Lera Savinkov (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
firecracker_hopping) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
zenderael_rl2014-01-16 09:58 pm
firecracker_hopping) wrote in zenderael_rl2014-01-16 09:58 pm
Lera + Sarai: Treason
Who: Lera, Sarai
When: Week 42 sometime, I think.
Where: Mazda's office.
Before/After: N/A
Warnings: Death, violence.
Lera was used to her new leg enough to stand up, walk around, and even spar and practice in it. It felt different, though; some intangible things were not the same. Her leg's weight and balance just did not rest under her the way they were supposed to. It made her tend to sit down more when she was in her office, now, and not pace as much as she once did. In turn, that made her restless; her biological leg bounced up and down while she did her paperwork.
Things entered a facade of normalcy. Iravati was released, but there were still whispers of suspicion; her friend was under suspicion, but Lera insisted that she wasn't guilty, and the preliminary investigations simply said that people weren't sure.
Other whispers came from that, though. They said that the new Mazda was too forgiving, or too naive, or even foolish. None of those whispers were treasonous, yet, but with the Khshathra dead, Lera felt the pressure on her growing. Life felt like it had spun out of control on her. The future she imagined -- one where she lived out an extended life with Harriet, where they were victorious and whole, where Iravati was always there and it was a good thing -- felt like it was slipping away.
Her smiles, her good demeanor, and her grasp on the situation were all part of a facade. Every day she kept it up took a sharper toll on her.
The desk she sat at felt confining, too, now. She kept her door open partly for that reason; it did good to sit in the hallway, look out, and see people pass. It used to be part of her open door policy, to let her commanders know they could come by and speak with her if they needed to, but fewer and fewer of them had reason to. She had considered changing that after the parade.
The concession to security was the pair of golden-eyed guards standing out the door, at attention. She looked at them, then she looked back at the book on her desk, and thought of everything else instead.
Sarai Elahn had often kept to the company of her men. They were all a little more rough-edged and violent than was considered proper for a Spellsword; men and women who had been raiders, warriors, people at the far front of the adventuring life, who'd grown accustomed to simply killing all their problems. They weren't mad, of course; They could do the salutes, pass muster, obey orders. But they weren't quite what many Spellswords thought of as a proper Amber Eye, a result of the strange effects Awakening could have on those whose only characterization was their eternal presence in battle.
All of which is to the service of establishing what Lera should be expecting when Sarai appears in the door with a fairly pleased smile, like she just did. "Admiral Mazda," she said, announcing herself. She hung at the entrance, allowing the guards to examine her. "May I have a moment? I've just received a report."
Lera looked up when Sarai spoke. She nodded; the guards at the door thought nothing of her. Sarai outranked them, truth be told. She did not stand up, but she did nod and motion to the inside of the room. It wasn't usual that Sarai came by -- they were not friends, after all -- but far from unheard of. "Of course, Lieutenant," she said. "Please, come in. Have a seat."
Sarai's eyes briefly lighted on the two guards, staying where she was for a moment of contemplation.. She walked in, then, quickly stepping forward. "Thank you for the offer, Admiral," she said, with her usual very loosely Irish accent. Characterization did weird things sometimes. "I'd rather stand. Got to get right back to it. Can't afford to get comfortable."
She puncutated the statement by dropping a folder on Lera's desk. The most important thing introduced to Zenderael by the merge: Manila folders. It contained Sarai's field reports regarding the incidents at the parade, as well as recon attempts by her unit to suss out the various Enemies Of The State that have emerged in the last week - the Sharifa's murderer and the bombers, both. Not a lot of progress. There was also a few collected accounts regarding what happened in Engelhab. Accounts of the initial EMP and assault of Acher's army. A warhound found beaten to death in a bar, a few other traces of escapees or fleeing. A rough reconstruction of the final push back against Acher, sightings confirming a new Vairya.
It was useful information, but possibly not worth troubling the Mazda directly over. Perhaps this was simply Sarai's way of offering support for Lera's absolutely miserable last few days. A rapid flow of information, helping her feel in the loop.
Or, perhaps it was her way of diverting Lera's attention from the fact that as soon as Lera took her eyes off her, Sarai had pulled her sword off her belt and begun charging a high-tier Fire blast.
