03/07/337

Vasuki

That glow, that damned glow, was so damn bright to Vasuki, if Audra hadn’t ascended by now she was right on the verge of it, and the sight of that rapier in her hand sent waves of terror through his body. He grabbed those icy chains of Etherea and wrapped his left arm in a gauntlet of cold cobalt. Audra’s eyes looked at his ice with a hint of recognition. Could she see his glow like he could hers? Or was it different for everyone? Questions for later he decided.

Vasuki’s feet shot off of the ground, and his blade flew towards Audra’s chest, she brought up her rapier faster than he expected she would. She grunted as his blade struck hers and forced her to stagger back. He jumped into the air and brought his blade down towards her, she side-stepped the blow and felt the pommel of her sword hit his cheek. He quickly recovered, diagonally swinging his weapon at her, bringing the blade up from the ground. She managed to jump to his right and tried to hit him with the pommel of her sword once again. He pulled the chains of Etherea and forced a small pillar of ice from the ground, hitting her hard in the chest. He could feel pain scorching through his left arm.

Ignoring his pain Vasuki’s boots pounded hard against the ground, this time Audra opted to put her own scales in the way of his heavy blade. She screamed in pain but was silenced by his fist, covered in cobalt ice, striking her jaw. She went back a few feet and fell to her ass. She looked up at him with a look of resolve and a nasty pale mark where his fist had been. That was when he realized how cold the ice he had been using had been.

Audra stood up and touched the pale spot before rotating her jaw a little bit.

“You really do believe I did that to you.” Audra commented, while standing up. Vasuki felt a blast of water hit him in the back of his head, forcing him to stagger forward he barely had a chance to react before her rapier impaled his right thigh. He screamed through gritted teeth, his hand tightened around the handle of his weapon as he instinctively swung the blade at his former ally. He didn’t think he would hit nothing but air where she had been just a moment before. The glow that surrounded her, her scent, everything about her vanished from existence in the time it took to blink. Her scent came back to him just before a scorching pain in his right shoulder as he found the tip of Audra’s rapier going through his back then retreating back through him. He reacted by swinging his blade at her, though this time he knew she knew that he was slowed by the pain of his injuries. She vanished again, he reacted by calling Etherea to his weapon, he swung wide behind him. She had already reappeared just as large spears of ice shot outwards in an arch.

Vasuki fell back as a shockwave came from the blade of Audra’s rapier, shattering the ice, and saving her from the waist up, but she screamed from the pain of the ice piercing her legs. She vanished then reappeared a few meters away from him. Her teeth clattered and she visibly shivered. He did his best to come to a stand, ignoring his aching and, quickly, numbing body. That was when the damned glow coming from her began to brighten. When her eyes met his they were the color of the setting sun, mixed with the purple color of demonic energy, filled with rage, and a bit of betrayal. She vanished, and when Vasuki turned he had to put the flat side of his blade up to protect himself. The tip of her rapier collided with his sword, instead of stopping she closed the distance, and her left fist went over the back edge of his weapon, colliding with his neck. He fell to the side, rolling over before coughing when he came to a stop. The burning on his skin felt like he was being cooked.

Vasuki came to a stand, and held his weapon outwards, his body was beginning to shut off and he could feel his shoulders becoming ever more heavier. Audra had grown crystalline scales on her, normally human, left arm, as well as purple markings that slithered around her arms. Vasuki’s blade shook violently in his weakening grip, he tried to hold on to the weapon with both of his hands to steady the shaking and barely realized it when Audra was already on top of him.

Burning sensations traveled across his body, everywhere her fist made contact. His collar bone, a hit to the his left arm, shattering the ice that surrounded it. She kicked his right side, feeling a hard pop under the force of her strength. The left side of his face, then the right, his body began to burn up as she continued her assault. A knee to his stomach forced him to keel over. Then his body was forced back upright when her blade traveled up his face. Warm blood seeped from a cut that traveled from the bottom of the left side of his jaw up his cheek. He fell to his back, his sword shattered into countless shards of ice. Exhaustion quickly settled in, forcing himself to lay on the ground. It was as if his energy had been drained from him, his body burned from hot marks all over his body. He felt the sound of something falling to the ground, and a hand slapping his cheek.

“Hey, don’t go to sleep!” He opened his eyes and found Audra over him, her rapier on the ground, concern plastered on her face in the light of the setting sun.

