There was still no triumphant cry booming like the godling's thunder in her ears and with every bit deeper she tore into the black ichor of its blood, she imagined Cain's grave dug in it. Was even this grand enough a coffin for him? Likely not. At least his flag would make a fitting shroud for the bard. She hooked her hands in deep, curving beneath a band of muscle and felt the creature shriek and writhe as her hands curled back toward her own face. A give in the flesh and the final smattering of muscle and tendon was hooked over the insides of her elbows, trapped and pulled away bit by bit from the spine it was to protect and steel and flex. The fourfold wings flared up in a helpless effort to dislodge her. There was no escape. She was the jaws of the kangals, the coils of the snakes, the reckoning and humbling of the divine. A helpless little laugh skittered from her lungs and up her throat as she pulled herself up to her feet, knees straining as the tendonmusclemeat grew taut. And snapped. She reeled back and grasped at bundles of the thick and ruffled feathers, catching herself before the near seizure grasped the deva. It twisted like a snake's death dance. Like the head was cut off but the muscles remained dumb and dim and unaware of their fate. The sound of its agony was deafening and as soon as the pitch waned and wove into the whine of the winds below, there arrived her cavalier chevalier in ivory and crimson and magenta. The answering laugh as he returned to the battlefield that was their prey was just as feral as she felt. The wind whipped away the storm bird's thick and steaming blood as the cold fought to bite into her skin. It was nothing compared to the burning of its blood, the heat of lightning under skin, or the mana that seemed to eat her hunting partner alive in an arcane feast. Too cold soon enough. She should know better than to underestimate the natural force that raged independent of the deified avian. The furious pain of the flagpole driven into where she'd dug into it had sapped its ability to carry on. It was failing. Weak. Trembling. Screaming distraught and disbelieving. The stars above were cold and burning and unmoved. They had already chosen their champion, with his voice caught somewhere between the boom of cannon fire and the lilting of a symphony. @Cain Darlite had little left to give. He handed the slaying of a more-than-mortal to her and trusted it would be done because that was the way this bard's tale would have to end. Fool. The smell of ozone drove her forward against the beating of the sleet. Gwyn curled her hands like talons around Cain's own clutched to the flagpole and hauled his grip up. The thin bit of meat left clinging to the spine of the creature had no suction to keep it. Ice blue eyes to match the gathering veins of lightning in the storm clouds around them gleamed back through the chaos with a furious glee. She pulled up his hands to raise twinned with her own, cupping his left palm over the top of the flagpole. Her right palm over the top of his. His right over that. Her left finally to crown it. A surge of power curled through her muscles and she could feel the scales under her skin as, with the pointed power and precision of her martial skills, the muscles contracted. The huntress pulled the Ivory Reminiscence down down down down down. Like an arrow slotted into the eye of the warden. Like a thousand game felled with one to the heart. It went easy and true. It was not made for this so they and it would forge it to be so the way humans demanded all limits shattered. The space between the exposed vertebrae of the Deva gave. The spinal column below cleaved in twain. The world exploded into branching lightning that pulsed toward them before scattering to the winds to which it truly belonged once more. Atop a dead god, they hit the ground.
The three fell and fell and fell, until the Deva of Frozen Lightning, slain by human might, smashed into the snow laden ground. Plumes of white rose as it grinded against the terrain, leaving a devastated trail behind it, but it all stopped with time. Just like the warmth of its pierced heart, like the fury of its godlike magic. It all stopped, leaving naught but the corpse of a divine bird, ravaged by a glorious fight witnessed only by two. Above the two adventurers, the blizzard ceased, frozen flakes falling softly, solemnly in reverence to their vanquished champion. It was kind now. No more howling, no more crackling, no more natural wrath to spend. In consideration to the valor and fury of the Huntress and the Flagbearer, in consideration to the White Winged Storm Dancer, naught but silence and the pounding of the victors’ hearts could be heard. This wasn’t a victory that was accompanied by laughter and jubilation. Wasn’t even a victory that had any real meaning. The world wasn’t saved due to this. The princess wasn’t rescued due to this. The evils of the world weren’t held back due to this. In the grand scheme of things, this was one fight that held an insignificant amount of meaning. But, as Cain flipped onto his back, lying on the cooling corpse of the great bird, he couldn’t help but smile. One bruised hand reached out towards the pale heavens, clenching tightly. A confirmation of his strength. A confirmation that all the time he had invested wasn’t in vain. And though this was an ordinary sight to behold, the fact that he could witness snow falling from the heavens at all was an indication that he was alive. In his hands, the Ivory Reminiscence had crumbled into pieces, the magical instrument incapable of bearing the burden of being used as a weapon. Shards of white stuck to his hands, while the nightscape banner had been blown