She waited patiently for Lera to match eyes with her, and her lips curled up in a twisted, mad delight, dancing in her eyes, and she said, "Your presence is requested in the Dark, Admiral," and then parted sword from scabbard - releasing a torrent of fire mighty enough to blow a hole in the wall behind the Mazda.
"As you like," Lera said. She looked down at first, peering at the folder; the information was useful but not critical, things that she was happy to know, but not something she had to concern herself with. Her first thought was that she had to be missing something; then, she realized, she was. She caught the spell as strands of golden light, weaving together, over the edge of the paper. She recognized how they moved; she knew that spell, having cast it herself before.
She let out a surprised yelp and kicked both feet up into her desk. The cybernetic leg was stronger than her natural one if she really pushed. The desk flew up into the air and she leaped to her feet. The torrent of flame slammed into the desk, blowing the huge oak furniture piece into a thousand pieces.
Lera was already on the move, rushing at the wall. Her long sword leaned against it; she held a hand out, activating a simple spell that made it unsheathe and fly into her hand. Her spectral saber appeared, too, floating at her side, and she looked at Sarai. Her eyes widened, with realization, and she drew in a gasp; the blade flashed with lightning, and a burst of it shot out towards Sarai. Forked tongues of electricity slashed across the floor, burning tiles and catching a couple pieces of paper.
"It was you," Lera said. Her voice was quiet -- stunned, but processing it quickly. "You were the traitor in our midst. But... but why?"
Sarai's lips curled up into her cheeks in delight at the quick response. "Fast! What I'd expect of the Mazda!" Sarai all but cheered.
Sarai snapped up her blade, the shock passing into the sword and grounding into an Earth effect humming in the blade. Sarai bore teeth. "Is it treachery if I never really cared, Mazda?" she wondered, lyrically. She stood back; she'd been a caster the whole time, and that much she couldn't lie about, as the light around her blade changed from the motes of earth to the cool white of ice. Her eyes twinkled with delight. "Why?" she wondered. "What a question! You're the one who ordered so many Amber Eyes out into the field! Hunting for murderers, wasn't it?"
Her eyes hooded beneath her bangs, her lips peeling up to show gleaming teeth. "How ironic."
She swings both scabbard and sword up above her head, and brings both down overhand - slamming into the ground. A two-lane sheet of ice shoots away from the impact point, coating the ground and spraying razor-sharp icicles along its path, a miasma of slowing chill blasting out of the wave. She failed to kill the Mazda with the first strike, and that meant she had to layer on every advantage she could get.
"Never cared? Was everything a lie?" Lera snapped, heat entering her voice. She saw the ice shoot across the floor, and the room grew chilly. She cast a quick buff on herself to improve her reflexes, then a second to improve her focus. When she let a breath out again, mist hung in front of her mouth. "I'll make you pay for what you've done, for everything that you've inflicted on us! Those men were your comrades!"
More than a few Ambereyes died in the bombing. Others had perished in fights with assassins and Greycloaks that they found. Harriet was dead, too, and she felt that heavy weight of depression. It did not lift; the anger, though, was fresh.
She could use it.
She howled in a wordless rage and launched off the icy ground. She spun as she went into the air, stretching her long sword out to stab at Sarai as she landed. Flame danced up the length of blade, crackling and popping, as she got closer. She stabbed down hard, and landed; the sole of her boot and her artificial foot hit the ice and skidded a little more than they normally would.
Sarai laughed, deep in her belly. "Everything is a lie," Sarai replied, with a dire hiss. Lera was buffing up, and that was no good, but for Sarai, it was all a laugh. All Sarai could do was slam her with element debuffs, but she could keep that up for a while. "Those men were puppets!" she jabbed back. "Ridiculous little players on a ridiculous little stage! How do you intend to make me pay for a crime against dolls? Send me home?"
Sarai's eyes twinkled; Lera's fury would be to her benefit. She had to account for spectral saber and sword both, blade going one way and scabbard the other to catch both oncoming strikes. Normally a lock like that would put Sarai, the weaker melee fighter, in a serious pinch, but Lera's awkward imbalance gave her her opening. She surged forward, thrusting both parries aside, and then driving the scabbard straight toward Lera's chest, a blast of lightning exploding toward her torso - and while Lera's balance was off and her muscles stunned, Sarai drove her sword toward her gut with a sickle wide on her face.
