*COMPLETE* Allayria promised to do what it takes to stop the Jarles, to make the ugly decision. She thinks, at last, she understands what the dynast meant. The lesson earned from the top of that lonely cliff and given the dark murky water below.
It...
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She's fucking gone.
It shakes in his fingers, trembles in the tap-tap of his shoes. She's gone.
She is several people now. Allayria, who's up somewhere in this hollow city of nightmares. Dost, who's somewhere back in that awful tundra, lying in pieces. Tara, who he left behind with those things—but he couldn't wait, when he found them, when he reached the platform he had to run, had to drive her off...
And even she, that ghostly face in front of him, is fucking gone.
Isi.
They are on the Climb of Tears, caught somewhere between the chaos and the deathly quiet, two sides of a familial coin, circling each other. Her face is a ruin—she, someone, has pulled out all the metal trinkets, all the sutured steel, and it should make her more human, more like Isi, but she's not. God, she's not.
"Finally come home, have we, brother?" his sister sneers, glinting and gleaming in silver and blood, dark flecks of blood, not just from her, not just from all those little pieces—
He grips his stone sword tighter, settling down into position, into pose. He's going to win this time, he's going to beat her. He has to: he has to get to Allayria.
Isi swings, viper-quick, and Lei throws his sword up, blocking, pushing back, only to have to leap back, dodging the follow up which slices through the air inches from his abdomen.
She's pacing around him on this narrow path, carefully, quickly, moving in that strange, animal way like before, like she's listening to a beat he can't hear. That lizard part of his brain is telling him danger, danger, danger, it's telling him she's coiled, ready to strike again—
But there it is, amongst the heat and the dust: a tiny falter, a small misstep. Not enough to derail her, but enough to make a gap, an opening in her armor, in that deadly intent. It's like a limp, like she's injured.
The metal means something, he thinks, stepping carefully back, up, further along the path, gaze flickering to each hole, each wound. Why is the metal gone?
"Isi," he asks, "are you alright?"
Her eyes widen; she recoils. He thinks for one, brief moment, she looks like his sister. And he understands what that limp is from.
With me gone, there wasn't any buffer anymore, was there? he thinks. No one to keep her distracted, keep her anger at bay.
And it's in his face, what he knows, because he's always been bad at hiding these things from her, and she knows, knows that he knows, and just as the alarm came across her face it fades, leaving something uglier in its path.
"Never felt better," she hisses and she lunges.
A block, a lurch, a swing. Her footing might be uneven, but her swipes are hard, sure. The question hasn't changed that, though it's shut her up some.
