guy. (inspirers) wrote in emillion, |
She tried. With his valiant leap, only the edges of her robes were singed. But she could smell charred flesh and burning paper as one of the stacks caught aflame. As the Shell settled over her skin, some small, mystical armor against this unexplained onslaught, she was already casting -- her Blizzara was not the most powerful of her spells, but there were people in the stacks, scholars, mages, guests… She did not cast to attack, only to contain the flames. This little, she had to do before she fled. She attempted to help the synergist along, knowing she hurt him with her touch but unwilling to leave him behind. At the door, she tried to allow other people past her. Containment was the only thought on her mind; this was not the field to engage someone as powerful as Vivian (she was not, she knew, capable of surviving such an engagement alone, though it never occurred to her not to try regardless). Fortunately, Peony wouldn’t go through the effort alone. Guy kept close as they rushed at the doors, considering briefly to himself the odds of their efforts, and those fallen and left behind. He gasped for air, thinking in splintered images of Zacheus, the other inquisitors, his friends. A noise from behind, like a whirlwind, and Guy staggered forward, shoving Peony down to the ground and shielding her with his entire body. It was the only effort left to him, a final act of protection as Vivian went sailing over them, Aerora magics slicing and shredding apart all in the Sage’s path. He felt as the air ripped him apart, like the teeth of wolves, piercing and merciless. Hardly able to move his limbs, running out of breath, he coughed and whispered into Peony’s ear. “Tell Cyclone,” he rasped, exhausted, “when she comes back, tell her I was—” A great blast of air exploded in the hall beyond, and then nothing. She rose, stumbling, from beneath him where he had pinned her, bruised and battered and disheveled, but alive. She could see death in his eyes, blank and glassy -- there was no need to check for a pulse, nothing left to be done. He was gone. In the chaos of people running around them, of the walls now shaking as though the stone itself were alive, she paused a moment, the briefest of moments to close his eyes, to say, “Faram watch over you.” There was nothing else she could do, no more time that she could take. Rising to her feet, steady now in the boots which supported her half a foot above the ground, she ran, too. |