"They were your comrades! They--" The electrified scabbard blow cut short Lera's shout of protest. The lightning drove her back, stunning her, and then Sarai's sword punched through the armor and into her stomach. She slumped forward, then fell backward against the wall, sliding off the sword. Blood ran from between her fingers -- and against the wall where she hit it, leaving a smear. She looked at Sarai, stunned, for a moment.
The fact that she could die here, like Harriet, suddenly went from a callous tactical consideration to a real, biting fear. The pain in her abdomen was excruciating, but the adrenaline did a lot to take away the fact that something was desperately wrong.
She pulled herself off the wall and clutched her stomach. She thought that she wanted to die, once; that she couldn't take outliving friends, being told to suspect them of treason, and cut off from everyone around her. But now, facing it, she realized how wrong she had been. If she died, it hurt the soldiers who worked under her; the soldiers that had died protecting. It hurt friends. She still didn't know that she was a good Mazda.
But, part of her wanted it.
She drew on her mana, ignoring the pain as best she could, and then loosed a furious blast of lightning from her extended long sword. Electricity exploded off the blade, tongues of it hitting the ice; some struck the corpses of the guards outside; more ignited papers and books on the walls. The lightning was directed at Sarai most of all, though; an effort to keep herself alive.
"Precisely!" Sarai called to her skewered captive. The sword began charging - Sarai preparing a fatal flame blast to cook Lera's insides. "And now I finally get to send them where they belong!" Sarai jabbed again, opening her mouth to end it. But her gold eyes caught that gathering light. "Whoop!" she yelped, and ripped her sword out while at the same time bringing up her scabbard, Earth-charged, to take that shot. But there were limits to that trick, and a furious Mazda easily surpassed them.
Sarai couldn't scream, not with the electricity spasming her muscles. She tried to intercede with her sword, drawing off some of the elemental fury into the blade. But the blast finally charged her sword enough that it jumped from it to her, and Sarai staggered back, arching from the power of the strike coursing through her.
After a moment, she sagged, wheezing, but still, still smiling. "Ahahaha," she laughed, gasping, and then emitted a rasping, pleased, "Ahhhhh." She raised her head to look Lera in the eye, smile tugging unpleasantly at her cheeks. "They just don't hit like this in training!" she said. "Feels good!"
And then, taking a few more steps back across the frozen room, she raised sword and scabbard - and slammed the sword home. Far from a gesture of surrender, for Sarai Elahn, it was a warning of her preparing her greatest abilities. The motes of electric light gathered up from Lera's blast flew around Sarai, sparked and whirled as she pulled out more, and more, and more power.
"Race you," Sarai said.
"You're insane," Lera managed. She tasted something copper in her mouth; she could feel some blood at the back of her throat. The flow of blood from her stomach wasn't stopping, she realized, and she was feeling feint already. Blood loss set in fast; she had some sense of that from the fight with Mezzron, but she wasn't sure how long she had.
She started preparing her own blast. The tactically sound option, she knew, was to charge Sarai and disrupt her, but she wasn't sure she could pick up a decent speed. She had a plan to try to overwhelm her. Spellswords were always about finesse over raw power.
Flame rolled up around her; it gathered along the length of her long sword and made the ice around her melt. Some of it began to rise as steam, and she drew more from the flames engulfing the shelves. She ignored how low her mana stores began to grow; she could deal with mana burn, if it came to that. Fire crackled and began to pop. She started sweating from the heat.
Sarai being as apparently absolutely batty as she has proven might have made it hard to tell what exactly her plan was, or if she even had one. But she couldn't have possibly made it this far with no cunning, right? The big smiles may disguise it, but she'd been in the Spellswords for months...right under everyone's noses.
Sarai's ugly little curl of a grin twisted even more at Lera's beginning release. "Insane," she said, slowly. "I wonder. I wonder if I'm even human enough to be called insane."
"Have you figured it out yet, Admiral Mazda?" She used the title with lyrical irony. "What I lost, that day I awoke?"
