Nostariel gasped sharply as the abomination's hands darkened with fel magic. It was, unfortunately, not the first time she'd seen it used. The trick was a favorite of maleficarum and the occasional Darkspawn Emissary, and she knew exactly what it meant. For one, this had to end quickly or it would end badly. Well, worse than it was already, at any rate. A glance at the shambling corpses rising from the ground outside, snapped necks, gashed bodies and all, was enough to confirm her guess, and the Warden swallowed thickly past the bile in her throat. Oh, how she hated the undead... "She's raised the others!" The elf warned. "I'll hold them off as long as I can, but as long as the abomination lives, they'll keep moving!"
Well, until they had nothing to move with, anyway. Renewing the arcane shield, she kept it contained to herself this time, knowing that if she was going to hold out long enough, she'd need all of the magic available to her, and every advantage she could muster. On the plus side, undead were slow and awkward. On the downside... they had incredible endurance. Bracing herself in the doorway, the Warden opened fire on the closest targets first- the incoming archers from the top of the staircase that Amalia had put down early in the confrontation.
She concentrated her fire on the legs, hoping, quite frankly, to blast them right off. They'd keep crawling forward with their arms alone if they had to, but these ones wouldn't be able to do that and attack at the same time, and all she had to do was survive until the others were done. Why... why does it always come to this? Can none say no?
Several events occurred in quick succession, and before any of them could get a word in edgewise, there was an abomination in the middle of the room, yet one more victim of this society's inability to control itself. Everywhere was excess, and everywhere was poverty. Of dignity, of duty, and most importantly, of anything resembling order. Like so many squalling children, crawling blindly toward the glitter of gold as though it were the only thing that mattered, as if freedom could be bought or experienced by sloughing off all restriction upon its acquisition. Utterly ridiculous.
The Grey Warden had moved to the door, informing the rest of them that the dead rose once again, and this too, was an unnatural symptom of their rot. A body was a dead husk, nothing of what it had once been, and it was not supposed to move again. But even corpses were drawn forth by greed, by that lust for power that inevitably overtook people who lived without understanding. When the blond elf informed them that she'd be blocking the door and staving off the undead, the Qunari realized the greater implication: to drop this corrupted creature would end the farce outside as well. "Merevas, Warden. So shall it be," she spoke quietly, the faint echo of the enclosed space sounding as if from nowhere when the woman vanished once more from sight.
The twisted thing was dominating the middle of the room, and she did not much like the chance of slipping past its flailing limbs without sustaining great damage. To the left side, however, was what appeared to be a shelving unit, little more than four long poles on which were braced slats of wood. Taking a grip on one of the supports, Amalia began to climb, ascending to the top by pulling herself up with her arms alone. The top shelf was about even with the abomination's head, and it was onto this that she stepped, pausing in her motions when the wood creaked softly. It was not a sound easily heard over the din or the creature's own roars, but it forced her caution all the same. Giving away her position would crush her advantage, and if they wanted this done quickly, she would need to be hidden and take advantage of the distraction that the Sataareth and the Saarebas were bound to provide.
The archer's knife slid noiselessly from its sheath, and Amalia perched herself on the edge of the wooden slat, waiting for her opportunity.
“This is why we are persecuted!” Aurora barked. However defiant she may have sounded, deep within the pit of her stomach, she was afraid. That Abomination in front of her was a very real reminder of what she would become if she ever faltered or her willpower lagged even briefly. For her, it was like she staring right into a twisted mirror. It made her sick to see what she might become one day. She didn’t want to fight this thing. Sure, she had seen abominations before, but she never liked them. They all made her feel the same way. Afraid, weak, and sick. Now she had to kill this thing, she just had to. Both for Feynriel and for the mage. She just couldn’t let the poor mage suffer like that.
Nostariel’s words and Amalia’s vanishing brought her back into the realm of reality and out of the realms of what-ifs and what-mights. Undead behind and an Abomination in front. They had to kill the unfortunate beast before they were overrun and snuffed out… Else she may end up like the creature in front of them. She shuddered but pushed it out of her mind. Now was not the time to dwell on such weakness, now was the time to act.
With quivering hands, Aurora once again dipped into the fade, though now with a bit of apprehension. An icy haze engulfed her hands as she readied her spell. She drew back her hands on either side of her and then suddenly pushed forward with both as if earnestly pushing the wall of ice at the Abomination. The Winter's Grasp barreled towards the Abomination and struck, slowing the creature down and causing icicles to form across the creature's body. It was a temporary thing, and it wouldn't be long before it broke out of the ice.
