Yelena

The power ran through her veins.

She commanded it to strike.

Virtir’s rapier was like a slow slab of iron encased in treacle, trailing through the air towards her neck with a slow, meandering speed that was almost laughable. She moved her arms in an arc to her left and only dimly felt her opponent’s sword meet her own. She pushed it away with little effort, and then spun to deliver a slash across Virtir’s sword arm.

For the Yok’ra, the response had been faster than even her sharp eyes could process. Yelena’s strike beat down her blade and returned a blow all in the space of a split second. She pulled away as she felt the chink at her elbow break, and with the pain that shot up her arm, she knew her tendon had been cut.

Her arm went limp, and her sword dropped to the snow.

"Wretch!" she wailed from the ground. Her tenacity pushed her forward, and Yelena saw her throw herself towards her with her claws and teeth bared, striking at the beast with anything she had.

Yelena felt a buzz in her head, like hornets pricking at the folds in her brain. She placed her sword back in her scabbard, closed her eyes, and unsheathed more than just her blade.

Searing Strike: Activated

Virtir’s eyes went wild as Yelena’s blade cut a swathe of sapphire across the air and sent the Yok’ra flying across the field of snow. She crashed into the wall of the glacier with a gasp of pained breath.

The eyes behind Yelena’s gold-wreathed vision darted to the lettering that was buzzing in front of her.

Searing Strike (Level I/V) You channel the energies of the Glance into a strike that repels your foes, giving you room to maneuver. This strike can affect up to two enemies in an arc in front of the Guardian. Level I effects: 10pts DMG (LIGH) Repulsion: 30ft in the direction the user is facing. Channeling Cost: 5

Yelena’s own dim thoughts registered the information: its a method of protection and offensive in equal measure.

And then her eyes hovered over a single word that almost made her drop her weapon:

Glance...

She barely had time to consider the implications of this as Viritr rose, spewing purple ichor across the snow.

Her left hand throbbed as thick, grasping vines sprouted from its fingers and dragged her rapier back to her.

"That’s it," she growled. "Show me all your strength. It will be all the more satisfying to watch you die."

Behind Yelena’s thoughts burned hatred as she watched Virtir rise. But she urged herself to loosen her grip on her blade, to breathe, to feel the chill of the air around her and not the pounding, blazing fire raging through her blood.

It’s not you, Yelena, she said to herself. It’s not you. This is a tool, nothing more.

Virtir’s thorn vines suddenly filled her vision. She saw them curl round her arms and pull, dragging her towards the Yok’ra’s waiting blade.

Again, in an instant, a flash of lightning pierced her mind.

Appraisal: Success

Glance Affinity: ERTH

Spell name: Vine Bloom

LVL: Acolyte

Range: 30ft (point of origin)

Effect: Entanglement up to 1 hr

She felt the sting of thorns scrape across her sides and grimaced as she tried to focus on the screeds of text shimmering before her eyes. Behind the words, the blade of the snake waited.

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But her mind was sharper than the tip of even Virtir’s sword.

Point of origin…

Virtir’s thrust scraped the side of her neck as she spun with the vines, coating the silver blade in the fresh blood of the golden warrior, and yet the snake’s triumph was ephemeral. Yelena’s sword came up from her side, slicing through the forest of thorns, and connected with the soft flesh just under Virtir’s wrist.

Yelena felt her sword sear clean through the skin and muscle there like she was carving a cake, and Virtir’s quivering hand fell to the ground, still twitching with the contemptible magic that had consumed it.

As the Yok’ra screamed and clutched the bleeding stump her right arm ended in, Yelena looked at the still twitching hand on the ground.

Appraisal: Success

Daemonology: Voidspawn

LVL: ???

Her eyes flew open. So did those of the thing that was watching behind them.

She turned back to Virtir and beheld her gritting her teeth, staring at her mangled limbs in unrestrained fury.

"You," Yelena said. "You are..."

Without warning Virtir rose from the ground to strike at her with nothing more than her fangs, and Yelena did nothing more than bring her sword up, one handed, and carved a bloody gash across her face.

Scales and scraps of flesh from the snake’s nasal cavity littered the snow beneath her shuddering body. Her breaths came in raspy gasps at Yelena’s knees, now. Yet the rage inside her had not abated in the slightest. Her arms lay limp at her sides, her strength drained from her shaking shoulders, and now Yelena looked into her slashed face to see the truth behind the hatred.

Beneath her scales, a secret was concealed: there, dripping from the bottom of her eyes, were the black tears that scarred the faces of the corrupted.

"Sister," Yelena sighed, her sword shaking in her hand. "How long…"

Virtir looked at her with only hate. Pure and primal.

