Quiet hung heavy, as if the city held its breath dragging out the moment painfully. When it passed It did so with a sonorous chime so beautiful and light Two could scarcely believe it was the act to such great violence.

The sound assured her it was. Like two hills grinding against each other. A thousand jagged blades gnawing through the bones of the earth. The first bell by the second and soon became a melodic torrent. Her bones hummed from the overwhelming sound her teeth rattled and her heart pounded.

Mist once in the dim night crept and swirled across the ground and filled the sky with shades of white and grey. It thickened and thickened until it was like cotton, and the reverberation grew distant.

Enough that she could hear herself think. Enough that nothing distracted from the wave of essence struck after. It was anger borne of love. The calm of an oak groaning in a storm. The glee and tension of a predator set loose. It was the impossible taste of light. It was that and more, dancing at the edge of her comprehension.

It forced its way down her throat and up her nose. She couldn’t breathe! A single attempt turned her stomach and spilt its contents onto the floor. The gasp that followed emptied everything else that was in her.

Yet the nausea persisted building and clawing though no air entered her lungs and her nose was clamped shut. The essence pushed through her skin and forced its way into her perception. Leaving tingling wracks of sensation as it did. It grew and twisted and bled into itself until it was defied description. Was beyond reason.

She tasted light and saw fury. Sense spilled into nonsense and real became another colour of feeling. Another pain danced upon her skin, eyes were upon her. She felt everything there was to feel.

Then like the slamming of a door, it was gone.

She was on the floor. She breathed and tasted nothing but the cool mist. Her fingers ground into silt and stone as she pushed herself upright.

The guards stood resolutely in ambush, their silhouettes clear in the new light. Their blades clenched tightly and the one she’d kicked shook like a leaf. They were… afraid, determined? She couldn’t smell it. Of the world of essence and feeling only cool mist remained.

Two looked at the signs of their terror and resolve. She picked out familiar signs and actions yet the greater scene was incomplete. Like she was staring at a familiar painting, but someone had stolen a colour from her eyes. But she remembered them. Their echoes still screamed their existence into the static of her mind.

She took a breath and breathed only mist and found nought but sweat and grime. Slowly and bonelessly she slumped against the wall not bothering to flee the puddle of sick.

Warmth flowed down the side of her head. A touch came away red. She must’ve hit her head. She stared at her fingers for a long while then let them fall. She turned her vacant gaze outside, to the swirling cotton mist and guars that had not glanced at her. Warm fluid streamed down her neck and trickled past her collar.

She… would, she would just, sit. Sit and wait until there is something to do. Because all else led to panic and crying. Despite the sinking dread that seeped into every fibre of her being, she still knew better. Some truths went deeper.

Tears wouldn’t help anything.

Tears welled freely in Deadra’s eyes. She let them because her aunt was here. She knew, despite the painful constriction that trapped her and the chains that bound her, all would be well. So she cried. The motions of battle shook her like a doll and tore her tears free, yet she knew no fear.

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Reduced by her bindings as she was, she couldn’t track of the battle. The world was a blur of forms and dashing lights punctuated by a storm of noise.

A blade of light chimed as it struck a cane and drove the latter’s wielder back for the umpteenth time. A wall of steel screeched past her as the snake dodged another of her aunt’s attacks. Conjured metal thundered through the stone. The resulting explosion pelted her with sharp stones and dust but she endured.

Her captor lurched to a halt and she could finally see clearly as the world stilled, even if her organs disagreed. A blade hurtled toward her and Deadra had but a moment to comprehend she was being used as a shield.

Leandra stood behind the door-sized implement, casting it forward with will alone. All the while a shroud of metal feathers protected her. The blade passed through her as she met her aunt’s eyes. A vicious light lit their eyes like none she; ‘d seen before.

Deandre smiled too. Metal slid through and ark cloth as if she were a ghost.

She felt her captor’s surprise as a sudden tightening of her tail. An undulation of scales was the woman’s response. The sudden movement almost smeared her against the floor but it wasn’t enough to spare the vile creature their fate.

All they accomplished was offering scaled flesh in place of the human tissue. The blade bit deep into their tail and released a shower of blood. That grew into a torrent as the Spes Nova ate the conjured metal and it broke into fragments and dust before being swallowed. Exposing the bone deep chasm it had carved.