As she coiled her hands in wait for her next spell, tears ran down the corners of her eyes. "Not all of us are like this... Not all of us..." she murmured. Was she telling that to her companions... Or to herself?
Ithilian certainly didn't care for the human mage's murmuring, and he certainly wasn't going to have a debate with himself about the dangers of magic or what this situation signified. To him, it was a threat to be dealt with, nothing more. The shemlen had given in, lowered her guard, allowed the demon to take control of her. What was done was done. She was gone, and this abomination was her new form. And with Nostariel volunteering to hold off the undead on her own, with Amalia disappearing into stealth, and Aurora being physically inferior as she was, it fell to Ithilian to take this thing head on. They needed to work together to bring it down, and it that meant Ithilian had to face its claws, so be it. Nostariel had proven her capability as a healer. Perhaps she would need to demonstrate it once again in a moment.
He drew his knives, steeling himself for the briefest of moments before charging. He had never actually fought one of these creatures before, but surely they were not immune to mundane attacks? There was only one way to find out at present. He sprinted forward and leaped with a roar, his blades backwards in his hands and raised above his head. The abomination burst from Aurora's ice an instant before Ithilian's attack landed. He plunged both blades into the creature's back, the weapons sinking into corrupted flesh right up to the hilt, but the abomination had made attacks of its own, its knifelike claws stabbing into Ithilian's chest on both sides, dangerously close to the heart.
All became pain and chaos. The abomination had him lifted into the air and abruptly slammed up against the wall, his feet perhaps a foot off the ground. In such close proximity to each other, any of Aurora's spells would have hit them both. He reacted with instinct, lifting his feet up to the abomination's chest, and pushing with all the force he could muster. With a terrible shredding sound, the knives ripped free from the creature's back by carving their way out, and the abomination's claws retracted out of his chest, sending him sliding down the wall to a sitting position, leaving a smear of blood along the way. The abomination stumbled backwards into the center of the room, wounded, but not dead, and there was little Ithilian could do but sit on the ground and try to breathe, which was proving remarkably difficult.
Amalia's breath left her in a muted hiss when Ithilian launched himself at the abomination. From her vantage point, she could tell that it would likely end well for neither combatant, and furthermore, the proximity was such that either of the saarebas launching a spell was just as likely to kill the elf as it was to end the abomination. Still, she could not act too soon, lest she spoil what little advantage she had been able to gain by dent of silence and precision. Her eyes narrowed and her weight shifted in her crouch, from her forefoot to the one bracing her from behind. If she were visible, she even so would not have seemed so real, more like the most lifelike of carvings in stone, apparently unmoved even by the stirring of breaths.
Ithilian hit the wall, and that was as much a signal as anything. Perfectly tactical or not, if she refused to act now, he would die, and while that was technically no concern of hers, the baseline will she possessed was that others survive where they might, and so she leapt, her hard stare never leaving the abomination as her body twisted midair to hit where she intended. She was not incredibly strong, and when training against her kossith comrades, she had learned to compensate for that. Height and the resultant force of gravity were a particularly useful way to do this.
Her feet, together and knees locked, collided with the abomination's shoulder, and Amalia kicked off as though the creature were just one more platform, bouncing a bit back into the air and refocusing, this time striking with the dagger she'd acquired, unsure how needles would puncture skin not of ordinary consistency. An experiment for another time. A blade, as she'd already observed, bit deep, and hers slid smoothly into the opposite shoulder, her body weight serving to drag it further down, parting flesh like roughened leather, crisscrossing with one of the wounds the Dalish man had carved. The abomination cried out, as though many voices converged in a single syllable, and gave a great heave, bucking the now knife-less Amalia off. Without enough time to land on her feet, the Qunari tucked into a roll, hitting the ground safely but with more force than she'd anticipated, and she kept right on rolling until she was unceremoniously smashed into the same wall the elf presently occupied.
