Eyes snapped to Aethril, and she prowled closer, tensed, waiting.

A white deer tumbled from midair, from nothing, and there was a split second between this and Aethril's snarled command where it had a chance to take flight. Obieth could only try to catch up, a cat leaping for a bird already on the wing--so to speak. She wasn't sure how the hell a deer was flying, and that also impacted her reaction time just a tad--but she bolted after it nonetheless, lashing out with her magic, with the first thing that came to mind: darkness.

Obieth did not have the power to strike someone down from a distance--such magics were unknown to her... as yet, at least. But as she raced to try and catch up, she reached for the shadows, trying to swarm them around the creature. If she could blind its flight, maybe she could reach it-...

Black muscles surged and reached, her body tearing her across the grass. And ahead, the light was swept from Arwen's eyes--the area immediately around her fleeing form plunged into blackness.

The bellow behind her startled her, a flinch. She jumped forward, glanced back--was Aethril safe-?

gm-tagging!

There was hardly any time to process the events, but for a brief moment as she passed by, she noticed the blood on Aethril's face. Isra didn't have the time to stop and question, though; she was hard on Obieth's heels, dodging around the other creature as it failed to catch the deer, and instead tried magic, shrouding the area before it in darkness. Isra, however, was larger, could leap higher—and she pushed off of the ground with a massive amount of force, reaching as high as she could with her claws.

She scarcely grazed it as it ascended higher and out of reach. Isra landed with a heavy thud and snarled up toward the deer—but the scent she caught was unmistakable. The child queen.

Fury burned in her blood. How did it learn to conceal itself in the body of one of her deer? The very kind that it had stolen from her? Was it some sort of trick it learned from the stolen one's body? Either way, her stride was quickly-paced as she followed beneath the flying deer. It would not escape Cepheus. They were far, yet, from either exit.

"We will follow it until the swans arrive," she said, though her focus did not leave the deer.

"CHILD QUEEN," she called up to it, her voice thick with a growl. "WHAT A PLEASURE IT IS TO SEE YOU AGAIN. I SUSPECT YOU DID NOT COME FOR TEA, THEN?" The snakes were still lost in their own hissing fit behind her, but she paid them no mind. "DO YOU REMEMBER OUR PARTING WORDS?" she asked, the flames along her back growing as her voice did: "YOU WILL KNOW INSUFFERABLE."

Roll info: Isra can reach ~24ft (with her outstretched paws) so she will need a full success to reach Arwen who is ~20ft high
edit: :sadcat2:

- Hellswans arrive next round.

@Aethril

There was a furious clack-clack-clack as Aethril ran after both cats and flying deer in heels, mouth open and breathing hard. There was no way she'd catch up to either, but she could get just within range to try to shoot Arwen down.

Blackness was forming where the deer was heading to, but the Hand was quick. With an explosive, echoing crack of thunder, thick forks of purple-black lighting made a jagged arc in the Cepheus air. They reached out like long fingers into the clouds and struck the creature, enveloping her in heat and static.

With Isra bounding after her, it'd only be a matter of time before the vile thing was in Isra's jaws. Teamwork really did make the dream work.

Round: 4/5
Attempt: shoot arwen out the sky
Defense: none
Injuries: broken ribs, broken nose

Freedom was nearly upon her, her wings carrying her higher and higher, out of Izra's reach. Her Hellswans would have one hell of a time trying to catch her, that was for sure.

"You forfeited tea when you decided to attempt to murder a child! Now you face the consequences-"

Arwen was interrupted by her own shrill shriek, the lightning sparking up her body, nerves flaring up in pain. She screamed as she fell to the ground, her illusion falling, revealing her true form once more. She landed hard, something cracking and causing her to cry out once again, tears beading in her eyes.

"Horrible... wrenches," she hissed, pushing herself to her feet, "You and your stupid palace, your stupid deer, your stupid EVERYTHING!"

’BLUE! Tell the Court! Tell them to tell everyone they can, everyone from every group you can possibly find. Tell them that Isra killed me in cold blood, that she is a liar and a horrible, sick wretch. That she is a danger to the caves. And tell them the others who live in the palace are the same. If I am to die then I shall send all who are gullible and good-willed to avenge me. Stay safe, my love.’