"You are no ‘Sister’ of mine!" she spat through the blood and bile collecting in the back of her throat. "You are an abomination."

The sight made Yelena waver. Her need for violence was surpassed by her desire to know. To understand.

"Amarata blessed me!" the snake screamed in her face. "She chose me!"

Yelena could only stare at the ruined Yok’ra captain. The once proud warrior reduced to this by her own hand. Her mind gave way to wanderings that made her drop her stance:

Was your hate for me really so strong?

From behind, Dimedrious’ strained voice sailed through the air. His prison of vines was slowly retracting and disappearing with the severing of Virtir’s Glance powered hand.

"Voidspawn possession," he spat. "Just a puppet all this time!"

Her hand kept shaking, eyes fixed on the salivating Yok’ra’s mouth that, even now, was twisting into a macabre smile.

"What do you want with her!" Dimedrious bellowed.

Virtir’s maniacal laughter echoed through the glaciers, and for a sickening moment that turned her stomach, Yelena thought she could hear the same snarling laughter emanate from the mouth of the great abyss itself.

"I saw her," she said through her mirth, her voice a mix of crazed bloodlust and diabolical joy. "I saw the Chainbreaker reach out to me as I dreamt. The sweetest dream in the world. She offered me the strength to face you, here. To end what you are. And to make you see what you must be"

Yelena’s grip on her blade’s handle was suddenly firm and sure. She didn’t know when, but her hands had flown back to grasp the blade with the keen intent of an executioner. Virtir’s sickening smile, and those eyes, told her duty was just, and clear.

"I won’t," she said, more to herself – the thing snickering within her being that saw the same sight she did, and licked its toothy, black fangs.

She looked upon her Sister with fear now. And the snake looked back in triumph.

"I will not kill you, Sister," she said.

Virtir’s thin tongue played across her slitted lips, dripping with blood.

"You will learn."

She felt it before it happened. The creature within her reacted to the buildup of energy from beneath her – to the right – the spot where Virtir’s hand lay still sparking with vile green power.

As she turned, she caught sight of the fingers stretch of their own accord – like a being experiencing a spasmodic death throe – and from their tips shot a stream of thorns heading straight for Dimedrious’ head.

He saw his death approaching. She saw the despair flash in his eyes.

Virtir’s laughter rose from deep in her diaphragm, contracting her stomach and causing her to seize up with joy. The ecstasy of the moment was too much for her body to bear – like something cackling deep within her chest was choking her throat with the same laughs that issued from it. So, when she heard the laughing cease, and looked down to see Yelena’s blade lodged in her chest, she barely even felt a thing.

The vine knife-needles flying towards Dimedrious melted away entirely. The dislodged hand, once brimming with magic, simply flexed once and then lay still as it felt the life drain from its host.

Virtir looked up at Yelena, lips caked with the pulsing purple of her blood, and saw the fury etched into the girl’s face.

"That’s you," she coughed with her dying breath. "That’s what you’ve always been."

Her head slumped, and her legs gave two slight, feeble kicks. Then, removing the blade slowly, Yelena watched her Sister fall to the ground with a soft, wet thud.

She felt Virtir’s blood trickle down the length of her sword, dripping from its tip and pooling at its expired host’s feet. The moment of the impact had been calm, almost serene, and in the fleeting instant between seeing Dimedrious threatened and shoving the sword in the Yok’ra’s chest, there had been almost no hesitation in the slightest.

The golden aura slowly faded from her. She returned to the snow-covered world between the two glacial walls and focused on nothing but the dead creature that lay before her, watching the slow rivers of blood that flowed freely from her chest, her wounded arms, and the gash in her leg.

She watched as a tiny whisp of shadow escaped from Virtir’s mouth and was pulled back into the abyss from whence it came, leaving it’s Yok’ra host to die alone. But as it trailed away into the nothingness of the black void below, Yelena heard a voice reach out to her from the world below:

"Will you be joining us soon, Sister?"

Her feet wavered on the precipice. She lowered her sword and felt herself sway subconsciously towards her destiny.

Before she took the plunge she looked back towards the freed Dimedrious, staring at her from across the field of battle. She did not hear his shouts, or the roar of the living mass of dark behind her. She didn’t even feel the chill wind of the North as it crept up her bones for the last time.

In the moment of war-torn grief that stretched between them she thought at first that she might just say nothing. But words escaped her lips before she had even truly formed them, tumbling out from behind her sad smile:

"Di," she said. "I belong down there."

She saw him reach out to her before she let herself fall, and she did not resist as one ghostly tentacle wrapped itself around her waist. She saw another one push him back, rejecting his sacrifice completely, before she closed her eyes and let herself be taken to the deepest dark from which none ever woke.