Red and black dots fought for dominance in her field of vision as she struggled to inhale. By the Qun, that thing had better be dead now or within a few seconds, because otherwise she was going to have to stand up again, and that was going to be difficult. At last, she managed a shuddering inhale, coughing several times as the dust stirred up by her slightly-undignified crash filled her lungs, and she braced herself against the stone with both forearms, pressing her back to the cool surface as she gathered shaking legs beneath her. She'd be a mess of mottled bruises in the days to follow, and the telltale twinge in her ankle was probably a break. Maybe just a sprain, but given the pain involved, that was unlikely.
The first two undead fell under Nostariel's magical onslaught, but she didn't have time to bother being relieved about that, because there were about a dozen more at various stages of 'on the way.' In stepping forward to launch a cone of cold at the first wave of melee fighters, she inadvertently exposed herself to a tricky flank attack from one of the three archers most distant from her, and the twang of a bowstring was the only warning she received before the head of an arrow buried itself in her left thigh, causing her to gasp sharply and nearly drop her staff in the process. Swallowing past the lump still in her throat, she decided to leave the arrow be for the moment, lest removing it cause her to bleed far too much before she could find the time to treat it.
Stepping back so that the doorframe and angle offered her temporary protection from more projectiles, Nostariel tried not to panic when the undead broke through her ice, continuing their shambling march to her location. Biting her lip, the Warden knew she needed something bigger, and quickly, so she sank into that peculiar mindspace that related to her magic and calmed her haggard breaths, drawing upon a wellspring of flame somewhere in the Fade to summon large globes of it into the sky above her enemies. The first crash of the firestorm missed, but the second impacted a corpse dead-on, the creature flailing helplessly as it was inexorably cremated. Ashes we were, and ashes we will become. She was not by any means a devotee of the Chantry, but that line had always held a particular kind of truth when stacked beside the events of her life.
For now, the corpses were delayed enough that she could turn her attention to the battle raging inside the small room. Thus far, the abomination had been distracted enough that Nostariel had not taken any spells or claws to the back, which she considered to be a good sign, but some of the things she'd been hearing...
Nostariel chanced a glance and murmured something unintelligible, blue irises rimmed with pristine sclera and her eyes grew wide with shock. Ithilian appeared to be struggling to breathe against the far wall, and Amalia was just now rising to trembling feet, looking more dazed than the sharp-eyed woman she'd been before. This left Aurora alone against the heavily-injured but still moving Abomination, and something that sounded suspiciously like a string of Starkhaven oaths tumbled over the Warden's tongue. Without another thought, she gripped the arrow still in her leg and wrenched, unable to prevent the jagged groan that accompanied it. Switching tactics, she pulled the healing energy from the Fade spirits with as much speed as she was able, pushing it outward to encompass the whole group. Her leg wound stopped bleeding and closed seamlessly, but without further treatment, she'd be limping for a while.
Aurora's allies were being thrown about like ragdolls from the onslaught of the fade beast. Her ice spell did little to even phase the Abomination, much less even slow it down. It even seemed to shrug off Ithilian's rage fueled slashes before picking him up with it's razor-like claws and slamming him against the stone wall. Aurora could not attack for fear of hitting both the abomination and Ithilian. The fade around her hands weakened as she began to feel more and more helpless.
Next to attack was Amalia, flying from the shelf across the room. While her acrobatics were impressive, the abomination bucked her right off and she too hit the stone wall hard. The roar the abomination gave caused Aurora to step back, frightened and hesitant. A groan behind her indicated that Nostariel too was wounded. They were being crushed and if the abomination didn't fall soon, they would all meet their end at the claws of the fade beast. If it was to fall it would be up to her. What could she do to this creature that the others could not? How could she hope to vanquish her own nightmare given flesh? She was weak before them... And weakness in a mage invited disaster. No. She could not be weak. For the price of weakness lumbered right in front of her. She could not afford the weakness, she could not prove the templars right for locking mages up. If she wanted to truly be free, then she had to have the strength to make it so.
She shut her mouth tight and set her jaw. She had to defeat this beast, else they would all perish. The fade around her hands strengthened again as she balled them into fists, ready to face the beast. For the second time, she charged forward, magic gathering around her hands. The abomination was ready for her, waiting to plunge it's claws into her neck. Then Aurora jumped into the air, right hand drew back in a heavy fist of stone. However, the abomination caught her in mid-air, driving it's claws deep into her back. It would snap her in half if she tarried. So with a cry of pain she crashed down with her fist and with a heavy stone burst, drove then beast into the ground.
