Round 2 Team 3

[Silence Sei]

Team is Alydia Ettermire and Alkor. Round starts at Midnight tonight, CST, and lasts for two weeks. Good luck!

[Alydia Ettermire]

A crimson-coated catburglar crept through the dense underbrush of the Lindequalme. A slip of paper twisted in absent-minded motions of her fingers, listing the man to whom she’d been assigned. Whispered rumors had floated to her ears; the Raiaerans suspected the Fallinese mercenary of perhaps murdering a teammate. In the back of her mind, she could see what the organizers were doing - she was an Alerian elf, an enemy by politics and language. If he walked out of the woods and she did not, then he had served his purpose to them.

Fools.

Alkor Kiljak, wherever he might be, barely existed to Alydia Ettermire as she pressed once more into the festering, sweltering darkness of the Lindequalme. Instead her mind wandered to Rayleigh Aston and Kamikaji Touma. The young human girl was still weak after a close encounter with a Fealote earlier on the trek, and while he was obscure to most of the world, those who knew of the Serpent Tamer knew he would take and discard lives as they suited his whims.

Careless chance had paired the mechanic under Aly’s protection with the conniving Nipponese, and the dark elf couldn’t have liked leaving her charge less. Maybe if she'd just been able to leave Rayleigh with the medics, or send her on her way out of the forest, the thief would not worry so. But she didn't know Kamikaji's endgame, his goal in the forest. So she couldn't gauge just how dire the mechanic's situation was.

Hopefully, the threats and promises she’d offered the mercenary who called himself Kaburagi would make Rayleigh’s life worth preserving. If it wasn’t… Alydia made no idle threats, even if she didn’t like the implications.

Vermillion foliage and gnarled roots clutched and grasped for her as she passed, blood-red mist clung to the ground and rippled around her coat. Her eyes probed the heavy darkness for movement; the druids and seers warned of the dead rising among the trees. Something about that didn’t strike Aly as right. An undead horde was fitting for a newly-awakened necromancer, but a vainglorious witch who fancied herself a god? It was too crude, too unsubtle.

That meant that there was another threat, something more real and perhaps less tangible than reanimated corpses. That thought sent cold blood running down the Alerian thief’s spine and through her limbs. How could she defend against Pode’s real strategems if she didn’t know them?

Enough. I’m not here to kill her. I’m not here to stop anything that will happen from happening. I just need to get some bloodvines and a blood oak from deeper in. Stay alert, remain flexible, accomplish the mission and make sure Rayleigh is all right. And in this brush, if my partner is looking for me, he might not even see me. Not even if I pass him close enough to touch.

The name was Fallinese, and the desert island bred tough, resilient people. He’d either survive on his own merits or fail on his own weaknesses. If Alydia never saw her would-be partner, so much the better, really.

His life was no concern of hers.

[Alkor]

Talk among the Raiaeran folk was that the woman sent ahead of him was some manner of degenerate. Others mentioned she might have been Alerian, an elf that the High Elves would consider a bastard and affront to their own way of life. The concensus seemed to be that they cared little for whether or not Alkor brought her back alive. The swordsman was to clear a path for the druids, with or without help.

It was of no consequence to him. Alkor walked slowly along the path, footprints etched in his memory from before. Podë sent him back from her realm with a task. It bore heavily on his mind, though his expression betrayed little about his thoughts. The first order of business was to make his way back into the forest depths.

Hopefully, he could find his "partner" and make short work of her. At first, he had wondered how many people had to die before the end. Now the answer was plainer than day is from night. The woman was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he had passed her by without noticing, or she was further still in the Red Forest.

Alkor hoped quietly that the forest had taken her, and that she would not be an impediment to his task at all. His bright blue eyes flicked one way, then the other. Above all else, Alkor could not forget that this was all the Witch's game.

If the sorceress had no further use for him, she would turn on him just as quickly as he would on anyone else. The sensation of her consciousness overlapping his own sent a bone chilling ripple down his spine. "Right," he muttered, "she can hear thoughts."

