Yelena

She was rage, untethered.

The Red woman led her and Marius through empty hallways echoing with the laughter of the revelers in the main plaza, completely unaware that their most precious prisoner was about to make her escape.

"Be keeping close," she called back to them as she led them across the palace gardens. "We are not having much time before they look for Nils."

Yelena nodded at the woman and at her stat-screen as it buzzed with activity. She perused her available skills and kept her hand on the pommel of her blade, feeling a tepid mixture of unease and excitement fill her heart:

Profession Skillset

Battlecry NULL Searing Strike II/V Undaunted NULL Rally NULL Guardian's Ward I/V

"So, uh, how much time exactly did you buy us?"

"Enough," the Red-woman barked back over her shoulder. "We are getting to the palace sewer and making escape through town."

Yelena tried to hear them, but her mind wandered. Her eyes glazed. In her head there was space for only one thing right now: the image of the dead lizard and her own hands dripping with his purpled blood.

It was a sight she'd seen before...

"You got the key to our carriage?" Marius asked from behind her.

The Red-Woman nodded, patting the lead rod at her waist - the same device that had been used to control the bulbous beetle that had brought them to this ruined place. A prize she'd procured from the fallen Yok'ra bandit.

"Okay," Marius huffed as they rounded another gilded corner and broke through a vacant atrium. The Red-Woman's distractions had been well thought out, Yelena noted, and could tell even the thief was impressed.

"Let's just hope they don't wake up from their beauty sleep too soon, eh, Yel-?"

She cast him a look of barely restrained fury as he tried to touch her arm.

He looked at her for a moment with pain in his eyes that gradually gave way to acceptance. They couldn't stop to talk now, and she couldn't let him touch her - not even through her new armor. Even beneath the firm leather tainted with the colors of their enemies, she could feel the scars that he had carved into her flesh.

Knox...

She turned her attention back to her stats and fixed on one that called to her, as though it were a detached figment of her soul looking to return to its mistress:

Battlecry You bellow a righteous challenge to your enemies, forcing them to see you as the most tangible threat on the battlefield. Level I: Taunt works on enemies of equal or lower LVL than the Guardian.

She felt the power running through her veins - blood pumping, magic pounding. The magic called the Glance. The tool of her enemies.

A tool she now had to use.

Consumed with visions of torture alone, she barely even heard the Red-Woman gasp as two Tigran guards strolled round the corner of the hallway they were presently thundering down.

They saw the triad charging towards them, raised their pikes, and would have called out for aid if not for the flash of gold that flew at them with unbridled rage, saying nothing more than two words before springing into action:

"They're mine."

The first one she ended with a thrust through its armor and a vertical slash that tore the guard's innards from his abdomen.

DMG: 16 (10 PRC + STR)

And before the other one was upon her she spun her blade and took her first victim's head from his shoulders.

DMG: 14 (8 PRC + STR)

The second aimed his pike at her as she twirled and met his blow with her blade, seeing the red-hot sparking of steel on steel against the golden palace walls. She pulled away as he stepped over his fallen comrade with no more fanfare than treading on a roadside pebble, and she sheathed, focused, and let her blade fly with an azure sheen of killing light:

Searing Strike (Level II/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 II effects: 15pts DMG (LIGH) Repulsion: 30ft in the direction the user is facing. Channeling Cost: 5

She heard the bestial cry of the Tigran as he was thrown against the adjacent wall, tripping over his friend's entrails as he tumbled back, sending cracks up the intricate gilded masonry. As she stalked towards him she let her eyes tell her only what she needed to know:

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Morphology: Tigran Sun Guard

HP: 15/30

She wasted no time in pressing her advantage: she drove her sword through his chest and felt it impale itself into the wall behind him, all the while seething with animal rage, seeing his face twist, turn, and transform like a wailing mask before her: Virtir, Agathae, Nils, Knox...

...Marius.

