Snippet #1608523

When the dragon released its ice, Alistair didn’t have much time to react. There were precious few seconds, and he did not waste them on a warning that would have been useless. Instead, he grabbed Talae’s forearms and took off, straining the muscles in his wings to reach the necessary altitude to dodge. The dark elf tucked her knees to her chest, feeling the chill at her feet even still.

“This is getting to be a rather odd habit of mine,” the harpy commented with some trace of irony. “Miss Shanir, do you still have a smoke bomb, perhaps?” She did not respond immediately, and Alistair was confused. “Talae?” he followed her eyes to try and figure out what had her so arrested, and saw the younger sibling handing off her little drake to the General. That was… odd, but he wasn’t sure why it had her sister so absorbed in the goings-on.

Gaining altitude, Alistair watched as another unit of the Legion filed into engage the dragon, still pinned to the earth by its tail. He’d scored the thing a good last to the side, enough to get the bomb in place, but it seemed even that was not enough to down it for good. He was counting on the air up here to clear the woman’s head a bit, because she, like the rest of them was going to be needed.

Looking back down, his eyes picked out a bright spot in the dark. Actually, it was bright enough that he couldn’t look at it for long- Alistair squeezed his eyes shut against the burst of luminescence, but Talae did not, for she had seen the entire sequence from start to finish. “No… no, no, NO!” she force of the raw-throated shout made the harpy flinch, and when he looked back down, it was to discover with surprise that Faera Shanir was simply… gone. Now that he got to thinking about it, there wasn’t a living Child left on the field either. A distance away, Neira and a dark elf he didn’t know were providing more than ample trouble for a dragon, and Caine, Lily and Mikana were at another. Kisikoni and a few other Legionnaires seemed to be keeping a fourth bust as the one they had just barely escaped tore through another line.

“No… Fae… dead gods, why would you do that?” Talae’s grief was expressed in whispers now, but Alistair caught the words, and his heart felt heavier for it. He did not know the pain of losing a sibling, nor indeed of losing the only family he had left, as he had gathered the sisters were for each other.

“I can take you to-” he began, but the woman shook her head fiercely.

“Put me down. That monster is going to die. They’ve taken everything from me. I can’t let them think for a second that they’re going to get away with that.” Talae grit her teeth. Nihalistrix had taken her mother, and these whitespawn her sister. It was time she took something from them.

Alistair hesitated, but in the end decided he wasn’t going to argue. “Don’t be reckless,” he warned. “Or all she did will be meaningless.” There was only one thing that drove people like the younger sibling to do something like that- the thought that she’d be helping those she cared about by doing it. Help she had; there was no denying that, but it wouldn’t make much difference if Talae got herself killed.

“I guess you’ll just have to help then, won’t you?” Her voice was completely toneless, and Alistair frowned. “I need one of my arms, and then you’re going to drop me on that dragon.”

He figured any arguments about the relative stupidity of that idea would go unheeded, so instead, he simply released one of her hands, doubling his grip on the other. Talae reached into her belt-pouches, pulling out first a vial with something bright red inside it, which she downed. “Painkiller,” she muttered by way of explanation, though she wasn’t really sure why. The next object was a smokebomb, and with a well-aimed toss, she lobbed it right at the dragon’s feet, taking a knife from her boot in the return motion. “Now.”

“Right…” Alistair aimed his swoop to take advantage of the cover and dove in, dropping the dark elf right where he thought the dragon would be. As it turned out, he aimed just about right, and the woman caught the creature’s flank on her way down, her momentum causing the knife to drag a jagged line down a white-scaled haunch. Releasing the blade before it caught and jarred her arms too badly, Talae cast around for something else to use as a weapon.

Bet those bastards can hurt each other, she thought upon spying a few serrated draconian teeth on the ground. Grabbing the longest two she could find, she ran up his tail and subsequently his spine with the natural grip and balance genetics had given her. Growling, the thing shot a spell or two, banking on the fact that his hide would dissipate the magic before it harmed him, but without being able to see her, the first flew wide and she was able to duck under the second.

Mouth set into a grim line, Talae pressed herself against his neck, aiming for the eyes with his very own fangs. “Die, you shit-eating, god-killing piece of scum.”