Difference between revisions of "GoldenCat/LunarRevenge"

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Luna's Revenge, Shadow's Fall

The Tamer of Burning Mares has fallen.

Ghostly nightmares, burning with fear, gallop out of where he burns in the fires of innocence and denied fear, a red-iron armor all that is left of the Second Circle, as the fears of all consumed within the Boil are let loose, and the water in the streets once again clears... for there is none to fear his own reflection any more, only the night-patch of the pillar of night where Niremar used to be.... fading on the wind, as the gallops of the ghostly nightmares seem farther and farther away...

Iron Shades: They stand in a circle around the ladies, eight cloaked corpses masked in quicksilver and chalcedony, shining under the fire as a mockery to the Princes of the Earth. Figures of quicksilver shadows, slashing blades on their hands, four move in unison.

As one, they strike at Kanti, Simma, and Fiona.
As one, they are stopped by the shining mandala of the field that appears between them.
Sending ripples that reveal its magical colors as the impact waves around it...
Never touching the ladies inside.

Outside, the buildings burn, smoke and fire filling the air and leaving nothing else. Only a building to their right is still standing, all in front of them and to their left burned where Niremar passed, or where he has been thrown in. The fire and smoke stop within Opals ward where Fionas cold mist stands, keeping it cool within the ever-growing inferno.

All of the Shades around the ladies distance themselves, and four of them throw their knives... stopping at the mists, as the cold mists bloom into flowers, one on each knife, as they fall harmlessly to the ground, knives and petals of ice...

Leaving the ladies safe in there, sheltered from death and flames by the power of the motherly Colossus that is Opal...

Fiona: “Kanti!”

Through the mists, Fiona ran. She ran to Kanti, going through the flames around the Dragon-Blooded, holding her from behind, touching her wounds... the cuts across her torso, flesh cut and bleeding from the end of Niremars red-iron claws. Touching the opening in flesh, and taking her hand out, covered in red...

Kanti: Kanti winces as Fiona touches many of the streaming wounds down her body, the flames lapping around her arcing over Fiona's skin.

"I ... I'm fine Fiona. Get back now ... please ... I don't want to burn you!"

She starts to unlimber her bow from it's place on her back, drawing an arrow from her sheath. They were too far to run too.

Fiona: "O... k..."

She steps away, only now feeling the aching in her fingers, so great was her worry before. She steps away, and watches Kanti try to fight even so wounded, even now, when the demon was vanquished, when they should be safe...

And once again curses that that is all she can do.

Exceedingly Sublime Opal: She held her breath, thinking that Kanti looked... so very small as she lay there wounded. It drudged up memories that she did not wish to dwell on at present. Luckily, her expression did not show on the impassive visage of the Warstrider's faceplate, and activated the voice projection system in the cockpit.

"The barrier hedges them out, but it only exists from them. If you have a bow or something to throw, I suggest putting those items to use." Opal's echoed cavernously from inside the gleaming white Warstrider.

Simma Siray: "Heh--fine with me." Simma smirks at Opal's comment. She glances at Kanti, somewhat worriedly, but not overly so. Given the blows she was raining on that demon bastard, she oughta have more tricks up her sleeves. And it couldn't be much worse than what she herself had taken. Damn -- it hurt like a bitch. But pain was but fuel for her vindictive rage.

The Wild Child brandishes her fans of knives -- three clenched between the fingers of either hand. A flick of her chin and Prick reappears from beside Niremar's cold, dead body (got whatcha deserved, fucker! ), gripped firmly between her teeth once more. She gauges the distance between herself and the shades with a wary squint, her calves tensing as she bounces on the balls of her feet.

Exceedingly Sublime Opal: Opal dips down and siezes hold of a large chunk of statue of the Smiling Lover, and hurls it with all the augmented strength the suit she wears could place behind it. Though she was not skilled in such things, she figured she could at least provide some confusion amounst the waiting aggressors until Selina and Fiona's magics could enter the fray.

She moved with amazing speed and grace dispite the bulk of the warstrider, and with one fluid motion, hurled a broken piece of the fallen statue at one of the snarling Nemmessaries.

Iron Shades: The Shade seems to blur in ghostly images amidst the smoke, not being where Opal thought he would be.... avoiding the statue, that goes through the flaming rubble, crashing on a smaller house behind it....