“She sees you as so much less than what you are, and you proved her right...are you going to let this continue? Do you want to go back to that hell?” Vistrata asked in his mind. Vasuki balled his fist, feeling just enough energy to hit her with a bit more Etherea. He quickly put his palm on the left side of her abdomen and released it. Pain seared through his body, a cold spear of cobalt shot through her side. She fell back to her ass, her body shook as she put pressure over her wounds. Despite everything that had just happened between them, he could feel his heart breaking. Just before his eyes closed from exhaustion.

Audra

Audra’s eyes were wide, with a mixture of panic and pain, as she desperately tried to halt the bleeding.

“W-why!?” Audra asked, panicking and shivering. She didn’t get an answer from Vasuki, his eyes were closed and his breathing was steady. She felt like she was going to freeze from the inside out. Audra pushed with her feet away from Vasuki’s unconscious body, until she felt her back hit a tree. The man and woman, Vasuki had called them, Rahzel and Izenia ran to Vasuki to check his slowly breathing body.

“He’s going to be okay...I think.” Izenia claimed, looking over at Audra, then giving a small smirk before she stood, “I’ll go get Gord and tell him we’re taking Vasuki somewhere safer.” She turned and ran off quicker than Audra thought the malnourished girl could manage.

“W-w-where...where a-are y-you t-taking him?” Audra asked, she couldn’t stop her teeth from clattering. Rahzel looked at her incredulously.

“Why the hell would we tell you that information?” Rahzel asked, slinging Vasuki over his shoulder. She reached out towards her old friend as Rahzel walked away from her. Their footsteps grew farther and farther away, before falling silent and the only sounds around her were the insects that accompanied the coming night, as well as her own breathing.

Audra’s eyes felt heavy, the time for her eyes to open after blinking was becoming longer and longer as time went on. The blood that poured from her injuries was causing her to bleed-out, if nothing was done about the hole in her side she would die. Just as her eyes began to shut, for that rest her body yearned for, pain sparked up her back to her head.

“Stay awake.” Lusalene desperately called. It was an echo, almost nonexistent, but definitely there. Her vision faded, and her senses were overtaken, by a life that she did not live through herself.

Audra stood in a field, surrounded by the bodies of humans and variants alike. The blood-stained battlefield was soaked in blood and stained with black residue, a temporary reminder of demons that had been slain.

Liquid, warm and crimson dripped down her neck, like ale from a barrel. Her vision was fading until she felt a spark. An overwhelming power that hungered for freedom, like a wolf in a cage. This spark inside of her caught, turning from weak embers to a wildfire. Her body felt lighter, yet pain was on the verge of erupting from every movement, Etherea mixed with every part of her body, magic had simply become a concept that intertwined with the power of her soul. Her wounds recovered almost instantly, giving her body a second wind, at least for a time.

“Complete your Ascension.” Lusalene ordered. Her voice like a whisper in the wind. Audra’s vision returned she found herself standing in the lake of her soul, her reflection was a blurry shadow, and the fog was closing in faster and faster by the second. The embers floated above the lake, at about eye level. It was a weak orange light.

“You’re my only chance right now.” Audra said, she looked around but knew there was nothing around to feed that fire, “I give myself to my undeniable fate.” Audra said, sad that she had no other choice but to finalize the destiny she didn’t want. She placed her hand into the flame, it crawled over her and set her soul ablaze. The fog flew back and the, now moonlit, forest around her came back.

Audra still sat with her back against the tree, but her wound had become little more than a large gray scar that traveled from the front, of her right side, to the back. She examined herself as best she could. Her left arm was covered in crystalline scales, that went down to the base of her fingers. She could see some of the hair, that rested just past her shoulders, had gained a slight orange hue, with some strands being a deep purple. But the thing that threw her off the most were the purple markings that slithered around her arms, they never showed evidence of having eyes but something told her that they were watching her. They wrapped around her arms, as if they were rope keeping a prisoners arms bound so they could be whipped.

Audra breathed a heavy sigh as she felt the weight of her ascension beginning to make her shoulders ache. As if it was as natural as breathing she pulled back from the flame within her soul, it was no longer just plain embers, but gave off the warmth of a campfire on a cool night. She had fed it, and in return it gave her a second wind; a second chance of life.

Eventually she came to a stand, and sadly looked in the direction that Vasuki and his companions had went. She had no idea how much time had passed, but even if they hadn’t gotten far she knew that she would not be welcome to accompany them. She picked up Keen Piercer from where she had dropped the weapon, she wondered how it had saved her life during the fight but put the question back for later.

Just as Audra turned around to walk back to the city she felt the hairs on the back of her neck come to a stand. Everything in her body told her she needed to run, the smell of something she could never hope to describe infiltrated her senses, and the vivid memory of a green scarf flapping in the wind sent fear running through her body.