But one thing was for certain. She was not going down without a fight. She would ensure that Isra was permanently disabled.

Arwen drew upon all of her magic, focusing it on Isra, pulling on all of her hate, her anger, her rage and turning it into something awful. Isra's own immune system would attack her. There was no banishing this disease. Hopefully it got the message across that Arwen was not someone to mess with.

’I have tried to weaken her,’ she thought, broadcasting everything along the link, ’If all goes to plan, then Isra will die. Good.’

A softer thought, then, as she accepted her fate.

’I love you. I love all of you. I hope my black, filthy heart didn't affect you all too much. Be better than me.’

@Obieth

Round: 5/5
Attempt: cause isra's immune system to go "fuck you"
Defense: N/A
Injuries: singed back, cracked shell, lightning burns

Obieth jerked back around, forward, as she realized it was only Isra racing in behind them. The hesitation cost her precious seconds; her priority was to keep Aethril alive, and if something had jumped on the Hand while she was distracted she could've been killed. She turned forward again, bursting into a sprint, black paws once again tearing her across the lawn. Eyes sought out, and tracked, the flying deer: she still wasn't sure how the hell that was happening, and it was screaming, too: insults, arguments. A rebel, Obieth realized, belatedly, the thought bubbling ferocious excitement up through her chest. My first rebel! She wouldn't fuck this up. She couldn't fuck this up.

She'd sent her magic out to blind; now she felt her heart thudding in her ears, the pound of feet on the ground--herself and others'--and the voices, dulled by the muffling of her own breathing. Eyes were locked on the target--and then black lightning arced up, lashing through the air with an ominous crackle.

Her prey was falling. Falling.

Obieth came in hard, ridged tail pinwheeling behind her. Then she pounced, muscles coiling and flexing, all her senses locked on this creature downed just ahead.

The scent of burned flesh. The enraged voice. The movement--injured? Then she was airborne, a leaping pounce, claws out: she would try to get a grip with jaws and claws.

Hopefully the incoming Hellswans would have the sense not to kill her, too--or Isra would warn her to get out of the way.

GM tagging!

Content Warning
This post contains potentially sensitive material:

gore

Attempt to murder a child? And what if the deer she had killed had been a child? Why was it acceptable to murder pleasant, docile creatures and not children? She barked a laugh from beneath the flying queen, disguised as the very thing that got her into this position.

The shot from Aethril hit perfectly and down came the child queen, with Obieth capturing it the moment she was able. Isra came to a halt nearly on top of them, attempting to hold the queen down as well, but was hit with some kind of foul magic. She felt it immediately and hissed, the sudden thickness in her chest that suggested it would spread, be worse. It was the kind of feeling she knew she would have to chrysalize to heal, unless there was someone who could cure her; but Isra did not know how much time she had, and she did not want to travel.

She'd finish here and return to the palace, release her emergency security for Aethril, and retreat to her own chambers to heal.

But for now, she gripped the flesh of the queen between her claws and whipped one of the snakes around, letting its fangs sink into deer-disguise, depositing a surge of venom into the queen's blood. For gembounds, it was lethal—if Arwen escaped the swans, and escaped all of them somehow still, she would die. The swans would do that well enough, though; but if Arwen wanted Isra to suffer, then she would know the same. Arwen would experience flashes of panic and pain as the venom spread.

The hellswans arrived in a flutter of snarling honks, some circling them in the air, others on the ground.

gore

"Leave nothing but the stone," she told them, gesturing for Obieth to retreat as she did so herself; the swans immediately closed in—ten of them at first, the others a mess of growling hisses on the outskirts, waiting their turn—and began to shred the creature apart. First they would break through the carapace, eased by the areas already cracked from impact. Others would focus on rending the wings from the body. And lastly, they all would shred skin from muscle, muscle from bone. Essentially, they would eat her alive. Perhaps mercy would find Arwen and the venom would kill her first.