Kanti: Kanti finishes drawing the bow, the wounds on her arms caused by the Dark An-...Nerimar slowing her, the blood trails flowing down her arms, fresh crimson flowing into the flowers carved into the bow.

She knocks an leafshaped arrow from her quiver, drawing back the bow, concentrating on the ghost that happened to be in front of her, then when the time is right, the smoke drifting out of the way to clear a path through to the ghost-shaped silloutte of flowers, she lets it fly with calm precision, drawing another and sending it down the same path through the ash, the speed of the arrows pulling the smoke along with them, twin spirals breaking over the ghost as the arrows hit.

Iron Shades: As one, they move once again.
Two of them, and four daggers thrown in the shield... availing them nothing.
As one, the hunters continue around them, circling them...

• Simma Siray takes several running steps, vaulting herself atop a large chunk of rubble. With hardly a whuff of pain, she launches herself clear into the air, looming towards the shadow that Kanti just attempted to strike. Briefly, winglessly, she soars -- her small, wiry frame suspended in air, her legs splayed and her arms flinging outward with an explosive snap of air as she sends two knives flying. They cut through the smoke like whirlwinds in miniature, one towards Kanti's target, the other towards the shadow glowering next to it.
  
  As the twin blades hurtle downwards, Simma brings her arms and legs close, compacting into a blur of tucked limbs, blood-stained leather and spiky, short-cropped blonde hair. She stretches out for the landing -- hitting the ground hands first, the elbows bent to absorb the impact, flipping herself backwards once, twice, somersaulting hands to feet before she lands somewhat shakily, but nonetheless upright.
  
  Her boots hit the pavement with a final, staccato tap. The knives meet their marks with simultaneous precision before she can even lift her heaving shoulders to look.

Exceedingly Sublime Opal: She considers the fast flying daggers for a moment, and how the curling whirlwind diffused and rippled the air in their wake. An idea strikes her then, and she smiled dispite herself. She took a long step toward a trio of poles, the reminants of a tattered canopy still clinging defiantly to them. These, she picks up swiftly, and spreads with her huge hands. With waving, flapping motions of the odd fan, she uses her suits augmented strength to cause a gust of winds, though not powerful to knock anything over, it wasn't aimed at the attackers... but the smoke that obscured them.

Simma Siray: He was hurt, but oh, he would be bleeding by the time she was through with him. As the smoke cleared, no more ghostly images. No more nothing but the sight of the bastards filled with nails.

More of the knives picked from the ground leave her hand... as she explodes in action, hurling two with each hand, faster than she could possibly be, more precise than archers. One to the heart, one to the head, on of two of them. And a moment to sigh that there was nothing to gain hitting a dead man's crotch.

Iron Shades: Without their cover, the Shades try to dodge, trailing ghostly images around themselves, confounding the strikes... but with much less certainty than before.

Kanti: Kanti watches as the ghost easily flows away from her pair of arrows, watches the other ghosts throw their daggers into the shimmering frost that surrounds them.

And this time she waits.
Waits until the goddess throws her arrows, distracting.
Waits until they're vulnerable.

Then she lets fly, another pair of arrows cutting through the clearing smoke silently, both heading for the field of white irises that had just attacked the wall of frost, bringing lethe with them.

Iron Shades: The Shade falls to the ground, shining in pure Viridian light... moving on, towards the wheel of reincarnation. There is no scream, there is no violence.

And then, the four appear.
Out of the smoke, four Shades, their cloaks darker.
The Circle of the Void, fully armored, essence pulsing on their armors.

Their leader looks up, seeing Avians anima-bird clinging to an Abyssal... who was certainly being cut in ribbons by this time. He looks down... and sees one of them die.

Only eleven now. This would not stand.

”Stopped by a mere barrier? Shadowlands, Labyrinth... I would have expected more of you. You who fell Terrestrials and Lunars, stopped by such a simple piece of magic?”

The leader readies a bow of silver and Black Jade. And an arrow, an arrow covered with pulsing violet handwriting.

Inside a Jade mask, his eyes shine at the girls. “Sesus Kanti. Simma Siray. And Fiona, right? I am Sain, the killer of magic. This arrow was done by one who understands that all that is, will end. Even Essence. With it, I commend your souls to the void.”

The arrow is fired. On its wake, a spiral of violet words on Old Realm, a spiral of pulsing words in the air... going towards the girls. Breaking the ward, in a multitude of shining glass that fills the air... breaking the mists, in the void of its passing, making it spiral into the void, and end... just like that. Leaving them open, and vulnerable, to the other seven, as the arrow falls right in the middle of their circle.