Still, the abomination lived, prone on the ground with Aurora sitting on it's chest. Without thinking, she drew back her left hand, now encased in a blade of ice and plunged it into the beast's face once, twice, and then she hesitated before burying it for the third time in the beast's face. Panting heavily and with an excruciating pain in her lower back, she allowed the bloody ice around her hand to fade away, leaving her victorious over the creature.
Well, until they had nothing to move with, anyway. Renewing the arcane shield, she kept it contained to herself this time, knowing that if she was going to hold out long enough, she'd need all of the magic available to her, and every advantage she could muster. On the plus side, undead were slow and awkward. On the downside... they had incredible endurance. Bracing herself in the doorway, the Warden opened fire on the closest targets first- the incoming archers from the top of the staircase that Amalia had put down early in the confrontation.
She concentrated her fire on the legs, hoping, quite frankly, to blast them right off. They'd keep crawling forward with their arms alone if they had to, but these ones wouldn't be able to do that and attack at the same time, and all she had to do was survive until the others were done. Why... why does it always come to this? Can none say no?
Several events occurred in quick succession, and before any of them could get a word in edgewise, there was an abomination in the middle of the room, yet one more victim of this society's inability to control itself. Everywhere was excess, and everywhere was poverty. Of dignity, of duty, and most importantly, of anything resembling order. Like so many squalling children, crawling blindly toward the glitter of gold as though it were the only thing that mattered, as if freedom could be bought or experienced by sloughing off all restriction upon its acquisition. Utterly ridiculous.
The Grey Warden had moved to the door, informing the rest of them that the dead rose once again, and this too, was an unnatural symptom of their rot. A body was a dead husk, nothing of what it had once been, and it was not supposed to move again. But even corpses were drawn forth by greed, by that lust for power that inevitably overtook people who lived without understanding. When the blond elf informed them that she'd be blocking the door and staving off the undead, the Qunari realized the greater implication: to drop this corrupted creature would end the farce outside as well. "Merevas, Warden. So shall it be," she spoke quietly, the faint echo of the enclosed space sounding as if from nowhere when the woman vanished once more from sight.
The twisted thing was dominating the middle of the room, and she did not much like the chance of slipping past its flailing limbs without sustaining great damage. To the left side, however, was what appeared to be a shelving unit, little more than four long poles on which were braced slats of wood. Taking a grip on one of the supports, Amalia began to climb, ascending to the top by pulling herself up with her arms alone. The top shelf was about even with the abomination's head, and it was onto this that she stepped, pausing in her motions when the wood creaked softly. It was not a sound easily heard over the din or the creature's own roars, but it forced her caution all the same. Giving away her position would crush her advantage, and if they wanted this done quickly, she would need to be hidden and take advantage of the distraction that the Sataareth and the Saarebas were bound to provide.
The archer's knife slid noiselessly from its sheath, and Amalia perched herself on the edge of the wooden slat, waiting for her opportunity.
“This is why we are persecuted!” Aurora barked. However defiant she may have sounded, deep within the pit of her stomach, she was afraid. That Abomination in front of her was a very real reminder of what she would become if she ever faltered or her willpower lagged even briefly. For her, it was like she staring right into a twisted mirror. It made her sick to see what she might become one day. She didn’t want to fight this thing. Sure, she had seen abominations before, but she never liked them. They all made her feel the same way. Afraid, weak, and sick. Now she had to kill this thing, she just had to. Both for Feynriel and for the mage. She just couldn’t let the poor mage suffer like that.
Nostariel’s words and Amalia’s vanishing brought her back into the realm of reality and out of the realms of what-ifs and what-mights. Undead behind and an Abomination in front. They had to kill the unfortunate beast before they were overrun and snuffed out… Else she may end up like the creature in front of them. She shuddered but pushed it out of her mind. Now was not the time to dwell on such weakness, now was the time to act.
With quivering hands, Aurora once again dipped into the fade, though now with a bit of apprehension. An icy haze engulfed her hands as she readied her spell. She drew back her hands on either side of her and then suddenly pushed forward with both as if earnestly pushing the wall of ice at the Abomination. The Winter's Grasp barreled towards the Abomination and struck, slowing the creature down and causing icicles to form across the creature's body. It was a temporary thing, and it wouldn't be long before it broke out of the ice.
As she coiled her hands in wait for her next spell, tears ran down the corners of her eyes. "Not all of us are like this... Not all of us..." she murmured. Was she telling that to her companions... Or to herself?
