Snippet #1503565

Fae was barely-useful in the last moments of the battle; all she was really able to do was keep feeding her Darkguard instructions and try to stay on her feet. Perhaps it was to be expected, then, that she accumulated a number of assorted injuries, though none quite as bad as the arrow still in her shoulder. A gash to the thigh, a few nicks on her arms and face, all of them the result of not quite having enough steam left to keep actively listening to what was going on around her. Her construct protected her, for the most part, but she was relieved when Beelzes and Pel swung by, nodding her understanding when the latter informed her that it was only a temporary fix.

Somehow, she made it to the end of the battle, or rather she should say the Black Guard's part in it. She was unable to do much more than sink heavily against a wall for a few minutes, trying to keep her breathing steady. Unfortunately, her still-weak and injured self combined with her own aversions and a far too-fresh smell of blood meant that her rest wouldn't last long. Having just long enough to ensure that nobody was below her and beside the wall she was on, Faera lurched unsteadily to the edge of it and heaved, losing what little she had eaten that morning.

Half-dangling over the wall, she sat up unsteadily, limbs weak and trembling from the forces of exertion and mental fatigue. she drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, pressing her forehead to her knees, attempting to regain control of her gag reflex. Why she was doing this now, of all times, was beyond her. Granted, she'd felt ill and disoriented after the first battle, but she hadn't actually been sick. "Dead gods... it doesn't get easier, does it?" she whispered to herself, pressing her head harder into her leather-covered knees. The pressure within her skull was dizzying; oh, how she wished she were anywhere else right now.

But she'd gotten herself into this mess; she would see it through. Somehow. Picking herself up, she managed to make it over to the General before she had to sit again.

---

The feeling of the cold, pointed steel on her neck made her unspeakably angry. It was as though that slight pricking sensation, so trivial and unimportant compared to all she'd suffered, somehow encapsulated all that she had ever failed to become, and the rage bubbled beneath her skin, driving her to shred, to tear, and to kill, all to prove that she could.

But she couldn't. Not right now, not while he had a hold on her mind like this. Not while she played his infernal game and lost. ah, defeat. So bitter a pill to swallow. Beyond that simple fact, none of the rest of it mattered. She cared not that he mocked her, nor that he claimed to be allowing her to live. No, she was dead. Because right now, the power over her life belonged to someone else, and one was just the same as the other.

In the end, he refused to even give her that, and this only made her angrier. It was an impotent rage, and she knew it. Even as the last echoes of his voice left her mind, Neira wished for nothing more than to tear him apart, one limb tortuously rent at a time, to hear the howls of anguish that would have to echo in his mind and hers since he could not speak, to feel the that the absolute power over her life and his both was once again in her hands. Because if she could not, she was nothing. She was once again compelled by the will of another, once again nothing but the Hive's little progeny.

For now, she was nothing. But she would find him again, and she would show him what it was like to be powerless. Between then and now, no matter what it took, she would find the strength. And when next they met, he would regret nothing quite so deeply as thinking her too weak to kill.

The nature of her fight meant that she was relatively unscathed physically, so she dropped from the tower to the battlements, fixing her eyes on Thanaros for a moment. "You and I are going to have that talk," she told him bluntly, nodding to the rest of them. It would not be now, of course; she would wait until the injured were treated and camp set up.

For now, she decided to simply approach the gathering group. Not like there was much else to do, anyway.