He sensed that Podë was not near, but somehow Alkor was not comforted by that knowledge. Screams of terror and the muffled sounds of combat tore through the brush at strange, erratic intervals. A war was being waged in the foliage, fought on a front unseen. The smell of death wafted across his keen nose, and Alkor grimaced.

"Magic," he vomited the word like a curse, painfully aware of the power that his father had denied to him. "Dark, ancient power. The dead are walking."

Oh, there is much more than that afoot, my dear.

Her voice caused his body to tense. Alkor looked around for the witch, but he saw nothing.

I am quite far from you, Kiljak, she cooed, her voice a gentle whisper in his ear, but really, what is distance?

His walk renewed, and Alkor sneered. Oh, my, Podë sounded shocked, though he felt that she was simply feigning the sentiment. Such a sour face. What have I done, I wonder?

Alkor slid his katana into hand and slowly glanced around. The open grove he stood in was shielded from the elements by a high canopy and hanging vines, the fertile ground mossy and lush. His feet dug into furry green as he surveyed the forest. You are not alone, the Witch confirmed, but it is not the dead who stalk you.

The Elf.

While Podë spoke in riddles, Alkor knew well enough that his alleged partner was somewhere in these woods. Did she intend to harm him? Alkor took a calming breath and banished the thought. If she did, it was no more than he intended for her. The bridge would be spanned when they reached it.

Go forward with my blessing, Kiljak, her voice creaked. Then, something inside of him snapped.

Alkor's world was fire.

[Alydia Ettermire]

Bloodthirsty shrieks and groans sounded through the Lindequalme, resounding eerily through the craggy trees. Each shrill sound sent shivers prickling up Alydia’s spine; she well remembered the sounds of the roaming dead. She hadn’t had so many circling so close in nigh on a decade, and it wasn’t a position she ever wished to be in again. Here I thought this was Xem’zund’s trick.

While some of the horde wouldn’t be able to see her in her crimson camouflage, and while others wouldn’t be able to hear her soundless steps, some would work on scent and some would see her living warmth. If she was not both quick and cautious, she would never again breathe fresh, free air.

I have no intention of dying in this morass.

A wisp of darkness congealed in her hand and hardened into a perfect replica of a robin. It hopped silently from her palm to her shoulder, then fluttered off at a tilt of her hat. Uuthli could fly ahead of her, ready to serve as a distraction if she so needed. How oddly fitting that an assassin’s tool would become a thief’s bodyguard.

Shadows shifted around the thief, weaving ghostly images that twisted into nothingness before she could understand them. The leaves rustled in the hot wind, whispering a thousand tongues with ten thousand susurrations. Again, she couldn’t make out the precise words. The ominous threat of impending death, however, hung hard over her hat.

Is that your game, then? If I refuse to walk into your trap, do you intend to scare me to death? Good luck, monster. If you don’t stop irritating me, I’ll find you in your maze.

Something caught the corner of her eye, a dark, leering face she’d known from the height of his murder spree until his death. Shynt Aubrey, butcher of the Old City - the first one to ask her why she’d never learned better than to hunt him on his own turf.

She whirled to face it, tendrils of darkness coiling around her feet so that she could teleport away. Instead of a bloodthirsty killer, there was only a tree. It had a knotty protrusion that almost resembled a face, but what she had seen had been a figment of her own imagination.

The thief shook her head and continued on. Stay focused.

Up ahead, a bright figure glowed against the shifting shades of the forest. He looked human, but it was hard to guess his race between distance and darkness. All she could really say was that he was alive. There was no telling if he was friend or foe, no way of knowing what his purpose was.

She decided to hang back and observe him. Did he need help? Was he worthy of it? Did he mean harm? Did she need to steal the movement from his limbs? Or should she just leave him alone, none the wiser that he’d ever been spotted?