She parted her sword from scabbard, lashing the sword fully out of its scabbard offensively, like a Japanese iai strike, except it was a release of a riotous column of electrical energy, thicker than Sarai was tall, bearing down on Lera and all those pretty little metal plates she was wearing. That leg wouldn't enjoy being blasted by an electrical storm, would it?
In the light, the whole room all but vanished into a haze of misting ice, burning fire, and electric blue. "That day I saw the Dark!?" Sarai called out in the impenetrable bright.
Lera did not answer Sarai. Her focus was on the fight, on not passing out from bloodloss and pain. The other spellsword loosed her blast first -- and Lera followed with a jet of flame wide around as a man's head, which flew off her sword like a missile. It struck the storm of electricity, but was all too small for the amount of power she channeled. It blasted the electricity back for only a moment, before the lightning pushed past the flame. The lightning rolled through the fire, the flames' waves breaking against it.
The rest of her charged spell came from Sarai's left. Her spectral saber hurled three spirals of flame outward, arching high, low, and left. The ceiling and floor alike were scarred black by flame, before the three jets plunged at Sarai's side with explosive force.
And then the lightning hit Lera. Her armor had some anti-magic enchantments that stopped the worst of the damage, but the electricity still poured into the cybernetic leg. There was a tremendous popping sound; every muscle locked up and she couldn't scream, despite the intense pain. Forks of lightning shot out past and through her, into the ground, and she crumples. As she cames to -- sucking in deep breaths -- she looked at the shattered remains of the prosthetic.
The lightning destroyed it, in the end. Parts of it popped off; plates lie in heaps, hurled here and there, smoke rising from them. The end of it remained attached her hip, reminding her of those desperate days when she first lost the leg. She remained on the ground, rolled onto her side, and found no strength in her arms or leg to force herself to sit up.
The pain caught up with her after that. Her free hand went back over her stomach, blood making it sticky. She had no energy left to scream. She moaned lowly, instead.
Sarai was about to finish her taunt when Lera's curving spell appeared. She was too busy casting; unable to do much but throw up her scabbard and shield with what mana she yet had, but it was far from enough. The fire blasts blew her off her feet, earning Lera a rich scream of pain that didn't sound...terribly unhappy, honestly.
Seconds passed. Sarai lay where she had slammed into the far wall, her arm and face scarred by fire. But while Lera slowly groaned, helpless and having to hope someone had heard the tremendous racket they'd been making, Sarai...stirred.
She emitted a low laugh, an evil chuckle as she drove her scabbard into the ruined floor, wobblingly shoving herself to her feet. She reached down to her belt, and produced a single, glimmering bottle. Health potion. She slammed it back, then tossed it to the side as her wounds slowly grew together.
"Regret," she said, watching Lera as she started to walk, first using the scabbard for support and then, gradually, with greater strength. "The one thing I can't feel...the one thing people like you build your whole miserable existence around. So no. I don't think of myself as human. And no, I don't think by your standards, I'm sane."
She rose tall over Lera, her eyes all but glowing with radiant evil. She dropped her scabbard, holding her sword for a final thrust.
"And no, Admiral..." She reached down again, and produced...
....a normal Amber Eye field spoon. Her lips curled up again with raw malevolence.
"No, Lera Savinkov. That all means that the one thing you can never make me do...is pay."
She thrust the sword down, aiming for Lera's heart.
Lera stared at the burnt wreck that she thought should have been dead. Somehow, though, Sarai lived. She groaned at that, looking up, and her fingers reached for the long sword she dropped. It was out of reach -- and her mana stores were burnt through besides. She couldn't even call the blade to her, the way she had at the beginning of the fight.
The spoon made her kick her good leg, but it was the only protest she could manage.
She was terrified. She thought that she had avoided this outcome; she thought she escaped being violently murdered by an alt. Acher was dead. It wasn't supposed to end like this -- and, facing her own death, it seemed frightfully final. A lifetime of expectation prepared her for that. She thought of Ezra, Vati, Missie, her parents, and Harriet in the end, and wished it could have been different.
She could only look at Sarai, though. "You won't... you won't get away with this. We'll never--"
The sword drove down through her chest. She let out a groan that became a scream, and then it fell short, as she spasmed. Her body fell back against the wall, Xumurdad's golden eyes rolled halfway up in her head.
