Snippet #1594316

Hmm… yes, I do suppose there are still a few kinks to be worked out with that one, aren’t there? Neira did not seem to be bothered by the fact that she had just lost that hundred and seventy seconds of her life. As with anything else, perfection could only be expected to take time. When he spared her a question as to matters of intimacy, she actually laughed. You’d rather like to imagine it, wouldn’t you? Your… deficiency has my sympathies.

Her eerie eyes flickered to the statuesque dragons, and she shook her head slightly. Even you are a slave, it would seem, and the sentiment in the thought was perhaps the closest thing to genuine sorrow anyone would ever get out of her. She tilted her head slightly to one side, and her gaze rested upon his mangled face once more. We are opposites, you and I. He’d gone from a free soul to something shackled; she had broken her chains only to discover that autonomy was not as she had expected. Make no mistake- she would never wish to go back to the hive, pure-blooded daughter or not, but even so it did tend to relieve one of the consequences of one’s actions. No wonder that a coward should be drawn to it.

Hmph. I’m flattered I’m significant enough to get any sort of notice, she replied sarcastically to his assertion. I wouldn’t have thought little old me would ever even register as existing to an almighty dragon, of all things. The crush of mental pressure followed, but Neira only smiled. It would seem that he couldn’t quite get a grip, as someone clawing at water, she simply slipped right on through. Anything that was striven for was redirected away. To be sure, she was not strong enough to keep him out of her head, but she was subtle enough to keep him away from anything significant.

He’d catch glimpses of inconsequential memories, perhaps even some that mattered to some small part of her, but nothing like last time. Now, now, she chided, You did not think the same thing would work twice, did you? she coated her forearms with energy much like what was used to produce his blade and deflected the first swing, swiping back and missing. The two of them were essentially hovering in midair, both teleporting with every step, mostly missing but occasionally connecting. He appeared in the space to her left, scoring a slash across her ribs that mostly skittered off her chitinous exoskeleton but did dig uncomfortably into the flesh of her belly.

Teleporting underneath him, Neira grabbed one of Xeron’s feet and wrenched, hurtling him towards the ground. He stopped the movement with his mind of course, but not in enough time to totally avoid the next hit, the psionic equivalent of talons scoring four welts down his left arm. By this time, both were fully locked in mental combat as well, trying to ferret out the information on where the other next planned to go, making the entire contest a high-speed, blink-and-you-die sort of affair that she was personally enjoying thoroughly.

She cloned herself again, this time so that there were three of her total and each looked, sounded and mentally felt exactly the same. It was an idea spawned of her homeland actually. We are the hive, and we are many, or something of that nature. It was disgusting to her, but effective in its own way. Despite the fact that there were three corporeal forms, they did still have one mind, so it was not to suggest that she tripled her strength, merely the advantage of positioning.

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Zek hissed sharply into Fae’s ear, causing the little mage to listen more closely to what she was hearing. There, over the din of battle… it sounded like the Children and their army were… cheering? Something in the area felt wrong, and she knew without a doubt that there were dragons here. The dark elf’s jaw clenched, and she ground her teeth together, trying to think of the best course of action. She had already helped here, but would it be better to join a group headed for those dragons or not? She wasn’t really sure.

She’d heard somewhere that different kinds of dragons had different abilities and natural resistances. What if these ones just so happened to be resistant to the kind of magic she practiced? Fae hesitated for a moment, noting that Caine had joined Talae and figuring that her usefulness here now was limited anyway. Concentrating carefully, she could pick up Beelzes’s location, and with a few seconds, determine what she was doing. A distraction… if that’s all she can do, I can do less. But maybe one…

Nodding firmly to herself, Fae joined the line Beelzes was forming, hurling a conjured sphere of fire at one of the eight free dragons, who wasn't even stopped in its mauling of a nearby Legionnaire. The projectile itself, being magically conjured, did no damage at all. She hurled several more, thinking of all the different kinds of spells she could, but alas none of them did anything at all. Dead gods, but she wanted this to end! Still, there was no sense in wishing for things that you could only make real with effort.

Still, it wasn’t going to be enough, no matter how many spells she tried, and her thoughts wandered once again to the one spell she knew that she’d always been too afraid to use. Would it even be sufficient? She couldn't damage or even distract a dragon, but there were still more Children in the area than she cared to count. Something would have to be done about that, as their cover fire and weapons were no less deadly in the presence of the beings they worshiped. Only by comparison did they fall short, and considering the numbers game, they were just as much a problem. It was on them, then, that Faera focused, trying to keep it to one directed spell apiece, but missing occasionally due to her imperfect method of aim.

She felt purposeless, and she hated it, and the Children paid for it. A vacuum in space suffocated a few, another three were speared with ice. Still more were slammed against walls with the force of air pressure, and these were punctuated with lashes of kinetic energy which she would not have thought to utilize in any but the most desperate of situations. But... desperate it was, and they risked being overrun if she did not give everything she had.