Snippet #1533829

Faera heard something strange, and felt a blooming of heat on her left side. The dark elf gasped, realizing too late that she was the target of a powerful magic. Her body reacted on instinct, and she flung herself from the tree, landing lightly on her feet, much to her own surprise. Rationality dictated that she probably should have incinerated on the way down... "Beelzes!" The familiar sly drawl was all the explanation Fae needed, though in the next moment she flinched, somewhat unsure what was going on.

The tree she had been in shook with the impact, and the ground was slicked further with a shower of wet leaves that lost their grip on their branches. Was Beelzes... but no, she seemed to be fine. The sigh of relief escaped her mouth before she realized that she couldn't afford to stand around dawdling. Tired or not, now was not the time to run out of steam. She cast about, trying to figure out exactly where and how she would be the most useful. Beelzes seemed to have the upper hand for the moment, and she figured she'd probably just be in the warlock's way anyhow.

Sid was... larger, unless her ears deceived her, and she remembered Lily was in that vicinity too, which left Qinn and whomever she was trying to fight. Problem was, they were in the air and Faera was on the ground. Come on, Fae, think! There has to be some way to help her... Of course, there was one thing she definitely knew she could try, but she'd only be able to manage that once, and it would probably end badly for her as well. Besides, she had yet to sense a sufficiently-close power source. If she found an opportunity, Fae knew from a childhood experience that she could pull raw lightning from the sky, but last time she'd almost died. It wasn't something she relished trying again, but... there might not be another choice.

For now, it might be best to try something else. She might be at a distance from the fight in the air, but the great thing about magic was none of that made her useless. Taking a calming breath, Fae summoned an aqueous whip to each hand, extending them so they were long enough to reach the confrontation above. The hand motions probably weren't necessary, but they did help her focus on what she wanted the water to do, and so she snapped one wrist, sending the corresponding tendril ripping through the air with enough speed to break bones. The other followed, and she kept moving on the ground to match the ebb and flow of the flying combatants, and to make herself a less obvious target. Her ears were her only guide, as the sound of Phaze's wingbeats was different from Qinn's.

---

And there it is. Undead. Lovely. Neira rolled her eyes in the careless way that she most preferred to affect, though privately she knew getting rid of them would be no easy task. You had to behead these fuckers, that or rend all their limbs off. Good thing she had substantial practice with both, then. Unfortunately, being immune to pain made them also immune to pain-inducing psionics, but apparently not the kind that put you to sleep. She observed with some amusement that the order to slay the sleeping applied to all of them, and she was glad that their directives were not all that complicated, since it thinned the annoying numbers surrounding her considerably.

Still, even undead might figure it out eventually, and she was no one-trick pony, thank you very much. That in mind, she launched herself at the first comer, glad for her species' inhuman strength as she forced the once-woman's head off her shoulders. The resulting lava-flow of blood from the stump-that-had-been-a-neck slathered her forearms. "Oh goody, blood. Why do I always end up covered in blood?" Were undead even supposed to bleed, or had she just drawn one of the still-living? "Lucky me," she muttered under her breath.

Of course, all the really fun fights had spread their way over to where the ranged combatants had set themselves up, but she had a fair few more heads to lop off before she would be of any use to them. Great. The damn Children had forced the melee on the stick-shooters and left the metal-swingers with hordes of laughably slow but stupidly tenacious pieces of cannon fodder.

"Well boys and girls," she said to her own private little legion of halfway-under hopeless cases. "If I have to do this, we might as well make it interesting. How about you all come at me at once, hm?"