When: Week 42 sometime, I think.
Where: Mazda's office.
Before/After: N/A
Warnings: Death, violence.
Lera was used to her new leg enough to stand up, walk around, and even spar and practice in it. It felt different, though; some intangible things were not the same. Her leg's weight and balance just did not rest under her the way they were supposed to. It made her tend to sit down more when she was in her office, now, and not pace as much as she once did. In turn, that made her restless; her biological leg bounced up and down while she did her paperwork.
Things entered a facade of normalcy. Iravati was released, but there were still whispers of suspicion; her friend was under suspicion, but Lera insisted that she wasn't guilty, and the preliminary investigations simply said that people weren't sure.
Other whispers came from that, though. They said that the new Mazda was too forgiving, or too naive, or even foolish. None of those whispers were treasonous, yet, but with the Khshathra dead, Lera felt the pressure on her growing. Life felt like it had spun out of control on her. The future she imagined -- one where she lived out an extended life with Harriet, where they were victorious and whole, where Iravati was always there and it was a good thing -- felt like it was slipping away.
Her smiles, her good demeanor, and her grasp on the situation were all part of a facade. Every day she kept it up took a sharper toll on her.
The desk she sat at felt confining, too, now. She kept her door open partly for that reason; it did good to sit in the hallway, look out, and see people pass. It used to be part of her open door policy, to let her commanders know they could come by and speak with her if they needed to, but fewer and fewer of them had reason to. She had considered changing that after the parade.
The concession to security was the pair of golden-eyed guards standing out the door, at attention. She looked at them, then she looked back at the book on her desk, and thought of everything else instead.
Sarai Elahn had often kept to the company of her men. They were all a little more rough-edged and violent than was considered proper for a Spellsword; men and women who had been raiders, warriors, people at the far front of the adventuring life, who'd grown accustomed to simply killing all their problems. They weren't mad, of course; They could do the salutes, pass muster, obey orders. But they weren't quite what many Spellswords thought of as a proper Amber Eye, a result of the strange effects Awakening could have on those whose only characterization was their eternal presence in battle.
All of which is to the service of establishing what Lera should be expecting when Sarai appears in the door with a fairly pleased smile, like she just did. "Admiral Mazda," she said, announcing herself. She hung at the entrance, allowing the guards to examine her. "May I have a moment? I've just received a report."
Lera looked up when Sarai spoke. She nodded; the guards at the door thought nothing of her. Sarai outranked them, truth be told. She did not stand up, but she did nod and motion to the inside of the room. It wasn't usual that Sarai came by -- they were not friends, after all -- but far from unheard of. "Of course, Lieutenant," she said. "Please, come in. Have a seat."
Sarai's eyes briefly lighted on the two guards, staying where she was for a moment of contemplation.. She walked in, then, quickly stepping forward. "Thank you for the offer, Admiral," she said, with her usual very loosely Irish accent. Characterization did weird things sometimes. "I'd rather stand. Got to get right back to it. Can't afford to get comfortable."
She puncutated the statement by dropping a folder on Lera's desk. The most important thing introduced to Zenderael by the merge: Manila folders. It contained Sarai's field reports regarding the incidents at the parade, as well as recon attempts by her unit to suss out the various Enemies Of The State that have emerged in the last week - the Sharifa's murderer and the bombers, both. Not a lot of progress. There was also a few collected accounts regarding what happened in Engelhab. Accounts of the initial EMP and assault of Acher's army. A warhound found beaten to death in a bar, a few other traces of escapees or fleeing. A rough reconstruction of the final push back against Acher, sightings confirming a new Vairya.
It was useful information, but possibly not worth troubling the Mazda directly over. Perhaps this was simply Sarai's way of offering support for Lera's absolutely miserable last few days. A rapid flow of information, helping her feel in the loop.
Or, perhaps it was her way of diverting Lera's attention from the fact that as soon as Lera took her eyes off her, Sarai had pulled her sword off her belt and begun charging a high-tier Fire blast.