Sain makes a simple gesture.

”Kill them all.”

Kanti: Kanti looked up at the leader of the shades as he arrived, at the arrow in his hands, and she knew then that she would die. The barrier would fall and the ghosts would swarm over her, and all would be lost.

She dropped the bow, and set her wounded body into a defiant pose, spear held aloft.

I'm sorry Mistress, I'm sorry that I won't get to see you again.
I'm sorry Mistress, I'm sorry that I hated you.
I'm sorry Mistress, that I failed you

Kanti holds her spear aloft and prepares to die that maybe, just maybe Fiona could live.

Seventh Moon: It had been a bath house. Now, it was rubble.

Lost in lingering smoke, something rose from the shattered bones of the pleasure house. A phoenix on stunted bronze wings, arching into the air. Crossing sun and sky, it's shadow dot of darkness sweeping across the ground and then begins to grow larger, grow darker. The dot became a circle around one of the Iron Shades and a gleaming flash of white and gold burst through the screen of smoke, dragging tendrils of gray with it as it dove hawk like towards the undead creature...

The bath tub smashed into the Shade's body and crushed it beneath it. Rolling and tumbling, scarcely slowly, it scrapped along the battered street to leave a streak of limbs and knives and oozing bits of darkness in it's wake before bouncing into the store front of a hash house.

Standing on top of the caved in ruins of yet another piece of home, Moon dusted his hands off on his pants as he stared at the leader of the Shades. He remembered these things. His body did, places where knives had torn him apart, tried to steal his soul, throbbed on his skin. The wounded hound was wrestling to it's feet within him, foaming at the mouth, hungry for them. Moon licked his lips as well.

"You fuckers talk too much." He grunted finally.

Exceedingly Sublime Opal: She sighed a bit at this. She shook her head, a motion mimicked by the helmed section of the warstrider, and considered against the best course. And then Moon came, glorious as the new risen moon as he rushed them. She was no match for the Archer, but maybe... she could make Moon more than a match.

Iron Shades: The Shades pick his blades, as Moon comes on sight, his Pack following suit...

”So... you survived. We should have known.”
”You Lunars are hard to kill.”

The swords of three get ready for a duel, three others readying knives for Simma and Kanti.

“We will finish the job we begun on the Spire, Lunar.”

Kanti: And then Moon arrived and Kanti almost trembled with relief.
Moon was here.
They would not die.
The dead would pass on.

Kanti readied herself to dance.

Exceedingly Sublime Opal: She eyed the archer, and knew him for a creature of darkness even without his monologue. She splayed her hand toward him, a motion mimicked by the oversized gaunlet, and a corona of power arumpted from the armor appendage. Her hand came down, then, level with the ground. The multihued lights of the radiance were reflected off the gleaming white jade of the armor, and with an almost casual gesture, sent the wave of eldritch force toward him.

• Sain felt it all around him, freezing his essence, tangling his souls... and sighed.
  
  No, this would not be easy.

Kanti: Kanti sees the the three shades begins their dance toward her and she moves herself, blood still flowing from the wounds on her arms and chest, moves not for the ghosts attacking her, but for those heading for the goddess.

Her footsteps bring with them a flurry of irises, her spear leaving arcs of flame and incense swirling behind it's blade, as she dances through the rubble.

Three times the spear moves.
Three times it strikes.
Three ghosts know lethe.

Seventh Moon: Moon winced, raising a hand against the sudden flash of light from the armored giant, watching through his fingers as the rainbow strand wrapped around the talky dead thing. Other senses were at work else where though, taking in what he hadn't been able to before. Ears, straining to hear the sounds around him over the constant roar of flame and distant screaming. Nostrils flaring as he breathed in the scents. Smoke, ash, rot, blood dragon blood. Even having never tasted it on the wind before, part of him instinctively knew that sharp metallic scent.

The kid had been hurt.

The light faded. Moon's hand fell. And a roar rose up behind him to deafen the fire. Dark bodies swarmed over the top of the rubble and came sliding and whooping into the street, brandishing borrowed blades and heavy clubs. The Pack moved around Moon, over him, with him as he started sliding down the rubble beside his gang. Running with eyes filled with hateful defiance towards two of the Shades heading towards Kanti and Simma, Moon muted himself, sliding back until he was little more than just another faceless punk in the crowd, swarming without pause past the two undead creatures that had been intent on the Lunar.

