s only made you stronger.”
Their eyes finally met with an air of seriousness, for once.
“What do you want?” she found herself asking suddenly. “Really – what’s this all about for you?”
“I told you – I’m here looking for something any man –“
“Not that,” Yelena said. “No riddles. No lies by omission. I want to hear something real.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, but his smile never vanished.
“If I told you,” he sighed. “You’d kill me.”
“I want to kill you anyway.”
He laughed. “That’s what’s good about you, Yelena. Did you know that? You can actually tell the truth – and mean it.”
He bent down to her level, hugging his knees and swaying from side to side on the battlements- the prospect of falling to his death utterly meaningless to him.
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“So I’ll tell you something else that’s true: I thought about leaving you all, back there. I thought about running away and letting the Scorpion-bitch have you.”
They each allowed a moment of silence to pass between them.
“But you didn’t.”
His smile grew. “Nah. I didn’t.”
“Because you know you couldn’t make it out there on your own.”
He licked his lips. “Also, I guess, because I kinda like you.”
She leaned her head back, stroking her sword with affection, and studying his face for a moment. In the darkness of the First Layer, the only lights that illuminated the all-consuming void of the world came from the thin strips of lightning slashing through the sky sporadically every few minutes.
One of those spikes hit as she was looking at him, and his rugged features coupled with the tousled mess that was his hair struck her.
But not in the way that she would have expected.
So she shrugged, gave a hearty chuckle, and flashed him a sarcastic smile of her own.
“Wouldn’t it be funny if that was true?”
His eyes widen at that – but gradually go beyond mere shock at her words. She sees his muscles tense. A solitary vein of worry pops into being on his forehead. Slowly she comes to the realization that he’s heard something. No – more like he’s felt something.
And when he reaches over to her and grips her arm, her suspicions are confirmed:
[Uncanny Danger Sense: Hostile presence nearby]
[Distance: 20ft below]
She looks right back at him. Her sword – well – that’s already in her hand.
“That’s the beauty of the Everloft, ain’t it?” Marius says as they storm away from the balcony and charge through the guests to the halls below. “It never lies.”
----------------------------------------
Amara
She feels the poison pulse as it is injected into her sides.
[STATUS CONDITION: GLANCE NULLIFICATION]
She feels weightless. Distant. As though she’s watching herself drown from the darkened ceiling of her claustrophobic little chamber.
Mother’s voice is nothing but a distant memory, now.
And all she can see: his eyes. Dark pools of crimson, surrounded by thick black threads that look like painted tears. But she sees them move, utterly incongruous with the riotous laughter that spills from his jaws.
“Heheheheeheeee!” he chuckles like a child at play, saliva dribbling from his open mouth. “I did it! I did it! I killed the Lightbringer!”
She feebly opens her mouth to scream, but all she can manage is to cough a simply question:
“Why..?”
For some reason, that angers him. She feels the dagger at her side plunge further into her body. She can’t even manage a weak scream.
“You…you dare ask why? Vile little human bitch! Surface scum! My whole life I have been a slave to your pathetic little prophecy! From birth! You hear me, girl? From birth I was told to serve the Lightborn by the stupid Elder! They all hated Lokar. They all laughed at Lokar. Lokar wasn’t big, and strong, and brave like the others. But he didn’t know. Lokar didn’t know that there were better masters out there.”
Something creeps into the corner of his eyes. A darkness that threatens to consume the entire room…
Another voice, talking through the shaking Gnoll’s frayed throat. His mouth moved, but the words that came out matched none of his movements. His limbs twitched like he was merely a puppeteer for something sitting behind his eyes.
“First, you. The bitch who comes to kill him. Then the dumbass thief. Then – ha! – then the Argent girl. I’ll leave that little piece of meat for last. I’ll show her what real pain is.
For the briefest flash of an instant there is a different set of eyes there, in front of her. A set of eyes very different from Lokar’s blinking, beady pupils.
Two dark slits slicing across a sea of amber. Scaled lids never closing, always open. Watching. Not the eyes of a thieving pup. The eyes of a predator.
Another flash – this time of blinding, searing light – and Lokar is launched off her body and right through the wall to the outside world.
“The – ARRGH! – LIGHT!”
She hears him wail like this as he flies from the room, falling outside into the castle courtyard amidst a cabal of terrified Gnoll citizens.
As she looks to the outside world, she looks down and sees the dagger still embedded into her side.
“Ah…ah…AH!”
“Don’t look at it!”
A familiar voice. Behind. Another –
No…not an enemy.
As she looks into the pale face of the Argent girl, her sword twinkling like azure light in her hand, she realizes she doesn’t know what this girl is at all.
“Marius!” she shouts.
“On it!”
Amara snaps around to see an arrow sail from above and sink into the face of Lokar who is still scrambling around below, snarling like a rabid beast at the Gnolls that begin to flee in the face of his fury.
“Here,” Yelena says, reaching towards Amara with a hand full of healing light…
“No!”
It’s an automatic reaction. She flinches. She shrugs away. She tries to form a flame in her hand.
Yelena inches forwards, “You don’t want to die, do you?”
Their eyes meet as the fury of combat breaks out below.
“Guards! Guards!” someone is shouting. “Guards to the courtyard! Guards to the…by the Lightborn! WHAT IS THAT!?”
Something is happening to Lokar below. She hears it before she sees it. His howl becomes that of a demon – lungs pouring out the fury of two voices, not one.
“Lightbringer,” Yelena said, holding out her gauntleted hand. “We’ve got work to do, right?”
Amara looked back at her, stood on her own, and, with a heavy sigh, bore the touch of her hand.
“This doesn’t mean I trust you,” she said, as she felt the wound close up at her side and her flower of flame begin to bloom beneath her heart once more.
“That’s the truest thing I’ve heard all night,” Yelena replied.
“Ladies!” Marius called from outside, his words swallowed by a storm of clashing blades and exploding straw huts. “Don’t mean to interrupt, buuuuuut –“
The two women needed no further instruction.
Together, Glancer and Argent, they descended into the jaws of death.