[Alydia Ettermire]

The human stood stock still for nearly a minute, then hurried deeper into the forest without ever being aware of the thief’s presence. Aly didn’t know if he was her would-be partner or just some other who thought he could do better on his own than with a group in one of the most lethal places on Althanas. His identity was of no importance.

Alone once more, the Alerian strode once more into the brush, leaving no track and making no noise, despite the heavy red foliage that fell in on her like a scarlet shroud. She kept her steps hurried; though the mercenary who called himself Kaburagi had regarded her injured little moth with a sort of uncomfortable familiarity, though he had an excellent reason to protect young Rayleigh, Alydia didn’t trust him with her for long.

Kamikaji believed he was in control. So long as he thought that, if he judged that keeping watch over the half-dead girl was either taking too long for him to enact his plans or that her favor down the line was not worth the favor of the day, he would abandon Rayleigh to the forest or kill her himself. Either way, he would likely disregard the threat she had issued alongside the promise.

It served Aly no purpose if Kaburagi accomplished his goals, nor did it serve her purpose if he didn’t. But if he was even half as intelligent as he believed he was, he would align his priorities with hers.

The young human was arrogant; with his far-off headquarters he could access at a moment’s notice, with his so-called Fraternity at his back, he would likely assume that there was little she could do to foil or harm him if he did not hold to the terms of their agreement. That was not, in fact, true. The Alerian thief could steal into his nation within a few minutes, if she had to, and there was little he valued that she could not steal from him.

One large bloodoak from as deep into the forest as I can go. As many blood vines as I can carry. Rayleigh has maybe as many as four hours of protection from Kamikaji. Maybe as little as two. I should have brought Hyanda; Glorfindel doesn’t need her at present, Operation Shrike won’t be in play for several more weeks, and I could have counted on her to protect lil dalhar.

“Have you left another person to die, Aly?” Decades had passed since last she’d heard the voice that went through her like a sharp sword severing skin. Every nerve tingled, every hair pulled and prickled. The thief turned slowly on her heel to face the source of the voice, and she felt the blood drain from her face and hands.

“Like you left me?”

Alydia shook her head slowly, eyes transfixed on the face before her. “…you’re not real.”

[Alydia Ettermire]

He laid there in the gnarled roots of a bloodoak. His sepia skin was blue and bloated, his ripped jacket and trousers dripped with the polluted brown waters of the Gliath River. Deathly blue glazed over his garnet-red eyes, but they still glared at her accusingly. This corpse knew her crimes, capers real and murders imaginary. He should; he was one of her alleged victims.

“You were cremated two decades ago, your ashes rest on your mother’s mantle. Aonar Kenate, you are not real.”

Alydia took a step forward and the stench of decomposing flesh and toxic water roiled over her, bringing burning bile up her throat. She retched involuntarily, retreating from the overpoweringly noxious smell. If that’s an illusion, it’s a powerful one.

“Aren’t I real?” The lifeless jaw moved and the rotting tongue flapped, creating the sickening impression of a macabre puppet on a wire. “Aren’t I proof that you would destroy everything you built based on one moment of petty rage? Look at you, the sad little orphan who grew up into the perfect detective at the Chief’s hands. The bitch who had everything handed to her and was too proud to claim it. Who bragged she wasn’t perfect enough to take a gift given. Who crushed the man who called her daughter and killed the man who called her partner. Are you not the reason I am dead? Am I not the reason you are exiled?”

The words were a mix of truth, half-truth, and accusation, and they twisted Alydia’s gut in a painful knot.

“Why come to accuse me here, Aonar? Of all places, why in this vicious tangle of trees, when you hated the wilds more than anything?” Her lungs struggled to pull in the heavy, humid air; the comfortable coat on her shoulders may as well have been an iron vice around her ribcage. “You’ve been absent from my nightmares for years, you’ve been absent from this world for decades. Why now?”