Deep in his throat, Moon let out a guttural snarl that tightened into a bark and the Pack shifted on cue. Their chatter was almost jubilant, animal-yips and howls filling the air. It was an old game now and they knew the rules better than the shit they'd been stuck in.

Opening their ranks and parting around the dead creatures, encircling them. No one rushed in, dancing around the Shades instead. Heckling and picking, feinting in and back in choreographed chaos that always came in where the creatures weren't looking.

Keeping them boxed in, the Pack slowly herded it away from the cluster of girls. And Moon was among them, taking his turn rushing into the circles the Pack had formed around the Shades, darting in crash his fists against their heads or their backs, hoping back into the swirling mob of punks before he could be singled out.

Simma Siray: The Shades are hurt, one disoriented, the other, hurt, badly, falling down with the violence of the punch, that cracks its mask.

Simma watches Kanti dance. Beautiful...

Not using any more of the makeshift knives now, she picks Prick, and throws to the heart of the one who evaded Kanti. Prick gathered the dust as it darted towards him, bathing the Shade with dirt and ashes from the ground, hiding the knife.

The streets had never been a fair player.

• The remaining Shades move... four of them left.
  
  Suddenly, they were outmatched.
  
  But they fought with abandon...for their bodies would live on.
  
  For none but its leaders had understood Kanti yet...
  
  The one with a sword gets up, slashing at where he sees Moon, trying to find him amidst the Pack, hitting on the first spot of silver he encounters...
  
  Another moves back, towards his masters, as fast as he can, letting out essence-drinking knives towards Simma...
  
  And the other two, still dodging, try to go the same way, to fall back...

• Simma Siray picks Prick just in time, turning around to bat the incoming knives away, moving on the last moment, when no one could even believe she'd move...

Seventh Moon: As the blade thrusts inward, Moon lets it come, a gauntleted hand reaching up to catch the sword. Gripping it tightly, he lets the dead thing follow through on it's thrust, twisting out of the swords path and yanking forward on the blade, tugging the Shade off balance. As the Shade falls forward, Moon shoves back on the blade, slamming the hilt into it's masked face.

Kinny: "Hey, Simms!" Out of the crowd, keeping Moon's back, Kinny grins at the goddess before turning back to the task at hand. "Rough night, huh?"

Je jumps over the Shade who dared to slash at his friends, at his alpha, Striking at the Shade's stomach and then at his face, taking full advantage of an open defense... holding to the club with both hands, to crush anyone who would dare to do that. "Nobody. Hurts. My. Pal."

And in his violence, the mace went through his stomach, past the mask, throwing the Nemessary hard on the ground, the body limp.

"Gah, wimp. Those guys gave you a hard time, man?"

Seventh Moon: "Bite me asshole," Moon shot back with a grin, tugging the sword from the shallow wound it had cut in his chest and throwing it on the ground. "Next time we'll let ya fight a couple of 'um alone and you can tell us all about how easy it was when we figure out how ta make your corpse talk."

Iron Shades: Sian looks at them. Only three of his' were standing now.
Soon, their ghosts could turn the tide... soon.
But now, he had to dispose of the important ones. The fallen god wanted Simma. And Sian would have Kanti dead.

"Achas, to the Goddess. Finish her off. Foras, kill the Lunar. Siang, strike the Dragoness first. Then the Sorceress."

With those words, they flew.

Towards Simma, Achas jumped high in the air, crackling with essence. He exploded in wings of pure power, a sphere of pale white energy on his hand as it descended towards Simma with all the force of the Underworld's Sun behind it... and hit the air.

For on the last moment, Simma left material shape.

Siang jumped towards Kanti was well, vicious claws of shadows appearing on his hands as he ran owards the terrestrial... and out of the way for Sian.

Sian, who moved in a blur. Wailing faces and crying voices appeared around him, a miasma of all he had ever killed.

And from it, came four arrows, moving with a nightmarish speed that seemed to bend time towards Kanti...

Iron Shades: Foras disappeared then.

He became darkness.
Jumping out, impossibly fast, as but a streak of dark liquid, jumping from shadow to shadow, wailing faces appearing around the liquid shadow... too fast for any eye to follow, and then, behind Moon, arms coming out of the shadow-liquid, raising a daiklave then, going for the kill.