She waited patiently for Lera to match eyes with her, and her lips curled up in a twisted, mad delight, dancing in her eyes, and she said, "Your presence is requested in the Dark, Admiral," and then parted sword from scabbard - releasing a torrent of fire mighty enough to blow a hole in the wall behind the Mazda.
"As you like," Lera said. She looked down at first, peering at the folder; the information was useful but not critical, things that she was happy to know, but not something she had to concern herself with. Her first thought was that she had to be missing something; then, she realized, she was. She caught the spell as strands of golden light, weaving together, over the edge of the paper. She recognized how they moved; she knew that spell, having cast it herself before.
She let out a surprised yelp and kicked both feet up into her desk. The cybernetic leg was stronger than her natural one if she really pushed. The desk flew up into the air and she leaped to her feet. The torrent of flame slammed into the desk, blowing the huge oak furniture piece into a thousand pieces.
Lera was already on the move, rushing at the wall. Her long sword leaned against it; she held a hand out, activating a simple spell that made it unsheathe and fly into her hand. Her spectral saber appeared, too, floating at her side, and she looked at Sarai. Her eyes widened, with realization, and she drew in a gasp; the blade flashed with lightning, and a burst of it shot out towards Sarai. Forked tongues of electricity slashed across the floor, burning tiles and catching a couple pieces of paper.
"It was you," Lera said. Her voice was quiet -- stunned, but processing it quickly. "You were the traitor in our midst. But... but why?"
Sarai's lips curled up into her cheeks in delight at the quick response. "Fast! What I'd expect of the Mazda!" Sarai all but cheered.
Sarai snapped up her blade, the shock passing into the sword and grounding into an Earth effect humming in the blade. Sarai bore teeth. "Is it treachery if I never really cared, Mazda?" she wondered, lyrically. She stood back; she'd been a caster the whole time, and that much she couldn't lie about, as the light around her blade changed from the motes of earth to the cool white of ice. Her eyes twinkled with delight. "Why?" she wondered. "What a question! You're the one who ordered so many Amber Eyes out into the field! Hunting for murderers, wasn't it?"
Her eyes hooded beneath her bangs, her lips peeling up to show gleaming teeth. "How ironic."
She swings both scabbard and sword up above her head, and brings both down overhand - slamming into the ground. A two-lane sheet of ice shoots away from the impact point, coating the ground and spraying razor-sharp icicles along its path, a miasma of slowing chill blasting out of the wave. She failed to kill the Mazda with the first strike, and that meant she had to layer on every advantage she could get.
"Never cared? Was everything a lie?" Lera snapped, heat entering her voice. She saw the ice shoot across the floor, and the room grew chilly. She cast a quick buff on herself to improve her reflexes, then a second to improve her focus. When she let a breath out again, mist hung in front of her mouth. "I'll make you pay for what you've done, for everything that you've inflicted on us! Those men were your comrades!"
More than a few Ambereyes died in the bombing. Others had perished in fights with assassins and Greycloaks that they found. Harriet was dead, too, and she felt that heavy weight of depression. It did not lift; the anger, though, was fresh.
She could use it.
She howled in a wordless rage and launched off the icy ground. She spun as she went into the air, stretching her long sword out to stab at Sarai as she landed. Flame danced up the length of blade, crackling and popping, as she got closer. She stabbed down hard, and landed; the sole of her boot and her artificial foot hit the ice and skidded a little more than they normally would.
Sarai laughed, deep in her belly. "Everything is a lie," Sarai replied, with a dire hiss. Lera was buffing up, and that was no good, but for Sarai, it was all a laugh. All Sarai could do was slam her with element debuffs, but she could keep that up for a while. "Those men were puppets!" she jabbed back. "Ridiculous little players on a ridiculous little stage! How do you intend to make me pay for a crime against dolls? Send me home?"
Sarai's eyes twinkled; Lera's fury would be to her benefit. She had to account for spectral saber and sword both, blade going one way and scabbard the other to catch both oncoming strikes. Normally a lock like that would put Sarai, the weaker melee fighter, in a serious pinch, but Lera's awkward imbalance gave her her opening. She surged forward, thrusting both parries aside, and then driving the scabbard straight toward Lera's chest, a blast of lightning exploding toward her torso - and while Lera's balance was off and her muscles stunned, Sarai drove her sword toward her gut with a sickle wide on her face.
