Laurolia was not going to give Alexia time to compose herself. She knew that allowing any student of one of the Council of Peace time to prepare was a one-way ticket to death. As soon as her feet left the poison, she rushed forward in a swift advance. A swipe of her vine-like arms from the left missed as Alexia jumped to the side. Knowing Laurolia couldn’t stop in time, Alexia swung the back of her scythe into her opponents… back.

She had hoped that their body had the fragility of a flower, but that didn’t seem to be the case. All that smack to the back did was irate her opponent, who managed to stop herself sooner than expected and swing her vines at Alexia’s cheek. A hit was scored, Alexia feeling her skin slice as the vine made its way across her cheek. They were thorned, likely an evolutionary trait to keep predators away like roses do. She was only thankful that it wasn’t deep.

When Laurolia swung her other vine from the opposite direction, Alexia was prepared. Laurolia watched her grab it, shocked by the sheer stupidity of the action as the girl pulled her in. Alexia did her best to ignore the sudden numbing in her cheek and hand, instead slashing at Laurolia across the chest with her scythe. The scream of her opponent from the hit threw her off, causing her to step back as she watched the plant girl place her vine hands on her chest.

Emotional pain was something Laurolia had felt before, but never had she felt this. The pain of something tearing into her flesh, something no plant should be able to. She didn’t feel it when she was still part of the forest, so she shouldn’t have felt it. She was off to even herself in that moment, unable to tell if she was more flora or fauna. Then, a thought came to her mind.

“Elenori, is this… some curse for… consuming you?” She whispered to herself as she did her best to shrug off the pain. “Is the reason I’m… like this because… you told me to… eat you? I had no idea… what I was doing… then.”

Alexia couldn’t focus on that as her right hand held her cheek to get some feeling out of it. It felt off, like it was swollen despite the fact it wasn’t at all. The sound of her scythe hitting the ground brought her attention to her left hand. She couldn’t feel it at all, and when she tried to flex her fingers they barely responded. Her confusion only got worse when she heard a voice enter her head, one that she had never heard before.

“Replication found, awaiting further data.”

“The hell?” Alexia turned to the left as she spoke, her words slurred due to her right cheek feeling hard to move. She swore the voice came from that direction, but no one was there.

“You truly don’t… know anything about… my kind, do you?” Laurolia asked. Alexia looked to her, and it hit her immediately on what was going on.

“Numbing poison in the thorns,” She said to herself to the best of her ability. She reached for her scythe with her right hand as she found her cheek and hand completely unresponsive at that moment. “I’m guessing I’m already dead, huh?”

“No, but it does make you an easier target,” Laurolia said.

The talk ended there, Laurolia taking the advantage as she continued to keep on swiping at the girl before her. All Alexia could do was dodge, unable to strike back with the scythe due to only having one operating hand at the time. Looking behind her, she saw that her mana pool was still on the poison from earlier. Any attempt to call it with her numbed hand is useless with her unable to both feel said hand. Not that she could move the muscles in it well enough to do any of what she would have wanted.

As she dodged, she looked for anything she could use. She felt a cut against her left arm, it soon joining her arm in being nothing but dead weight. Eyes darted left and right in hopes of something that might be able to help. Then, as she had nearly been backed into the very poison she had created she spotted something that might just work: a small pothole in the road just big enough for her to put her scythe into.

When Alexia next saw Laruolia’s strike miss her, she took her chance. With a leap to the side, she stuck her scythe’s blade into the pothole and used it to keep her momentum up. Laurolia could do nothing as Alexia circled around to her back with the scythe. With the pothole’s service done, she unhooked her scythe and wound up for a strike. Even though Laurolia saw it coming, there was nothing she could do as she felt the scythe opened her back up like a knife to butter.

The only reason the blow didn’t make blood flow onto the streets was due to Laurolia being flora instead of fauna. It did not keep her from falling to the ground as both blows caused pain to course through her body. She absolutely hated it with every fiber of her being, each attempt to stand feeling like she was pressing against a slab of needles. So instead she turned her body around so her back was to the ground, eyes locked on Alexia’s.

The girl’s pupils had completely developed her eyes. The Sign of Fog was trying to replicate her numbing poison for the girl to use, she knew it. She was thankful that the poison would likely have little to no effect on her. Even if the girl fully replicated the poison, there was little it would change in her approach.

Laurolia staggered as she got to her feet, pushing through the pain even as she felt an urge she had never felt before; the urge to cry. To say it surprised Alexia that the girl could still stand would be an understatement. The blow would leave any orc, human, dwarf, or most other living creatures dead to rights. Yet it was there she realized the problem: Laurolia was neither of those. She wasn’t even fauna, or at least not completely, which left the question of how she could kill something that shouldn’t even be sentient.