DMG: 18 (12 PRC + STR)

"Hey," someone was shouting at her. "Hey, Yelena!"

She whirled, aiming her sword at the interloper who dared accost her, ready to tear his eyes out.

But it was the thief that was watching her, a hand placed firmly on her heaving shoulder.

She looked at her crimson coated blade, shook herself and stood tall again.

"I'm fine."

He grimaced.

"Look, you need-"

"I'm fine!"

She said it even as she watched his face churn to see her covered in the blood of the fallen guards whom she'd debased without a second thought - without even the being inside her to spur her on...

...You don't need me, do you, little flower? See that poor creature down there? That's your handiwork. That's you, Yelena.

"Stop it!" she spat, whirring back round to see only the dead eyes of her fallen foe.

"Yelena, I-"

"We are needing to keep moving!" the Red-Woman interjected, pointing to the courtyard and the armed sentry that was heading their way.

Yelena needed no more warning than that.

"Where's the sewer entrance?" she asked the Red-Woman over Marius' shoulder.

She ushered them both with her to another hidden-away alcove, far from the wails of joy in the palace center, and palmed a piece of loose stonework in the golden walls.

"Here," she said. "Be following."

"How many fucking secret passageways does this place have?!" Marius boomed. "It's a goddamn kids' haunted house."

The wall closed behind them and they threw themselves down the darkened corridor, with nary a light in sight, or room to maneuver. Shoulder to shoulder, they sidled forward, bound inexorably towards their only hope of freedom - the Red-Woman leading, and the two surfacers growing more and more angsty.

"How can you even see where you're going here?" Marius asked.

The Red-Woman answered with solemn certainty, and Yelena was sure she could hear the deep pangs of regret in her words - the words of one who's world had been stolen from them, long ago.

"As child, these walls are being my sanctuary," she explained. "The dark is good. It is only place I can pretend the Blackbird and his minions do not exist."

Yelena felt Marius tap her shoulder. "Just so you know, I didn't mean to find the person with the biggest downer backstory to help us."

She ignored him. For her, there wasn't just darkness here. There was the ever-present red haze that she felt was crawling in on all sides of her vision. If she wanted to, she knew, she could have taken the Red-Woman by her braided hair and ended her life then and there...

What's happening to me?

When they eventually heard the thunderous din of running water rolling through makeshift pipes below them, the Red-Woman stopped, palmed another piece of loose wall, and led them into a spume-coated sewer pipe dripping with the filth of those making merry above.

"Be hurrying," was all she said as she helped them out of the stone crevice. "They are coming."

They dropped to a crouch, jumping from the pipe into a river of spume that turned their noses. Above - the sound of footsteps clamoring through the other sections of pipes that filled the cavernous passage above. Looking up, Yelena saw that the sewage works must have run into the very bowels of earth below the palace - and they were on the muck-filled foundation.

"How th'", Marius sputtered through slime that Yelena's charging feet kicked back at him. "How d'you know where your-"

"Darkness, Marius," the Red-Woman replied without looking back. "It is being our friend."

At the next pipeline there was a general shout - feral and challenging - that sailed from one of the pipes above. Their gazes were quick enough to catch the sight of two Tigran troopers dropping down from above - followed by a torrent of bile from the pipe they had just burst through.

The first one caught Marius in his shoulder as he rolled to evade, feeling the brunt of the cat-man's halberd pierce the flesh beneath his leathers. The Red-Woman managed to catch the other in his shin as she sidestepped his plunging attack, and Yelena shifted her gaze between them both, trying to resolve their images before her.

Blood. That was all she could think about. Their blood. Coating her blade. Painting her scarred hands...

And it was her voice that took over this time:

Battlecry: Activated

The sound that escaped her lungs could not be said to belong to a girl. It was the roar of a draconic beast - some terrible being from a long-forgotten myth. And, like clockwork, the two Tigran immediately switched targets, their long pole-arms seeking Yelena's neck.

