Snippet #1580744

Faera was unaware that an acknowledgement had been made of her assistance, but could not say she felt terribly offended by this. It was the middle of a battlefield, and people needed to get back up and going as soon as they could, after all. She managed to catch wind of part of the following conversation, and dread welled up into her throat. Their brother? A Child? Did the world know no mercy? She hovered uncertainly for a moment, caught between the desire to do something and the certainty that there was nothing to be done. Eventually, her reason won the day and she turned, setting her feet down the battlefield.

She came upon the scene involving Lily, Tala, Pel and Koni quite by accident, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out what the problem was. Well, at least not to figure out the part where one of them was badly injured. As to how it had happened, well she wouldn’t know. Fae opened her mouth to offer her assistance, but last time she had done this, Pel had brushed her off, and she was not particularly eager to repeat the process of feeling quite so useless as she had then.

There was one thing she could do that the other woman wouldn’t be able to, though: convince Talae to do something she was clearly reluctant to do. “She’s right, Tala,” Fae put in gently. “The enemies have been cleared from here. You know it’s best that we just let Pel do her job.” Sensing that this probably wasn’t going to get her far, she sighed. Talae could be strong and inflexible as steel when she wanted to. Despite not generally being sociable, she was not one to leave a comrade behind, especially not if she actually knew them, as Fae herself could well attest.

“Come fight with me. I need someone to help me down the wall and into the town.” It was a rather underhanded tactic, playing on her disability, and she wondered why it suddenly didn’t seem like something she should never do. Where had she picked up the inclination to manipulate, anyway? No, it was not quite that, just… there were people down there that could still use their help, and she for one fully intended to give it.

One way or another, she was going down that wall. “If we can prevent even one death by being down there, that’s worth it, right?” It was something Talae had used in an answer once, when Fae had asked her why she’d taken up soldiering. If I can prevent one good person’s death by fighting for this cause, then I have to do it because I can. How killing people was supposed to help was not something Fae had understood then, but she had it now. It was by and large silly to think that one ordinary rank-and-file soldier made a real difference in the course of a battle, much less a war, but they did impact each other.

As soon as her feet touched ground, Fae was off, catching up with the main body of the charge in little time at all. They seemed to be met with still more Children and soldiers, but what bothered her was that the acrid smell of smoke hung in the air. Not combat-style mage-fire either, because that burned differently to her nose, but plain old, building-razing fire. Still she couldn’t sense anyone in the buildings, so she kept going. In a sense, it smelled better than the blood.

A few soldiers slipped past the front line, and Fae reached for some of those flames on instinct, redirecting them to block the path and funnel them into a narrow group. The flanking team was forced to file through one-by-one, and quickly fell to a few Legionnaires that had noticed. The dark elf chewed her lip, trying to figure out how else she could help. Honestly, she wasn’t that effective at killing; her powers seemed more tailored towards making it easier for others to do so. Or, well, the way she used them did. Actually… there might be something to that.

A few minutes later, the breeze in the area changed direction, blowing smoke and ash into the faces of the oncoming enemies instead of towards the invading Legion, and Faera smiled to herself.

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Once, not to long ago, it would have been nearly impossible for her not to try and slam her fist in his face for daring to call her ‘fairy.’ It was an old childhood nickname she’d received from her siblings, and she detested it. Being one of the youngest amongst them had not helped matters, and made her into a rather feisty, confrontational child. Needless to say, the mere suggestion of some form of delicacy and fragility was an insult most grave to her.

Now, though, she reminded herself that in the end, words were just that, and though it would still be very satisfying to feel his nose break and the cartilage sink back into his soft brain matter, there were other ways to go about things. She was not thinking about peaceful ones, either, mind, just… different ones.

She had to admit to being intrigued by his little game, though, and just a little bit by the massive construct he produced from nowhere. “Hmm… fair enough.” She was honestly surprised, though, when his question was so innocuous as that. She hoped he did not expect her to play that softball also. He could have asked for any knowledge she had on Legion leadership, plans… granted she knew very little and cared even less, but it would have been a worthwhile attempt. “What makes you think I even have one?” she questioned wryly, but shrugged. “As it happens, I enjoy purple.” No crack about blood-red or bile green, or even black hearts, just a simple answer to an equally simple question.

She supposed that made it her turn. Thinking on it for a moment, she decided to take the opposite approach and go for something that require finesse rather than raw power. Not that it didn’t need that as well, it just wouldn’t seem so particularly. Neira locked eyes with her opponent and smiled, even as what he saw of her fuzzed at the edges, eventually resolving into two solid, perfect physical replicas of herself, down to the last detail. These in turn split until he was surrounded in midair by a perfect circle of a dozen of them, half wearing her Legion armor while the other half donned the white robes of children. Each had the same psionic signature and felt exactly the same to an inquisitive mind.

All of them raised their left arms in concert, speaking mentally at the same time in eerie concord. What followed was a complete loss of all sense: sight, sound, touch, even the mental connection to the surrounding world. Everything was gone until it resolved itself back into being about ten seconds later. The copies folded back into the original Neira, and that one crossed her arms. If you will: what is something about the dragons’ plans that they would kill you for telling me if they found out you did? The actual piece of information, mind, not ‘their battle plans.’ Since she didn’t much care about schemes on the grand scale, she was going to have to fish for something useful before she could be specific.