Hanna: "Moon!"

Hannah screamed, seeing so from the back, running towards him, as everything begun to slow down... to look so... solid. Everything seemed set, she seemed so heavy, the world... the world seemed to stop. But she did not stop to it. She ran, breaking her bandages, her blood flowing free. She had let down Simma Siray, she had let down the Queens, to be in Moon's gang, to be close to him... she would. Not. Let. Him. Die.

She just would.... not. She liked him too much to. Too... much....

Opening her wounds, opening her leg on a sharp piece of rubble, she did not even realise it, as long as she got there.

And she did, placing her arm in front of the sword, expecting to be cut in half.

It was all instinct then.

She did not notice how her arm stopped the blade,
She did not notice how her foot had broken the ground,

She did not notice the pure diamonds appearing all around her,
She didn't notice anything but the fact she would hurt him before she died.

Suffused with diamond dust, the liquid became mud, and then dry, enough for her to punch him away, a dragon of diamond going through him as she did, sending him away.

It would take her a few moments more to understand the exilirating sensation about her was not the feeling of death.

Kanti: Kanti turned to face the ghost as he ran at her, lowering her spear defensively, ready to move it to ward the claws of shadow and darkness, though first, she asks a question.

A question that demands an answer.
A question that requires thought, too much thought.
And when the answer reaches Siang's lips he is past her, and the moment of the attack is gone.

Then the arrows come in and Kanti draws the smoke of the battle to her and around her, swirling up and wrapping her in it's protective embrace, wrapping Siang in it's confusing depths.

Above her the chained garda bird cries triumph.
The smoke clears.
The arrows are in Siang.

Exceedingly Sublime Opal: Oh, now that pissed her off. She wasn't even important enough to attack?!? Resolving to show their unkind attackers just how rude they had been to a now peeved off Mountain Folk Noble incased in a 16 foot tall suit of walking White Jade, she thrust her hand forward toward one of the lesser disciplines, who toward her size was more akin to a doll than a combatant. She squeezed with her armored hand, impossible strength reinforced by a dozen, dozen servoes, animated by her attuned Essence. Dark blood and vile fluids squire from between her immaculate fingers, and she hurls the broken thing at the feet of their leader...

Kanti: Kanti spins away from Sian, turning to follow the ghost who took the attacks meant to pierce her body, thanks to the magic of confusion she wrapped about herself.

She ends the spin in a crouch, and then she leaps in a burst of flame, trailing incense behind her, leaving streaks in the vision of the mortals watching her.

She falls on Siang, her robes fluttering about her, the red jade of the spear wrapped in the viridian glow of the cycle, her blows tearing at the ghost below her.

Forcing him away.
Forcing him out.
Forcing him onwards.

Black Avian: Far above....

The bird of razored feathers opens its wings,
Releasing the egg of void it so tenderly caressed.
And as with all births, this one is pain, as the bird screams,
Its head made only of a corpus luminescence and feathers cocking back,
Letting out a wail unlike any living being could ever utter.

From the egg of darkness, comes pure, sheer Void... going through the heart of the bird, where a powerful ghost stands. He stands his ground valiantly, but not for long. And as his essence, power and will have run out... he screams. Crackling darkness touches him, and strips of void fly through the air, from him to the egg of darkness... that opens its wings as the Dark Angel, dragon roaring in full bloom, drinking the stripes from Black Avian... drinking his soul.

The feathers, dipped in shadow and soulsteel, each engraved with a name of a martyr for the Bishops cause unmake to ash, now without the essence of that kept them whole... and the bird of luminescence and feathers become a bird of shadow and ashes...

... and, screaming, it falls.

Over the destroyed houses, snuffing the fires in a vortex of ice-cold void... As black feathers fill the air.

Stripes still flow from him to Selina as he screams, and the birds that made up his body begin to fly away... raitons, crows and ravens, all leaving him, leaving the crater of his fall, forever etched with the symbol of a dark bird.

The ravens that fly out flock around the Dark Angel, perching on her wings, on her gloves... and where Black Avian fell, the vortex of chilling void vanishes, the stripes are all consumed by the dragon, all the birds have flown away and all that is left, is the shadow of a bird on the ground, and the Blue Jade Daiklave, Resplendent Sky, shimmering in its center...