Not about to let her opponent find her footing, Alexia took a few steps forward and swiped again. It cut across Laurolia’s left arm and nearly severed it, the pain agonizing but she somehow managed to push through it for the moment. Instead of a stagger back like Alexia expected she stepped forward and wrapped a vine around the girl's leg. With a firm grasp on it, she flung Alexia into the air and used the thorns on her vines to numb her opponent's leg.

“Replication complete.”

Alexia didn’t register the mysterious voice, her world suddenly filled with agony as she hit the ground back first. A howl of pain passed through her lips, all her limbs save her numb arm contracting as she heard ribs break. Laurolia fell to the ground moments after, clearly in just as much if not more pain than that of her opponent. The needles were overwhelming, and she knew if she could she would be in tears. Neither were fit to fight, and neither were dead. That only became more clear as Alexia felt her leg going numb from Laurolia’s poison.

She did her best to sit upright, something significantly harder than she imagined with one arm unusable. She winced as she did, the numbness of her leg making even the slightest movement agonizing in its own strange way. Nonetheless she somehow got her back off the floor, though quickly collapsed onto the ground once again. It hurt too much, and she knew that moving would only make it worse. Best thing she could do at that point was wait for someone to come help.

“Heh, guess we beat each other up more than killed each other,” She mumbled to herself. She heard the sound of footsteps too late, and her words had reached the ears of the man they belong to.

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“Yes, and you did a job so fine that it is a shame a crowd wasn’t here to see it.”

Laurolia was the first to look in the direction of the voice as she instantly recognized the robes and hat that adorn the man approaching them. Alexia didn’t need that, the man’s voice so distinct and the emotions running off him so visible it was impossible for her not to notice him. A groan escaped her lips at the knowledge someone had seen the embarrassing attempt she and Laurolia had put on.

“I’m sorry sir… Cyrus,” Laurolia said, her pause not from her hilted speech but from the pain that coursed through her body. “She understood the… plea, but refused to … change sides,”

“Oh course she would,” He replied, his disappointment masked by the shadow of his hate and darkness of night. “Did you think that was all it would take? Did you think she would turn on all she knew on that alone,” He summoned a bright red mana pool and kneeled over the wounded plant girl. As it touched her wounds, a surge of warmth and comfort washed through her body. “You get healed first, then the idiot over there.”

“I’m right here you old bastard!” Alexia spat as she tried to sit up again, only to groan and lay back down. “Would appreciate it though. You got a lot of strength in those arms of yours Laurolia. Honestly surprised you didn’t break my spine, all things considered.”

“You aren’t too… bad with your Scythe…as well Alexia,” Laurolia said. The warmth moved away from her back and to her arm, and it took her a moment that pain was no longer breaking forth from it. “If I was truly… an elf, I would have been… dead. Yet at no point… did you separate… me completely.”

Alexia turned to Laruolia, surprised that she would reveal such information at first. Then she reminded herself of the man that was healing her opponent. She had called him the reason they could use magic. Clearly she was a dead girl if she tried to attack either of them now that Cyrus was there.

“No killing each other when I’m done with this, got it?” Cyrus said. He looked at Alexia as he spoke. While she couldn’t see the glare he had given her, she definitely felt it. “You had your fun, and I would prefer to not have to rescue you both from the brink of death again.”

“Like I would try that with you around,” Alexia said as she did what little she could to try and get something resembling feeling back into her completely numb leg. It proved to be pointless, but it was something to do till Cyrus took care of her shattered rib cage. “Something tells me that you would have me dead in an instant.”

“That afraid of an old man?” Cyrus asked rhetorically, a sly smile on his face. Even if the question wasn’t rhetorical, she wouldn’t have given him an answer. He sounded like he wanted his ego stroked. “Okay, arm is done. Now just let me take care of the gash on your chest.”

Alexia didn’t know how long it took, but the moment she next looked at Laurolia she was back in her elven disguise fully healed. She gave the elderly man a bow, but he paid zero attention to it. He Instead focused on Alexia as Laurolia stretched her fixed arm out. It would have been the best chance Alexia had to see his face if it wasn’t for the lack of light. All she could make out was the outline of his face, which didn’t satisfy her at all.

“You did a number on her Laurolia, that is for sure,” Cyrus said as he looked back to the plant girl. She looked back to him with a smile, something he looked on with disdain. “You are damn lucky I have the ability to heal this. As talented as Halerosh is with his magic, he wouldn’t have been able to fix this.”