"They were your comrades! They--" The electrified scabbard blow cut short Lera's shout of protest. The lightning drove her back, stunning her, and then Sarai's sword punched through the armor and into her stomach. She slumped forward, then fell backward against the wall, sliding off the sword. Blood ran from between her fingers -- and against the wall where she hit it, leaving a smear. She looked at Sarai, stunned, for a moment.
The fact that she could die here, like Harriet, suddenly went from a callous tactical consideration to a real, biting fear. The pain in her abdomen was excruciating, but the adrenaline did a lot to take away the fact that something was desperately wrong.
She pulled herself off the wall and clutched her stomach. She thought that she wanted to die, once; that she couldn't take outliving friends, being told to suspect them of treason, and cut off from everyone around her. But now, facing it, she realized how wrong she had been. If she died, it hurt the soldiers who worked under her; the soldiers that had died protecting. It hurt friends. She still didn't know that she was a good Mazda.
But, part of her wanted it.
She drew on her mana, ignoring the pain as best she could, and then loosed a furious blast of lightning from her extended long sword. Electricity exploded off the blade, tongues of it hitting the ice; some struck the corpses of the guards outside; more ignited papers and books on the walls. The lightning was directed at Sarai most of all, though; an effort to keep herself alive.
"Precisely!" Sarai called to her skewered captive. The sword began charging - Sarai preparing a fatal flame blast to cook Lera's insides. "And now I finally get to send them where they belong!" Sarai jabbed again, opening her mouth to end it. But her gold eyes caught that gathering light. "Whoop!" she yelped, and ripped her sword out while at the same time bringing up her scabbard, Earth-charged, to take that shot. But there were limits to that trick, and a furious Mazda easily surpassed them.
Sarai couldn't scream, not with the electricity spasming her muscles. She tried to intercede with her sword, drawing off some of the elemental fury into the blade. But the blast finally charged her sword enough that it jumped from it to her, and Sarai staggered back, arching from the power of the strike coursing through her.
After a moment, she sagged, wheezing, but still, still smiling. "Ahahaha," she laughed, gasping, and then emitted a rasping, pleased, "Ahhhhh." She raised her head to look Lera in the eye, smile tugging unpleasantly at her cheeks. "They just don't hit like this in training!" she said. "Feels good!"
And then, taking a few more steps back across the frozen room, she raised sword and scabbard - and slammed the sword home. Far from a gesture of surrender, for Sarai Elahn, it was a warning of her preparing her greatest abilities. The motes of electric light gathered up from Lera's blast flew around Sarai, sparked and whirled as she pulled out more, and more, and more power.
"Race you," Sarai said.
"You're insane," Lera managed. She tasted something copper in her mouth; she could feel some blood at the back of her throat. The flow of blood from her stomach wasn't stopping, she realized, and she was feeling feint already. Blood loss set in fast; she had some sense of that from the fight with Mezzron, but she wasn't sure how long she had.
She started preparing her own blast. The tactically sound option, she knew, was to charge Sarai and disrupt her, but she wasn't sure she could pick up a decent speed. She had a plan to try to overwhelm her. Spellswords were always about finesse over raw power.
Flame rolled up around her; it gathered along the length of her long sword and made the ice around her melt. Some of it began to rise as steam, and she drew more from the flames engulfing the shelves. She ignored how low her mana stores began to grow; she could deal with mana burn, if it came to that. Fire crackled and began to pop. She started sweating from the heat.
Sarai being as apparently absolutely batty as she has proven might have made it hard to tell what exactly her plan was, or if she even had one. But she couldn't have possibly made it this far with no cunning, right? The big smiles may disguise it, but she'd been in the Spellswords for months...right under everyone's noses.
Sarai's ugly little curl of a grin twisted even more at Lera's beginning release. "Insane," she said, slowly. "I wonder. I wonder if I'm even human enough to be called insane."
"Have you figured it out yet, Admiral Mazda?" She used the title with lyrical irony. "What I lost, that day I awoke?"