The corpse lurched to its feet, popping and bursting rotten gas from a dozen new holes. “Ask yourself, Aly. Ask why I’m here. Ask why you haven’t discovered who killed me, if you are so certain you did not. Ask yourself if you’re afraid to know.”

The thief’s hat tilted slightly. Solve the murder, with how long cold it was? Could it be done? Rather, how badly would she have to cheat to learn? There were rules to the game, rules even she could not break - rules she couldn’t even bend too far. And what would she do if she learned the identity of Aonar’s murderer? Turn them in to the Chief? Demand an apology? Would it be worthwhile, after everything said and done?

Even if she solved the murder and absolved herself, Alydia Ettermire the thief and Alydia Ettermire the detective were very different people. She could not simply turn around and go back to the old life. Her current life was not a coat she could simply don and shed for her own amusement.

A shrill chirp pierced Alydia’s contemplation in time for her to see a pair of bloated hands swipe for her head. Shadow coiled around her and enveloped her, depositing her safely in a dense clump of leaves thirty feet up, where a mechanical robin waited for her. Though Uuthli was just a machine, she gave him a nod; without his watch, she might not have recovered from the zombie’s first blow.

The thing looked around, confused. It looked into the puddle of vomit at its feet, then it looked up. He was not Aonar, and that she’d mistaken this seven days dead human with an Alerian she’d known for half a century seemed impossible. Powerful illusions.

Though its milky eyes saw nothing, it spewed forth a laugh like air through the holes of a dying organ’s bellows. It chilled and mocked her, calling her out on how easily she’d been distracted, on how gullible she was.

Alydia could have taken the soil from beneath the abomination’s feet and buried it so deep that no roots would ever find it and draw nutrients from it. Instead she slinked away, leaving it for some other poor soul.

[Alydia Ettermire]

The Lindequalme trembled and thrashed around Alydia. A thousand thousand things rushed through the canopy above her head, a million more swarmed the forest floor. Some shrieked and screamed with bloodlust, some stoically stalked toward the forest’s edges. All sought the enemies who threatened Pode’s existence.

The Alerian redcoat fled in the relative safety of midlevel branches like a lizard caught in a flash fire. Elven agility let her evade the few risen denizens that thronged through the trees alongside her. A thousand nights running over slick rooftops helped her keep her footing and balance on the treacherously shifting bark beneath her boots. A hundred days in the Plaguelands told her just how desperately she needed to escape the boiling mass of wrath at the Witch’s command. A lone elf would be easy prey for anything that could catch her.

Of course, she reflected during a brief pause to determine the best direction of travel through the tightly-meshed twigs, if any of these things catch me, I probably deserve what happens.

It wasn’t like Pode’s army would stop her politely, ask what her business in the forest was, and let her go when she told them she wasn’t there to kill the Forgotten One. The thief had known the risks before she left Melenahil; that she found herself imperiled came as no surprise. She’d prepared herself for the threats she’d researched - but if she was honest, the Red Witch was being disingenious to bring back the dead.

Uuthli’s danger call trilled to Alydia’s left, thick cobwebs stretched from soil to sky on her right, so her only choice was straight ahead. It was almost completely clear of monsters, which gave her some pause. Few things large enough to be dangerous stalked this level of the branches; either they were too heavy or their prey was. Either too much sunlight or too little reached for the most numerous and deadly monstrosities. That was the whole reason she utilized the branches that barely deigned to hold her; the most dangerous fate she realistically had to worry about was a fifty-foot fall to the seething mist below.

But the stark barrenness of the way ahead left a nagging worry in the back of her mind. Long experience told her that in a world of peril, a path that seemed impossibly safe usually harbored the deepest danger. She didn’t like the path ahead. She couldn’t go right. A tiny robin swooped in from the left, landing on her shoulder with a metallic flutter and dancing anxiously up and down her arm. Whatever lay that way was a non-option.

