in tenebris est veritas.
A candid cry escapes her as the keen keratin cuts deep, blood and pain pouring forth alongside the sting of shock. Again there is barely enough time to retaliate; the reaching grip of her opposite hand finds purchase on a limp spine as the greater mage rescues her from a worse fate. With a sharp wince, she extracts the sagging body from her arm and drops it bitterly to the ground. Then her palm immediately rises to the wound to apply much needed pressure.
Tears of instinctive pain fracture her vision as Deimos approaches, blinked rapidly away behind the scant privacy of her mask. She only nods in response to his first question, a vain attempt to hide her weakness as she clutches its source behind red-stained fingers. By the time he utters the second, her voice is more or less steadied.
“Yes. The shifting of energies, first gathered and then scattered.” She speaks the words like a mantra, threads of arcane intention woven into what was clearly some lesson from some long gone mentor. “You as well. But yours is… potent.” Hers is the intonation of a statement, but there is a question hidden between the syllables-- a curiosity that she dare not speak aloud, not yet. She steps carefully toward him, avoiding the warm corpses at her feet and peering into the bag as he rifles through it.
Chaele trembles faintly, her lost blood dripping a sticky trail down the grooves of her scarred arms and onto the smooth stone at her feet. Her attention is drawn to the slain gore crows there, perhaps more than even the three of them could hope to carry. “Your people will eat well, I imagine. I will take this one.” She gestures to her singular kill, its open eyes frozen in unforgotten suffering.
Tears of instinctive pain fracture her vision as Deimos approaches, blinked rapidly away behind the scant privacy of her mask. She only nods in response to his first question, a vain attempt to hide her weakness as she clutches its source behind red-stained fingers. By the time he utters the second, her voice is more or less steadied.
“Yes. The shifting of energies, first gathered and then scattered.” She speaks the words like a mantra, threads of arcane intention woven into what was clearly some lesson from some long gone mentor. “You as well. But yours is… potent.” Hers is the intonation of a statement, but there is a question hidden between the syllables-- a curiosity that she dare not speak aloud, not yet. She steps carefully toward him, avoiding the warm corpses at her feet and peering into the bag as he rifles through it.
Chaele trembles faintly, her lost blood dripping a sticky trail down the grooves of her scarred arms and onto the smooth stone at her feet. Her attention is drawn to the slain gore crows there, perhaps more than even the three of them could hope to carry. “Your people will eat well, I imagine. I will take this one.” She gestures to her singular kill, its open eyes frozen in unforgotten suffering.