Ithilian certainly didn't care for the human mage's murmuring, and he certainly wasn't going to have a debate with himself about the dangers of magic or what this situation signified. To him, it was a threat to be dealt with, nothing more. The shemlen had given in, lowered her guard, allowed the demon to take control of her. What was done was done. She was gone, and this abomination was her new form. And with Nostariel volunteering to hold off the undead on her own, with Amalia disappearing into stealth, and Aurora being physically inferior as she was, it fell to Ithilian to take this thing head on. They needed to work together to bring it down, and it that meant Ithilian had to face its claws, so be it. Nostariel had proven her capability as a healer. Perhaps she would need to demonstrate it once again in a moment.
He drew his knives, steeling himself for the briefest of moments before charging. He had never actually fought one of these creatures before, but surely they were not immune to mundane attacks? There was only one way to find out at present. He sprinted forward and leaped with a roar, his blades backwards in his hands and raised above his head. The abomination burst from Aurora's ice an instant before Ithilian's attack landed. He plunged both blades into the creature's back, the weapons sinking into corrupted flesh right up to the hilt, but the abomination had made attacks of its own, its knifelike claws stabbing into Ithilian's chest on both sides, dangerously close to the heart.
All became pain and chaos. The abomination had him lifted into the air and abruptly slammed up against the wall, his feet perhaps a foot off the ground. In such close proximity to each other, any of Aurora's spells would have hit them both. He reacted with instinct, lifting his feet up to the abomination's chest, and pushing with all the force he could muster. With a terrible shredding sound, the knives ripped free from the creature's back by carving their way out, and the abomination's claws retracted out of his chest, sending him sliding down the wall to a sitting position, leaving a smear of blood along the way. The abomination stumbled backwards into the center of the room, wounded, but not dead, and there was little Ithilian could do but sit on the ground and try to breathe, which was proving remarkably difficult.
Amalia's breath left her in a muted hiss when Ithilian launched himself at the abomination. From her vantage point, she could tell that it would likely end well for neither combatant, and furthermore, the proximity was such that either of the saarebas launching a spell was just as likely to kill the elf as it was to end the abomination. Still, she could not act too soon, lest she spoil what little advantage she had been able to gain by dent of silence and precision. Her eyes narrowed and her weight shifted in her crouch, from her forefoot to the one bracing her from behind. If she were visible, she even so would not have seemed so real, more like the most lifelike of carvings in stone, apparently unmoved even by the stirring of breaths.
Ithilian hit the wall, and that was as much a signal as anything. Perfectly tactical or not, if she refused to act now, he would die, and while that was technically no concern of hers, the baseline will she possessed was that others survive where they might, and so she leapt, her hard stare never leaving the abomination as her body twisted midair to hit where she intended. She was not incredibly strong, and when training against her kossith comrades, she had learned to compensate for that. Height and the resultant force of gravity were a particularly useful way to do this.
Her feet, together and knees locked, collided with the abomination's shoulder, and Amalia kicked off as though the creature were just one more platform, bouncing a bit back into the air and refocusing, this time striking with the dagger she'd acquired, unsure how needles would puncture skin not of ordinary consistency. An experiment for another time. A blade, as she'd already observed, bit deep, and hers slid smoothly into the opposite shoulder, her body weight serving to drag it further down, parting flesh like roughened leather, crisscrossing with one of the wounds the Dalish man had carved. The abomination cried out, as though many voices converged in a single syllable, and gave a great heave, bucking the now knife-less Amalia off. Without enough time to land on her feet, the Qunari tucked into a roll, hitting the ground safely but with more force than she'd anticipated, and she kept right on rolling until she was unceremoniously smashed into the same wall the elf presently occupied.
Red and black dots fought for dominance in her field of vision as she struggled to inhale. By the Qun, that thing had better be dead now or within a few seconds, because otherwise she was going to have to stand up again, and that was going to be difficult. At last, she managed a shuddering inhale, coughing several times as the dust stirred up by her slightly-undignified crash filled her lungs, and she braced herself against the stone with both forearms, pressing her back to the cool surface as she gathered shaking legs beneath her. She'd be a mess of mottled bruises in the days to follow, and the telltale twinge in her ankle was probably a break. Maybe just a sprain, but given the pain involved, that was unlikely.