Whatever magic Arwen had cast on her was already worsening. She could feel her joints swelling, stiffening; she found it difficult to walk even now as she backed away from the spray of blood. Would she even make it back to her chambers? She'd have to go now to release the dormant guardians as it were. Her breathing was coarse. Was there fluid in her lungs?

"It cast something," she rasped, glancing up to Aethril's bloodied face and growling within her throat. "I am sorry, Aethril. You were injured," she said, her voice cut off in the wheeze of a troubled inhale. "I need to heal. There will be golems—they remain only on this side of the river." Again, her voice cut off, and she began to move toward the palace. "I must hurry... I must leave you now. Do what you wish... with it..."

She could not remain to see the end of things; she needed to act now before whatever Arwen had cast caused her to chrysalize somewhere random. Already, Isra could feel the scratch and burn of Oilstone fighting to take over. Not yet... not yet...

* Exit Isra.

Isra awakens four Oilstone golems to patrol the palace in her place; they can be commanded by Aethril. She returns to her chambers and chrysalizes, and will emerge June 8th.

@Aethril

There was a sense of satisfaction admist the gentle rasp of Aethril's laboured breathing. Watching Arwen fall out the sky, watching Obieth lunge for her, watching Isra summon the flock of hellswans.

"Move away from it," she commanded Obieth-- just in case --as the swarm of white feathers and teeth descended on Arwen. Aethril wiped the dark blood from her nose with the back of her wrist as her eyes darted towards Isra, noting her breathing only seconds before the Valkhound spoke.

What did it-... "I'm sorry, Isra," the Hand's voice was slick with grief. She'd only be gone for a few weeks but it felt like it was her fault. Guilt-- true, proper guilt --was a rare emotion she did not entirely know how to deal with. "I'm so sorry. Thank you."

For a time, Aethril stood there, face smeared with blood. The back of her throat stung and there was a gentle pressure just behind her eyes as tears threatened to cling to her eyelashes. This did not last long.

The grief was quickly turning to anger. Her lips pulled back into a snarl and she turned with a flash of sharp teeth. A ping of magic-- oh, how His magic loved lapping away at her emotions like fire licking the sky --and a vacuum of air opened; a tiny black hole.

Around Arwen's face.

As if being eaten alive with flashes of panic and fear weren't bad enough, Aethril was choking her out all the while. At the very least, it wouldn't delay her death: but it would not be quick nor painless as the Hand held the spell with gritted teeth.

Round: 5/5
Attempt: suffocate arwen to death
Defense: none
Injuries: broken ribs, broken nose

Content Warning
This post contains potentially sensitive material:

death

gore

violence

And an extra tag for VIV SPECIFICALLY!!! I'll make the buggy bits PINK Don't read that color, just skip!!

’Well. This is a way to die,’ she thought grimly, watching Isra loom over her.

She threw her mask away, baring her face to the world, eyes narrowing.


Arwen's face split open, mandibles extending and her eyes glittering under the voidlight of Cepheus, her wretched features coming to light. Everything had been folded up underneath a delicate, beautiful face, with soft lines and lashes, but now her ugliness came to light. She screamed as Isra pounced on her, yanking her hand away as the snake bit down, teeth and disgusting mouth parts on full display as she snarled at Isra like an animal.

"You wretched... FOUL CREATURES!", she wailed, "DIE! ALL OF YOU PERISH A THOUSAND PAINFUL DEATHS!! I HOPE YOU BURN! I HOPE YOU SUFFER! I hope you REMEMBER ME WHEN YOUR DEATHS ARE UPON YOU!!"

Spittle flew as she spat up at Isra, gasping for breath as she tried to crawl away, a horrid screech leaving her mouth as the swans descended upon her.


Arwen's screams were anguished, a hand reaching above the hoard in one last desperate attempt to break free, her stinger piercing the animals' flesh repeatedly until her venom ran out. She found at least a little satisfaction in the fact that the stupid birds would be plagued with her illness, causing their feathers to fall and their skin rubbed raw as they scratched the itches that would never leave them. At least she had that.

The sound of tearing flesh rose above her dying cries, the hand falling and her voice suddenly cutting out as she was not only torn apart, but her breath stolen away. There was no quick death for her.