Alydia bit her lip and sent the robin off again, resuming her run and angling for the clear, however much her instincts screamed against it. She swept past a knobby protrusion on her way, and it launched itself from its hiding spot, all bark and moss and fury, all elbows and knees. It bounded through the branches with the same effortless ease as a monkey, slashing for her head with scythe hands and launching its body to collide with hers.

The thief danced with it, spinning up and around the tree golem, dashing and dodging on teetering twigs. Her hands went to her belt, drawing forth a mythril knife. She had no intention of stabbing the thing; if she let it touch her, she was probably dead. This weapon, the Jester’s Knife, was made more for show than for murder.

The creature slammed its arms at her head and torso again, and Alydia kicked back her heels, sliding beneath it. Her fingers worked over a series of glyphs on the blade’s hilt, triggering the latent magic within. One sheet of shimmering scarlet silk fell between her and her attacker, another one twisted and floated back in the direction from whence they’d come. With her nameless opponent distracted, Alydia let the darkness claim her and deposit her a hundred yards away, well within the clear zone. She crouched, waiting to see which direction the golem went. Crimson-clad in claret cover, maybe it wouldn’t notice her if she stayed still.

But the gnarled head turned toward her, it leaped and scuttled for its target, charging with sightless fury.

Alydia stood to run once more, to evade until she could destroy her pursuer. Which way?!

It stopped suddenly, just at the edge of the clear. It squirmed, it fidgeted, caught between the instinct to kill and the instinct to survive. When it turned and ran from her, Alydia looked around nervously. Trees stood all around her, misshapen, thick and tall. She could see nothing too warm or too cold, and somehow that was not reassuring.

She took a cautious step, then another. The sleeping forest woke up abruptly, with a series of thunderous groans. The branches beneath her feet started moving, and though she scrambled to elude the grasping hands, one closed around her leg with oaken fury, and a woody face turned to regard her.

It gave its prey a jagged, bloodthirsty smile.

[Alydia Ettermire]

Alydia swung upside down, caught in the excrusiating, vice-like grip of a creature that looked like a huge, angry tree. Its eyes gleamed brilliant lime malevolence, its maw opened with a roar like oaks being twisted in a hurricane to reveal an abyss full of stakes. It dangled its prey cruelly, taunting her with the fate it had planned for her.

“I do not have time for this.” Since she’d stepped into the Lindequalme, Alydia had adopted a charge, nearly had said charge die on her watch, abandoned her to the whims of an untrustworthy man, been subjected to powerful illusions that poked into deep wounds in her past, been chased through the most deadly forest in the world, and now she was imprisoned by one of its biggest creatures. “Nor do I have the patience.”

The tree held her away from its face to look at her. Screaming, flailing, weeping, or general panic would have been normal and acceptable responses. Even the forest’s other abominations fled in terror of its appetite. Was the red elf actually something not good to eat?

Darkness wound out from Alydia’s ankle, flickering around the creature’s arm and stretching to its torso with the speed of night. It dug, then dissipated. More shadows swallowed the thief, releasing her further up her attacker’s arm. It tried to swat her, but didn’t so much as twitch. It couldn’t even close its mouth or open its eyes.

“That’s right. I’ve taken your movement.” The thief sat, pulling off her boot so she could inspect her ankle. It throbbed painfully and was already starting to swell, but the delicate bones remained mercifully intact. A wad of bandages appeared in her hands and she started wrapping them around her lower leg and heel, since the forest hadn’t yet learned that there was a void of danger it now needed to fill.

“Since you haven’t crippled me, I will do you the favor of destroying you now, instead of leaving you to wait for the druids and Spellsingers to arrive and purify you. I suppose that you don’t understand a word I’m - mmngh - saying, but on the off chance…”

Her frost blue eyes flicked up to its glowing green facial sockets. “Do you have any idea how much raw energy a creature your size stores in potential kineticisim?” Scarlet lips twisted at the inevitable lack of response; it wasn’t like the tree was able to move the relevant parts, and she didn’t even know if it was intelligent.