off into the wind, tossed up as a sacrifice for the bloody miracle they had performed, but this…this was all fine. He let the last pieces go, and they turned into white ash, winter’s whisper flying them off to greener fields. He hadn’t challenged the Storm Dancer solely for the glory, solely for the challenge. Drunk as he was on the theatrical and the bombastic, Cain still had a materialistic reason for coming here. Gradually, he rose and reached out towards the wingtips of the fallen beast for his reward. A long, white feather, unsullied by conflict, light blue on the base. The same feather that was pinned onto Ursa’s hat. He couldn’t bear the burden of her death forever, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t allowed to remember it from time to time, right? It twirled inbetween his fingers, a puff of warm air blowing off the fuzz that clung on, and gently, he threaded it into his hair. “How do I look?” Cain turned to his comrade, a frivolous grin cresting his features, “Pretty fetching, aren’t I?” Indeed, with blood leaking out of his orifices, the pure white feather certainly did stand out from the rest of his mangled outfit. … Yup, he was going to take a longggggg bath after this. @Gwyn ap Herne
It was only the grip she had, moving from Cain's clasped hands to the corpse of the winged tempest, that kept her from being flung from the back of the deva as they hit. That and the thick cover of snow that ate away at the force of the blow, just as it did sound. It threw her to the side as the body pulled strangely. A wing caught on rocky terrain beneath the white coating, the muscle jerking, her footing shifting. She caught herself on her side and rolled to her back as the beast shuddered with the final slide. And then it was still at last. Every swathe of skin, every buried bone, every strand of muscle, every nerve ending throbbed and ached and pulsed with an energy not far from the bite of the lightning still dancing in her mind's eye. Gwyn stared up, blinking the falling snowflakes from her eyes, and watched the stars appear as the storm vanished. The dirge for this beast was quiet. Something to be felt, not heard. A ruffled tuft of feathers brushed at her face as she breathed, coming away from the contact stained. She was covered in the strange blood of the beast. From under her nails, it reached up to her upper arms. It had sunk into the divots of her armor. The cold air made it clear some was splattered across the skin of her bared throat and face as well. She flexed her feet and felt some relief that the leather boots were waterproofed enough to avoid the discomfort of walking in a blood puddle all the way down the mountain. Her ears were still ringing with a droning whine from the shrieking and snapping of electricity and her head swam as she went to move. Black dots matched the white ones of the snow in her vision with a rush of dizzy heat in between her temples. It settled to normalcy as her head finally turned enough to look at @Cain Darlite. The silvery shards of his famed flagpole were lost to the white around them and the huntress found herself almost mourning the iconic symbol and the tool that had helped her more than a time or two. Gwyn supposed even objects died, in a way. It found its rest on the top of a mountain, in the embrace of a blizzard, buried in the spine of a demigod. It slew a force of nature in the hands of mortals. "Sorry about your- Well. It did good. You did good, you crazy bastard." Her words were little more than a whisper. There was something other in the air and it wasn't her's to ruin. She realized what exactly that was when he rose and claimed his prize. Her throat threatened to close for a moment. The burning heat of the memory made all the worse for the cold in the air to match what had followed. Gwyn pulled herself to her feet and took the moment to really take in the sight and the magnitude of the casual question he asked. "Like you're worth your weight in gold," she replied and snorted with a resigned sort of amusement. She'd be proud to see how hard he'd come, Gwyn thought. If she knew anything about the spitfire remnant Cain came here chasing a ghost of. Or she'd give him hell for jumping off a cliff onto the back of a god without her. Preferably to test some ridiculous contraption more likely to kill them than the deva. "Come on. We got a hell of a hike back down." Her lips twisted for a moment in thought before she worked up a smile. "Race you?" She didn't wait for an answer, but at the same time... her pace wouldn't be getting beyond a leisurely jog until she got a solid eight hours and a potion or two. And a meal. She'd have to visit Kyupin and tell her all about it. Or she'd give him hell for jumping off a cliff- Tell her about most of it, maybe.
EpilogueLong after the trespassers had left its territory, the Deva of Frozen Lightning flew back, its beak stained with the bracken blood of its great foes. Flew back to an empty nest, a home scorched by mortal magic and stained by the blood of its descendant, its fledgling. It stopped. It stayed. It laid its wings against the peaks, tracing the last marks of its beloved, before folding its serpentine neck against its breast. And for seven days and seven nights, a storm unlike any other ravaged the Hylands as the Deva mourned for its loss, turning the winterscape into one of icy purgatory, lashing out at the very world that conspired to take a life of its own. On the morning of the eighth, as the sun cast unyielding resplendence over the world, its white wings opened up, a shadow consuming the mountain range entirely. With a single beat, it grazed the boundary of space. With a single beat, it was hunting once more.