She parted her sword from scabbard, lashing the sword fully out of its scabbard offensively, like a Japanese iai strike, except it was a release of a riotous column of electrical energy, thicker than Sarai was tall, bearing down on Lera and all those pretty little metal plates she was wearing. That leg wouldn't enjoy being blasted by an electrical storm, would it?
In the light, the whole room all but vanished into a haze of misting ice, burning fire, and electric blue. "That day I saw the Dark!?" Sarai called out in the impenetrable bright.
Lera did not answer Sarai. Her focus was on the fight, on not passing out from bloodloss and pain. The other spellsword loosed her blast first -- and Lera followed with a jet of flame wide around as a man's head, which flew off her sword like a missile. It struck the storm of electricity, but was all too small for the amount of power she channeled. It blasted the electricity back for only a moment, before the lightning pushed past the flame. The lightning rolled through the fire, the flames' waves breaking against it.
The rest of her charged spell came from Sarai's left. Her spectral saber hurled three spirals of flame outward, arching high, low, and left. The ceiling and floor alike were scarred black by flame, before the three jets plunged at Sarai's side with explosive force.
And then the lightning hit Lera. Her armor had some anti-magic enchantments that stopped the worst of the damage, but the electricity still poured into the cybernetic leg. There was a tremendous popping sound; every muscle locked up and she couldn't scream, despite the intense pain. Forks of lightning shot out past and through her, into the ground, and she crumples. As she cames to -- sucking in deep breaths -- she looked at the shattered remains of the prosthetic.
The lightning destroyed it, in the end. Parts of it popped off; plates lie in heaps, hurled here and there, smoke rising from them. The end of it remained attached her hip, reminding her of those desperate days when she first lost the leg. She remained on the ground, rolled onto her side, and found no strength in her arms or leg to force herself to sit up.
The pain caught up with her after that. Her free hand went back over her stomach, blood making it sticky. She had no energy left to scream. She moaned lowly, instead.
Sarai was about to finish her taunt when Lera's curving spell appeared. She was too busy casting; unable to do much but throw up her scabbard and shield with what mana she yet had, but it was far from enough. The fire blasts blew her off her feet, earning Lera a rich scream of pain that didn't sound...terribly unhappy, honestly.
Seconds passed. Sarai lay where she had slammed into the far wall, her arm and face scarred by fire. But while Lera slowly groaned, helpless and having to hope someone had heard the tremendous racket they'd been making, Sarai...stirred.
She emitted a low laugh, an evil chuckle as she drove her scabbard into the ruined floor, wobblingly shoving herself to her feet. She reached down to her belt, and produced a single, glimmering bottle. Health potion. She slammed it back, then tossed it to the side as her wounds slowly grew together.
"Regret," she said, watching Lera as she started to walk, first using the scabbard for support and then, gradually, with greater strength. "The one thing I can't feel...the one thing people like you build your whole miserable existence around. So no. I don't think of myself as human. And no, I don't think by your standards, I'm sane."
She rose tall over Lera, her eyes all but glowing with radiant evil. She dropped her scabbard, holding her sword for a final thrust.
"And no, Admiral..." She reached down again, and produced...
....a normal Amber Eye field spoon. Her lips curled up again with raw malevolence.
"No, Lera Savinkov. That all means that the one thing you can never make me do...is pay."
She thrust the sword down, aiming for Lera's heart.
Lera stared at the burnt wreck that she thought should have been dead. Somehow, though, Sarai lived. She groaned at that, looking up, and her fingers reached for the long sword she dropped. It was out of reach -- and her mana stores were burnt through besides. She couldn't even call the blade to her, the way she had at the beginning of the fight.
The spoon made her kick her good leg, but it was the only protest she could manage.
She was terrified. She thought that she had avoided this outcome; she thought she escaped being violently murdered by an alt. Acher was dead. It wasn't supposed to end like this -- and, facing her own death, it seemed frightfully final. A lifetime of expectation prepared her for that. She thought of Ezra, Vati, Missie, her parents, and Harriet in the end, and wished it could have been different.
She could only look at Sarai, though. "You won't... you won't get away with this. We'll never--"
The sword drove down through her chest. She let out a groan that became a scream, and then it fell short, as she spasmed. Her body fell back against the wall, Xumurdad's golden eyes rolled halfway up in her head.