The first two undead fell under Nostariel's magical onslaught, but she didn't have time to bother being relieved about that, because there were about a dozen more at various stages of 'on the way.' In stepping forward to launch a cone of cold at the first wave of melee fighters, she inadvertently exposed herself to a tricky flank attack from one of the three archers most distant from her, and the twang of a bowstring was the only warning she received before the head of an arrow buried itself in her left thigh, causing her to gasp sharply and nearly drop her staff in the process. Swallowing past the lump still in her throat, she decided to leave the arrow be for the moment, lest removing it cause her to bleed far too much before she could find the time to treat it.
Stepping back so that the doorframe and angle offered her temporary protection from more projectiles, Nostariel tried not to panic when the undead broke through her ice, continuing their shambling march to her location. Biting her lip, the Warden knew she needed something bigger, and quickly, so she sank into that peculiar mindspace that related to her magic and calmed her haggard breaths, drawing upon a wellspring of flame somewhere in the Fade to summon large globes of it into the sky above her enemies. The first crash of the firestorm missed, but the second impacted a corpse dead-on, the creature flailing helplessly as it was inexorably cremated. Ashes we were, and ashes we will become. She was not by any means a devotee of the Chantry, but that line had always held a particular kind of truth when stacked beside the events of her life.
For now, the corpses were delayed enough that she could turn her attention to the battle raging inside the small room. Thus far, the abomination had been distracted enough that Nostariel had not taken any spells or claws to the back, which she considered to be a good sign, but some of the things she'd been hearing...
Nostariel chanced a glance and murmured something unintelligible, blue irises rimmed with pristine sclera and her eyes grew wide with shock. Ithilian appeared to be struggling to breathe against the far wall, and Amalia was just now rising to trembling feet, looking more dazed than the sharp-eyed woman she'd been before. This left Aurora alone against the heavily-injured but still moving Abomination, and something that sounded suspiciously like a string of Starkhaven oaths tumbled over the Warden's tongue. Without another thought, she gripped the arrow still in her leg and wrenched, unable to prevent the jagged groan that accompanied it. Switching tactics, she pulled the healing energy from the Fade spirits with as much speed as she was able, pushing it outward to encompass the whole group. Her leg wound stopped bleeding and closed seamlessly, but without further treatment, she'd be limping for a while.
Aurora's allies were being thrown about like ragdolls from the onslaught of the fade beast. Her ice spell did little to even phase the Abomination, much less even slow it down. It even seemed to shrug off Ithilian's rage fueled slashes before picking him up with it's razor-like claws and slamming him against the stone wall. Aurora could not attack for fear of hitting both the abomination and Ithilian. The fade around her hands weakened as she began to feel more and more helpless.
Next to attack was Amalia, flying from the shelf across the room. While her acrobatics were impressive, the abomination bucked her right off and she too hit the stone wall hard. The roar the abomination gave caused Aurora to step back, frightened and hesitant. A groan behind her indicated that Nostariel too was wounded. They were being crushed and if the abomination didn't fall soon, they would all meet their end at the claws of the fade beast. If it was to fall it would be up to her. What could she do to this creature that the others could not? How could she hope to vanquish her own nightmare given flesh? She was weak before them... And weakness in a mage invited disaster. No. She could not be weak. For the price of weakness lumbered right in front of her. She could not afford the weakness, she could not prove the templars right for locking mages up. If she wanted to truly be free, then she had to have the strength to make it so.
She shut her mouth tight and set her jaw. She had to defeat this beast, else they would all perish. The fade around her hands strengthened again as she balled them into fists, ready to face the beast. For the second time, she charged forward, magic gathering around her hands. The abomination was ready for her, waiting to plunge it's claws into her neck. Then Aurora jumped into the air, right hand drew back in a heavy fist of stone. However, the abomination caught her in mid-air, driving it's claws deep into her back. It would snap her in half if she tarried. So with a cry of pain she crashed down with her fist and with a heavy stone burst, drove then beast into the ground.
Still, the abomination lived, prone on the ground with Aurora sitting on it's chest. Without thinking, she drew back her left hand, now encased in a blade of ice and plunged it into the beast's face once, twice, and then she hesitated before burying it for the third time in the beast's face. Panting heavily and with an excruciating pain in her lower back, she allowed the bloody ice around her hand to fade away, leaving her victorious over the creature.