With her ankle wrapped, she calmly stood up and started walking away on the swaying boughs, with only the barest hint of a limp to betray her injury. When she was out of the range she deemed hazardous, she held up a hand, two fingers and thumb held together. The fingers snapped, a wad of darkness rippled into and out of existence on the oaken face, returning to it what she'd taken. A report louder than thunder shook the forest, sending everything in the area fleeing. The Alerian regarded the tree creature’s slow collapse with cold disdain, then turned in a swirl of red to continue her journey.

She didn’t manage to take two steps before her path was blocked.

“Not you, as well.”

[Alydia Ettermire]

A tall Raiaeran male stood in front of Alydia. Well-defined muscles rippled up and down his bare arms and torso, where they weren’t rotted off. In life he had tended acres of crops; his physique was no vain attempt to appear tough or attractive. Clumps of bronze hair clung to his scalp, and one weary brown eye regarded her.

In life, they had been friends. He’d shown her that all Raiaerans were not untrustworthy caricatures who could not have seen the sunlight if it didn’t shine into their eyes, she’d provided him with an extended family who had taken in his wife and children during the Corpse War. She had braved Raiaera during the Corpse War to try to rescue him and two others of her organization from Eluriand when it was under siege.

All three had been alive when she reached the one-time capital city. Only two had survived the perilous flight back to Nenaebreth. She’d delivered news of his death to his widow and orphans. Years later, his shambling corpse had been found wandering the Plaguelands and brought back to Melenahil. Despite Aly’s hopes that they might have been able to revive him, the best they could do for their companion was end his torment and let him go. She’d stolen his Corruption herself. She’d been present at his funeral.

He said nothing, just stared at her. He didn’t let her go past him, and he didn’t let her go around. He was merely a silent, non-violent, inexorable obstacle. When she vanished into shadow, he was in front of her when she reappeared. He didn’t reach for her, he didn’t come into range where she could touch him. He just looked at her, remaining eye full of reproachful judgment.

“Why, Kelvar? What are you trying to tell me? To leave the forest, when there’s something I need to do here? To accuse me of your death?”

He didn’t answer. Of course he didn’t.

“Trust me, I know how culpable I am. No one knows better. Not the family who mourns you. Not Hyanda or Sintta or any of the survivors from Eluriand. Not any of the men I brought with me on the journey. I know. I should have been quicker, I should have chosen a different direction, I should have made you go instead of letting you stand your ground. But you need to let me pass, so that maybe some day your children can come home to a safe land that’s ready to be prosperous again.”

He didn’t move, he didn’t blink, and a slow horror crept through Alydia’s gut. All of a sudden, the hot, heavy humidity of the forest became unbearably oppressive. The darkness deepened, and the rumbles and crashes of monsters all around them faded into eerie silence.

“...she’s going to make me kill you again if I’m to do what I need to, isn’t she?” The thief choked a breath down despite a sudden tightness in her chest, and she sank to her knees in the slender branches, though she never took her eyes from the figure in front of her. “No, please. Kelvar… How can I go through this a third time? Once was too much.”

She would never accomplish her goal without getting around Kelvar. If she didn’t get the Lindequalme’s flora, Sintta couldn’t create his experimental treatment for the Plaguelands. It might take another century - or more! - to undo the damage done. That was unacceptable.

She knew that this Kelvar was an illusion, the Red Witch playing on the weaknesses in her consciousness and conscience in an effort to defend herself. But how was she supposed to kill him when he was looking at her and rebuking her for her failures and betrayals?

Animal snarls and wooden snaps filtered through the barrier of despair; she was distracted and being stalked. Her choices were to die, to fail, or to destroy an illusion who wore a familiar face. Dying helped no one, not her, not Rayleigh, not Kelvar, and not the dozens of people who depended on her. Failing helped no one, either.

That left only one option.

Aly’s eyes and sinuses burned with tears, but she called the whips to her hands. They coiled and snapped, waiting to be unleashed. “Usstan tlun taudl, ussta abbil,” she apologized earnestly. Then she snapped her arms forward.