• The Dragon drinks of Avians soul, feeding from his essence and life.
  
  And Selina sees it... like she had never seen upon drinking of a soul. A soul so powerful, so wilful, it would not end like this. Even if it had to exist within Selina... she sees... Avian.
  
  A boy in the streets of Windia, coarse wings and a wry smile.
  A member of the assassins guild, a sigil Selina knew only on story books.
  Exaltation. Discovery. Bastard to a noble family,
  Gifted with something that had skipped all of his parent generation, all the lawful children.
  Lured to it, always remembering the streets.
  Always remembered of them by his true family. Bastard.
  Snapping, killing them all in his elemental fury.
  A great asssassin from Windia of before, a contract on the Silver Angels head... his one loss.
  Running from Windia, he met Vicious. Paladin of the Bishop, undead Dragon-Blood.
  The most charismatic man he had ever known, and he pledged allegiance to him. He fought in his crusades...
  And to the Syndics of Whitewall, over the body of one of them, lost his life.
  
  In death, he became even more powerful than in life.
  For such was his goal, the goal of his fallen prophet, to persist, forever, to show heaven their existences would not be denied by the wheel.
  Selina sees how he organized the Iron Shades, looking for the strongest ghosts he could, most of them former terrestrials, dispossessed due to the Immaculate Order... organizing them, training them, all clad in Jade, all ready for it. Four for the Shadowlands, Four for the Labyrinth, Four for the Void, just like his colleagues in the open part of the Dead Hand. Making them one of the best assassin elites of the Underworld.
  
  After all that work... surpassed so quickly by the Deathknights.
  Hating. Meeting the Dark Angel, the new great assassin of Windia...
  Hating. Throwing the Windian guard on the Hierophant. Hating.
  Meeting the Parishioner, having to work with him for his cause. To meet the Dark Angel. To kill the Dark Angel.
  Meeting Kodak, fallen god of the Boil. Promising to help him.
  His Shades, helping him break into the Snow Owl, killing Iron Tears guard... seizing... the Smiling Lover.
  
  He watched and waited, for the Dark Angel... to face her , to kill her.
  Waited until she was spent, until after the Parishioners demon.
  Meeting Meeting her, above the Boil...
  
  ... and then, his life was over. And nothing was left, but essence and scattered memories on Selinas mind...

Selina de Windia: It happened the way miss de Windia knew it would happen. The frenzied strikes from his wings rebounded from the almost-scales of her body as she gathered energy for the attack, with such force that sparks sputtered off their blades. Black Avian's daiklave came forward to strike at his enemy, just as she was supposed to be distracted with the flurry of his wing-blades.

But it was the Dark Angel within that trap of soulsteel, the light from the Dark Angel's orb of Void-spawned energy was what back-lit her features, not the energies Black Avian gathered on his sword. Her cataclysmic blast tore out toward her enemy -- through him, around him, past him.

Her vision went white with pain, then black and red with the memories flowing into her as the backlash from her strike and its reply hit her like a hammer, pushing her back a few meters. But she still held her deathgrip on her opponent.

A swath of Selina's armored skin was gone, the nemissary's blade stuck through her stomach, coming out her back. Warnings in her mind, born of past experience, told her to cut and run, find shelter while she healed, but the black energy demanded her attention. It ate her opponent, seconds became months.

Black Avian was very good. He'd made his last gambit a fraction of a second early, but he must have known that he wouldn't get the additional instant he needed to run his weapon through Selina's heart.

He must have known he was meeting the Dark Angel for the last time.

Selina opened her eyes, out-thrust palm still aimed where Avian's head had been, the roaring fury of her attack finally spent, memories dancing in her head like so many whirling devils in the desert she'd beheld so many years ago. The daiklave slid out of her wound, fell to the ground, as the rest of Avian's armory clattered down with it.

The deathknight let herself fall to the cobblestones with a minimal amount of wingbeats, and looked at what was left of her enemies. They seemed...surprised. But defiant. They should have run, but it looked like they were going to try to finish the job at which their commander had failed.

Quicker than thought, Selina wrapped one taloned hand around the skull of the closest, not more than a yard from her, then sent a small bolt of oblivion through the crumbling pieces to vaporize them in a pyre of darkness. Her gaze turned toward the other five -- knowing.

They should have known it was impossible to do what Black Avian couldn't manage. Very few were as good as Black Avian...among them the Dark Angel.

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