Deadra’s smile grew as pride and hope mixed and built upon each other. Hers was the clan of love and passion. They had nurtured those essences since before the empire’s founding. Her aunt followed a path of cold steel but it was one founded in love. She would hurt her.

The snake changed tact and sought distance, but Leandra hounded with steady steps. Her aunt’s cloak billowed and burst into a storm of dark feathers that shone with a metallic gleam. The storm washed over them. To Deadra, they were as soft as snowflakes. To her captor? Each feather was a lethal sliver, carving thin red lines wherever they went. They hissed in pain.

Their once lustrous brown scales were stained scarlet as bright as the ribbons that had once been a flowing red cloak.

Beaten, bested and driven against a wall the snake whose name Deadra still did not know stopped. They did not bow as Deadra expected, instead, they loomed above Deadra as proud as ever. Heedless of the red rivers leaving them.

They smiled down at her, blood dripping from their marred face, but their grin was sharp. “It seems I’ve underestimated your lot.” They said voice saccharin sweet all the while tightening their coiled hold. Deadra feared they would squeeze the life out of her and her aunt must have felt the same for attacks stopped.

Leandra’s cold voice cut across the crisscrossed and chasmed land. “If you stop now there is a world where you live.” Though her attacks had halted her steps did not. She walked across the rent and torn ground left in the wake of her assault as if it were perfectly smooth. Mist, previously banished by the conflict crept back in and Deadra noticed how the unnatural vapour had consumed the land and sky in shades of grey and white.

“Live,” The snake chuckled. “Live you say, I know enough about your ilk. You shall take me to your bloody peaks in chains and bind me with your arts until I am naught but a happy slave.” Deadra trembled in their grip. She clung to her aunt’s closeness but even her indomitable presence failed to blunt the vitriol that bleed into her words. Her captor never stopped smiling. They sighed and swooned as if they were the star of a play. “I have danced amidst the shadows of giants for too long! Am I finally to be stomped down into the mud?”

Leandra had not stopped while her captor rambled. The moment she passed the ten-metre mark she lunged. One moment they were walking the next, they were a hurtling comet, poised to thrust with a materializing lance.

In that same moment, the coils binding her slackened. Then she was lobbed at her aunt like a sack of rotten fruit. “Or must I dive to yet further depths?”

She was confused as she flew through the air. She watched her aunt’s determined face, confusion swept across them but was quickly replaced by complete and utter panic. Deadra realized why a few moments later. While things crafted by the essence her clan cultivated would not harm one loved. The same was not true for the basic laws of momentum and the reinforced body of a cultivator.

The conjured blade shattered as if it were a mere suggestion. Fierce lunge turned into scrambled grab as her aunt dug her feet and carved twin rents into the floor to slow her momentum.

Deadra fell into her aunt’s arms, landing hard but whole. She turned her head up to find the older woman smiling down at her and flushed with exertion. “I have you little bird.” They whispered. A new wave of tears threatened to undo her.

Deadra opened her mouth. To say what? She didn’t know, it could have been a prayer, tearful thanks or the inconsolable wailing of a wounded child, She didn’t know. She didn’t get to find out.

Wind rustled behind her, and long locks of black hair fell over them.

Her aunt’s face twisted in pain. A wet sound signaled tearing flesh, a deep snap the breaking of bone. They began to fall and a hand, freshly covered in blood yanked her from her elder’s faltering grip. Deadra was once a gain wrapped by a scaled tail.

“No! No no no.” She screamed and muttered and screamed more. A pillar of her life fell to the ground amidst a rapidly swelling puddle of blood. All the while she could do nothing but scream and cry in the monster’s grip.

A wet hand traced through her hair. “Don’t worry lovely, she’ll be fine, old gals like her are tough.” Deadra did anything but. She kicked and punched and threw every ounce of her reduced power into escape, giving her all to reach her wounded aunt. But though she bruised her knuckles and cried herself hoarse she accomplished nothing. The snake merely huffed in amusement and smiled.

The pit of despair had returned and its bite was more painful than her bleeding likely broken hands. It also came with something new. A burning cinder settled into the pit of her chest, all the accumulated cold was birned away. Fear and worry became kindling.

For the first time in her life, Deadra knew hate.