She heard her lover's cries in her head calling for her, regret filling her chest as she realized Blue was here with her, witnessing the horror, the pain. She didn't care for her death, but she did care for Redwood. For Blue.

"Oh Blue- I'm so sorry! I should have fled- I should have told you the truth! I'm so sorry- please forgive me, I'm so sorry...", she called out to them, crying out in anguish, "I love you, I love you so much I-"

Silence.

The Queen lay broken on the ground once everything was said and done, her eyes lifeless and parts of her strewn across the grounds of Cepheus, her green blood splattered across the grass. There was no grace to her death, nor mercy. Even as she lay with her body twisted and mangled, her mouth lay open in a tortured scream.

No more would she see her love smile. No more would she card her fingers through their beautiful feathers and watch their armor shed away, revealing them in all their beauty. No more would she laugh with her kin or present those she loved with delectable honey. Her sins had clawed her down straight to hell, but even her cold dead heart had something left to feel as a single tear rolled down her cheek.

This was the end, her great finale. Arwen was no more.

@Obieth

Obieth's attention was at first so locked on the thing squirming beneath her grip--hooked talons and jaws holding tight--that she almost did not notice Isra's gesture. Even so, she stared for a moment, the movement hardly registering more than questioning thought in her mind.

It was Aethril's command that got her moving, a quick leap back, shoulders and thighs flexing as she sprang away and landed a few feet back. And retreated; Isra had hold of Arwen now, after all, and then the white birds were flocking in. The sheer noise of their battering wings on approach--and the size of them--had her scurry back a few more paces, to come to a halt a little ahead and to one side of Aethril--and then there were the snarled sounds of combat beneath the wings, the screaming words under it all.

Obieth narrowed her eyes, lifted her head, and sniffed.

Beneath the burning, beneath the blood, she tried to compare the odors that graced her nostrils against those she'd smelled on Aethril after her last battle with a rebel. Her tail twitched; the burning was really the only similarity. This thing smelled... strange, foreign.

"Was this... a rebel?" she asked, up toward Aethril, as the noises died down. As Isra herself departed.

And then she studied Aethril herself. She debated, but wasn't quite sure how to properly phrase the question "are you injured badly" or "are you going to die" or "are there more of them," so she picked another and blurted it: "Are you still in danger?"

@Aethril

Content Warning
This post contains potentially sensitive material:

gore

strong language

The spell faded as there was little left of Arwen to keep choking. The ravenous honking of the Hellswans seemed far away to her ears as the only thing she could hear was her own breathing, loud and incessant, causing a migraine to pry its way up the back of her skull.

She almost didn't hear Obieth. "I don't know," came the response, and it was unclear which part, exactly, she was responding to. Aethril herself didn't quite know-- nor did she feel as though she were... here. She was somewhere else, back to that place that smelled like woodsmoke.

A flash of a memory. Something large hanging upside down, its throat slit, blood trickling into a coagulated pit. It smelled. It smelled like burning and blood. 'How long until we can eat?' someone had asked-- her, just a child, she thought --but for the life of her, she could not remember what the reply had been. She did not feel very hungry.

The increased honking of Hellswans fighting over the last scraps brought her back to her feet. Back to a dank cave under the ground. "Move," she said, stepping forward. The swans half-turned, hissed at her-- "MOVE!" --and began to back off, elongated mouths split open.

In a fluid movement, she picked up the pointed opal and moved back towards Obieth with a frown, the flock swarming the rest of the flesh with varying screams. She wanted to destroy the fucking thing. She wanted to blow it up and scream and cry. She didn't like this feeling-- the feeling of it being her fault.

There was no remorse for Arwen, however. Of course there wasn't. Her mind was stuck on Isra.

At last, the Hand's gaze was flicking upwards to Obieth, her face still damp with sweat and blood. "This is what the rebels do," she said, voice hoarse and grim. "They destroy for little to no reason. They hurt innocents. They hurt our friends. I knew they were still out there, and I know that more of them are going to come here."

"A simple death is too good for them," she finished, and she extended the slab of opal out for Obieth to inspect. "We need to try and find them."

@Obieth