Darkness sheared through the half-zombified form of Kelvar Maliaya, who exploded into a coppery crimson cloud. Vision blurred and heart trying to claw out of her chest, she kept hacking, carving out her sorrow in all directions. Rusty sap wept from errant blows on trees, living monsters screamed when steel-sharp shadow sliced into them, the undead and the constructs fell silently.

After a half minute of carnage, the tear-stained thief looked up at her mechanical bird, who had stayed out of range during her rampage. ”Doer, Uuthli. We haven’t much further or much longer to go.”

[Alydia Ettermire]

True to her word, within ten minutes Alydia stood among the branches of a gigantic bloodoak that was absolutely smothered in rusilek bloodvines. The vicious thorns twisted at the scent of prey, seeking her tender flesh. A few creatures skittered up and down the vines and bark, mostly many-legged undead abominations or living creatures with hard, chitinous shells and very little blood. She walked imperiously among them, checking her list to ensure that this tree and its accompanying cluster met the bare minimum requirements for Sintta’s hypothetical cure.

“What brought you here, Alydia?” A dry baritone voice carried from the trunk to the end of her branch. She did not need to turn to see the form this illusion took; she knew every inch of the modest brown trench coat and fedora, each sharp line and harsh crag of the face. She knew the expression that face was wearing, its eyebrows drawn in a hard line to match its mouth. She knew the casual set of the feet and the slight hunch of the shoulders.

The thief forced her lips into a characteristic smirk and she twisted slowly on her heels to face the latest illusion. “I’m on a case. What else could drag me all the way from your welcoming handcuffs… Chief?”

Other whispers and screams had flitted through her ears, people she was helpless to save. Sometimes the voices had been people she knew. But she had thought that Kelvar was the last, most powerful illusion Pode had to use against her. Forcing her to kill a dear friend whom she’d twice failed to save? That was brutal and perhaps a little bit genius.

But much like a serious shock victim rarely felt the full pain of their injuries, that experience had burnt out her emotions and left her numb. So she thought. If she had nerves left to metaphorically dip in lemon juice and scour in salt, this one image might have that power.

He walked toward her, sturdy boots shaking the branch. “You betray Aonar to his death, my care and kindness with your actions and lies, your uniform with the criminal you have become, and now your nation with the aid to the darthiiris?”

Alydia sighed. This old tedium? “Ilharn, you can do better than that, surely. I did not kill Aonar, my uniform betrayed me, and I thought you carefully and kindly taught me that people are more important than politics. While they are unfortunately pale, Raiaeran elves are people as much as Alerian elves.”

“You still turned on me. On everything I stood for. On everything I raised you to believe.” If the Chief’s voice had been a viper, it could not have carried more venom. His eyes - eyes that matched the bloodoaks in hue - bored hatefully into her own. His hand clamped down on her shoulder with iron strength, keeping her in place though she tried to step into The Dark and away from the illusion.

“Taking you in was the worst choice of my life. You never deserved the least of what I offered you.”

Alydia’s eyes widened and her breath froze. Despite the criminal adventure her life had become, despite the unspannable divide Aonar’s death had caused between them, despite his dedication to law over his loyalty to his child, she still regarded the Chief as her father. Though she could never see him again, he had her love and respect. She might have dropped a few Ettermites into the sewers when she caught word they were planning to assassinate him. Despite everything, she believed that the century she’d spent as the Chief’s daughter was time he valued and did not regret.

This illusion rent all of that asunder; she was no beloved daughter, she was a shameful blot on an otherwise sterling life. A mistake he would not make again, if he had the choice. If he had the time.

He stood for a moment, restraining her and letting his words fully sink in. Then he yanked her sideways, pulling her off her feet and ripping her from the branch, releasing her to the mercy of the Lindequalme.

The thief plummeted.

The bloodvines converged.