With a single, fluid movement, she crouched low and let her blade fly across their knees.

Searing Strike

When they hit the filth-laden wall she finished them both in one swing - drawing her sword across their exposed necks, taking from them the tiny slivers of HP they had left.

And panting, blood pumping, nerves flowing with so much free energy that she barely heard Marius' complaint, she gave a curt nod to the Red Woman and they kept moving through the sludge of Caer Akris' nethers.

"-remind me never to get you angry..." Marius quipped as they went.

They came to another drop - sliding down an artificial waterfall of filth and emerging into a sea of viscous green flanked by two metal platforms. Gasping for clear air, shaking the chunks of rotted meat, piss, and other fluids that clung to them, they started to swim towards the nearest platform, even if Yelena and Marius both saw nothing more than a watery grave awaiting them.

When they pulled themselves out of the vile pool they stopped to hear the sound of raised voices carrying through the pipes. More than two this time. Probably the entire barracks.

Then their eyes lighted on the Red Woman feeling the wall in front of them.

"Well?" Marius barked, coughing up the polluted waters. "Where's our exit?"

She did not respond at first, and Yelena was filled with the dreaded notion that she'd either given up, or was considering returning to her enslavement. Then, an incredible change came over her, visible even in the depths of the dark: she was smiling, and caressing the wall like it was a long lost friend.

"Here," she said with almost childlike longing. "Here."

More voices from above - and now, behind too.

"Honey we're gonna be 'dead', 'dead', if you don't get on with it!"

She didn't even acknowledge Marius' remark. Instead, she pushed another loose brick in the ancient stonework and opened the way into a small enclosure covered in mud, dirt, and dust.

But at its center was something that shone even in the darkness of the sewers: a shrine. A statue withered with age, with two candles at its base. Most of its features were debased or rotted with time. Some of them were so filled with grime that Yelena couldn't know what they were supposed to represent specifically. But she could get an overall idea. It was plain enough to see - two legs, two arms, small, almost emaciated frame. And flowing, auburn hair.

The Red-Woman crept forwards, head bowed, legs shaking in supplication, and fell before the statue.

"This is being our greatest secret," she said. "Even as the world above is dying, she is watching. She is there."

Marius shot forward to grab her. Yelena held him back with a firm hand.

"This is no ordinary shrine," she said simply.

He followed her eyes but she did not notice if he could sense what she could.

"There's power here," she murmured through her blood-vision. "Glance."

The Red-Woman turned back to them, still kneeling, and looked almost close to tears.

"This is being our escape," she said. "The Lightbringer is no longer being myth. She has come to us, and so her shrine has the strength to light the way to freedom. I am needing time to complete ritual. Then we shall have our path to outside."

Marius double-blinked.

"Listen lady," he spat. "This wasn't the deal. We ain't here to help you worship some bullshit God. We're here to get the fuck outta dodge. So would you kindly get up, quit the psycho shit, and HELP US?!"

"The Lightbringer is no lie," she hissed back at him. "She is our way. I am saying to you I will show you the path of freedom. She is our only path. I will call to her, and she will bless me with her magic."

As Yelena met Marius' confused stare - the deep, nerve-racking, abyssal stare of a trickster who has themselves been tricked - she suddenly felt the distinctive sensation of wind nipping at her neck. It started small, creeping down her back and spreading through the surface of her limbs, before growing to the roar of a gale force hurricane whipping up behind them.

And when they turned to meet the source of the atmospheric change they saw the ocean of sewer water swirling around the other metal platform facing them, their crashing waves the roar of a corpulent beast waiting for its new meal.

Then, all at once, the wind-racked sea settled, and where once there was nothing but air, six Tigran guards stood to attention surrounding their master.

As he walked to the head of his retinue, Yelena tried to gasp and found the air in her lungs was caught in a vice. It was a sensation she was more than used to.

Because it was him, standing there. Silent, resolute, and as cold-blooded as a raging winter blizzard.

Knox.