“Wait real– argh!”

Alexia had expected a pleasant feeling from his healing, but what she got was the exact opposite of pleasant. She could feel her body patching itself together, and it did not care how she felt or how much pain she was already in. She kicked her leg in the air frantically as she felt what she could only describe as what it must have felt like to have a greatsword removed from one's body. That still didn’t do it justice.

“Stop moving for Oracles sake!” Cyrus said. If his words reached Alexia she was unable to respond coherently, still in overwhelmed agony as the inside of her body glued itself back together. He sighed at this. “Fucking child.”

“I’m technic– aaa!” Alexia’s attempt to respond was cut off by another surge of pain.

A surge of pain that, when it passed, left her exhausted. Yet as she laid there, she noticed that all the pain that had been in her back was gone. She did her best to sit up, the numbness still present in her arm, cheek, and leg. Cyrus moved out of the way so the girl could look herself over, immediately eyeing the numbed leg. Due to the thorns, it was scratched up pretty badly even if the cuts weren’t deep. Yet the sight of her own blood sent a sudden feeling of queasiness through her head.

“One moment,” She told Cyrus, laying back down as she felt her world spin. She had never felt so lightheaded.

After a good ten to fifteen minutes, it started to pass. During that time Cyrus closed up the cuts that Laurolia’s thorns had placed on the girl with his magic. With it the numbness started to fade, giving her once numb leg a good kick just to make sure she wasn’t imagining anything. With a sigh, she got up to her feet and reached for her scythe, only to find it wasn’t at her side.

“Precaution so you don’t try anything,” Cyrus said as he pointed across Alexia. She hadn’t noticed Laurolia at all during the lightheaded spell, but her scythe was held firmly by the plant girl’s hands. “Don’t worry, we’ll give it back to you once I’m done explaining everything I have to.”

Alexia frowned. “I already told Laurolia I wouldn’t help.”

“Yes, and did a pretty awful job convincing you by the looks of it,” Cyrus replied. Laurolia couldn’t see his eyes move their attention to her, but she certainly felt them shift to her. “What did you tell her?”

“I told her about Elenori… and the council… doing nothing,” Laurolia explained as she admired Alexia’s scythe. “She said that… she understood but… still would ask them. She betrays the… Sign of Fog.”

“You can’t blame me for not trusting someone I know nothing about,” Alexia countered. She held her cursed hand up, noticing how it seemed to glow in the night. “Besides, as I told her, it is very possible that the Lord of Terror is not who she thinks they are. Why would I trust the problems of our world to that of an outsider?”

“You would have a valid point if Alabaster didn’t exist,” Cyrus said. He wore a smile, glad to see that the girl was at least trying to use her head. “As a Lord of Terror he is not of our world. He is not a child of Vas’e’lou, but of another Oracle that ours borrowed for the purpose of sorting out a problem they didn’t trust us to deal with ourselves. Does that not make him any less of an outsider.”

“I’m more of an outsider than he is,” Alexia replied only to wince as she realized what she had said. A grimace formed on her face, and though she wished to not believe it she knew her statement was true. “Alabaster has been living here for centuries. He may be another Oracle’s creation but he is as much a citizen of Evra as the rest of us here. He would know our pain better than some new arrival.”

“He too was a new arrival, yet I will concede that you have a point,” Cyrus said. He walked past Alexia and yanked the scythe out of Laurolia’s hands. “Still, it seems Laurolia did not tell you everything. You wouldn’t be opposed to listening to an old man’s ramblings over a midnight cup of tea, would you?”

Alexia considered her options, but one look at the still summoned mana pool Cyrus held made her realize this was not a question but a threat. If she didn’t comply, he would kill her right there to likely avoid dealing with her in the future. Without her weapon – no, even with her weapon – she doubted that she could take him on. So, with a sigh, she put her hands up in surrender.

“Sure, whatever. Will you not kill me as long as I do that?” She asked him.

“Possibly,” He said, his mana pool finally unsummoned as he got the response he wanted. “Well, come on then. We should get this over with before the sun starts to rise.”

Alexia and Laurolia nodded to him and then looked at each other. The former summoned her mana pool just in case while the latter refused to turn away. Even as they started walking to wherever Cyrus was taking them. They weren’t sure if it was out of distrust or worry, but both were more than ready to kill the other if somehow possible. Not that they would be able to with Cyrus around.

“Halerosh, if your student goes home with a few broken bones, I sincerely apologize,” He whispered.