[Mini Event] hands off your fate, child

M  A   E    A I talked to God to no avail Said, "If you won't save me, please don't waste my time." How long time had passed? Minutes, hours? Maea felt like she had been climbing for years when the darkness around her changed hue and she came stumbling out of the entrance. The cool night air was a sweet balm on her ravaged throat and she sucked in a breath, desperate like one who is drowning and just barely managed to breach the surface before being dragged under once more. And she was drowning. The cough that rattled through her chest was wet, tearing, and left her lips flecked with bright crimson blood. The taste of it filled her mouth, her nose, reeked from her clothes and skin where the essence of the giant tortoise had bled on her. Eerie flecks of some other fluid splashed her face too, transparent save for the otherworldy sheen that seemed to glow in the faint light of the stars. A rapier dangled from her right hand, it too coated with blood. The sword was not hers. Had not been, until she picked it from a fallen Ascended's limp hand and used it to avenge his death. A death that might have been avoided, that could have been prevented... "Please" she gasped the instant she could manage, lips blue and eyes glazed over with shock. "Help them! Below... poison air.." But that was all the could manage before Maea started coughing again. Her knees buckled, and the pale young woman crumbled to the ground, helpless as she struggled to breathe.