Amara
The golden doors of the palace throne room parted before a single gout of fire unleashed from her impatient hands.
This, her mother told her, this is the precipice of your path, Amara, she said. Do not falter here. Strike fast. Strike strong. Do not give the Blackbird time to make his taunts.
She nodded, looking at the two companions she was left with: the grim priestess and the ever-jovial thief, whom she trusted less than dung scraped across her feet.
Regardless, it wasn’t him that dominated her attention, now. Rather, it was the sight of the throne room that she’d expected to see draped with tapestries of grand designs and gilded with the same precious metal that adorned this whole monument to Argent sin.
But this was not the sight that greeted her and her companions.
The high-ceilinged throne room was surrounded by a haze of dark, shimmering clouds filled with the same faces of torment that had come against them outside. Around the once gilded walls of the room were several mosaics depicting desert residents filled with pain, and as Amara looked closer, taking another step into the empty space of the haze, she recoiled in sudden terror.
“By Ty’kella…” Antethra whispered.
The faces of the mosaic’s blinked and moved. They began to stretch their arms out towards them – arms that ended in blackened, charred claws once they exited each picture frame. Their cries of terror rebounded off the walls of the room and created a chorus of suffering – a sound that traveled through the ears of the three mortals who had entered their realm and gripped their hearts like a vice. The pews of the throne room were nothing but wrecks of their former splendor – of the once decadent place Marius had described he and Yelena had seen when first they entered this place in chains. He seemed simply creeped out by the sight, but for the Red-Priestess – Antethra – there was pain that swam in her eyes.
“Sisters…” she whispered as she looked at the dreary, hollow forms of the women clawing at them from their mosaic prisons. “What…What has he done to you?”
“Nothing they wouldn’t have chosen themselves,” came a voice, draped in shadow, from the end of the room.
The fog of lost souls began to clear before them, revealing the dark wings of the speaker who sat upon a golden throne dripping with ooze and spume, coated with the entrails of his own people.
“To see true beauty with your own eyes,” the voice behind those black wings bleated. “To look beyond the limits of your body - Is that not a prize worth dying for?”
Amara felt the robed form of the priestess move beside her.
“Grant me fire, Lightbringer,” she said. “And I will be ending this bast here and now. Marius –“
“Same goes for me double,” the thief whispered beside her. “I’m gonna try slipping into the shadows here, come up his rear end. Keep him talking and we’ll take him down.”
Amara cast her Infernal Armaments Incantation with a simple flick of her fingers. But as she did so, she watched the vile, broken beak of the Blackbird twist into a smile.
“So this is the Lightborn,” she said, standing to make a mock bow on shaky legs, she noticed. “I’d say I’m glad to meet you, but you’ve caused me quite a bit of trouble ever since I got down here. You, and your damned prophecy.”
“Your reign of terror is being over, Revok!” Antethra roared, bearing a hidden dagger and flashing it at the Jilae’s neck. “Your army is being crushed. Your Glancer dog is dead. Be taking your execution with dignity – for you shall not be escaping your fate.”
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Amara uncorked an Arcanists’ elixir and downed its contents, restoring her Glance while the Blackbird stepped forth, keeping his hands behind his back.
His blind eyes never once left Amara.
“’Fate’?” he scoffed. “A word I heard often, but never fully understood. What is fate but just the path we hope takes us towards a better life, a better world. Once I knew a man who believed in just that. Like everything else he peddled, it was a lie.”
Antethra edged towards him, seizing her chance, while Amara wondered why this old bird was speaking like he was dead already.
Then his eyes flashed with sudden excitement.
“But this,” he said as Antethra sprinted at him, the tips of her daggers shining bright against the dark. “This is truth. Three lost souls looking for vengeance, looking to push onwards just like he did, so, so long ago…”
His claw flashed out to grab at the priestess, meeting her blade with a notched sickle that disarmed her with ease. Amara didn’t see him strike her body, but instead saw her fall away, clutching her chest, an arc of crimson spraying from just below her neck.
From his left the blackbird took a flaming arrow in his wing that should have singed him clean through. Yet Amara watched the inky, oozing dark that was billowing at his chest where his heart should have been spread out to stop the fire before it could spread.
Then another sickle sang through the air to cleave through the thief hiding in the shadows. Amara saw him just barely roll out of the way of the strike that took the grey hairs at the top of his head.
All the while, his eyes had never left her sight.
“This is the crossroads, little red Lightborn,” he said, sharpening his sickles against eachother as he brought them together and stalked towards her, trailing his charred wings behind him. “I’ve heard you’re the end of all things. The cleansing fire that shall sweep away the scum of the sands.”
His next words were a dark whisper that came behind her ear.
“Don’t disappoint me.”
…
Yelena
Sentinel’s Aura: Activated
Glance: 12/20
She felt the sting of every shard as it pierced through her bleeding body, tearing through her armor and puncturing the flesh beneath. The air in her lungs was being cut with every blow, her heart beat to contain the flood of agony crawling over her every pore and orifice, and all the while she heard the voice of the Voidling screaming in her head.
Just let me in! Let me in and watch him die!
We’ve been here before, she shouts back in her mind as the sadistic Glancer fires more sharpened shards at her inert, floating form, using the remainder of his Glance reserves to keep up his Seerchains.
Glance: 8/20
For her part, she knew she’d run out before him.
She was only just able to seal up each wound he made – a face that no doubt fascinated him. Even without eyes, he could feel her pain, and her determination to never give in.
It’s not giving in to take help when it is offered to you! The Voidspawn growled. We can end him together – like that bitch Virtir, like Nils, like all those you want nothing more to crush beneath your heel!
She clenched her fingers as she felt her Sentinel Aura die away to nothing, and her every limb began to go numb with agony.
This was your plan all along, wasn’t it? You wanted me weak. You pushed me here, thinking I would cave to you. Do you think me a fool?
She felt the creature sag under the weight of her wounds, and her eyes flew to the glass ceiling as she watched it split apart and fall towards her – decimated by blasts of the Glancer’s cutting wind.
It seemed he was getting impatient, down there. And this was going to be his final incision.
Glance: 4/20
HP: 10/40
I think you’re a warrior who knows she’s destined for more than to die on the First Layer of the Everloft, the beast echoed inside her, its words clutching at her heart. You met me in the maelstrom of that Gnoll’s death. You saw in that moment what I am – and what I want. Our goals are aligned, Yelena of the Argents. Let me in, now, and you have my word that once this filth is wiped from the face of these Sands, you can have your body back.
The glass above was shredded down to fragments sharp enough, and with enough wind behind them to pierce dragonscales.
Then, as one mass, they descended
I’d be a fool to trust you!
You’d be a fool to die here!
She watched her reflection shake in the face of the storm of knives.
Together, her fading mind wheezed. Like above – when I fought Virtir. I’ll give you a taste of freedom. I will let you pour your strength into my limbs. But you will stay out of my head. I will see this vermin die through my own eyes – not yours!
Glance: 0/20
The glass knives struck.
…so be it, Argent.