Brigitte's experience with lip reading was -as per her relatively short life- nil, so it was with a pounding sense of betrayal that she watched the other woman step away from the wall. “Wait!” she called, pressing her nose to the glass as if to soak in the last traces of the warm, human light. Any moment, the fog would slam back down. The wall would be only a wall and the woman would be gone as if she had been nothing but Brigitte's terrified reflection. There had been something at the end, though, a hardening in those cerulean eyes. She had seen it just as the woman turned away. If only she could see it again. If only the woman hadn't left her and faded...
She hadn't faded. Brigitte blinked, replacing the scene her fear insisted upon with what she actually saw. That warm light shone bright enough to burn away the fog, and the woman herself shone courageously below it. She was fighting her tormentor! Brigitte beamed and cheered silently.
“Fine,” Jackal barked behind her, his voice tinged with that familiar annoyance at being ignored, “If you're just going to cry there like some pea soup puking baby...”
Her hand flicked to her face. “Crying?” she asked aloud. In the light that still blazed through the glass, she saw the thick bulb of a tear roll down her finger and disappear beyond the curve of her wrist. That was new. When she was Jackal's harpy, she hadn't been able to cry. Shadar, she thought with a smile that threatened more of those oh-so-human tears.
With one last look at her sister in the nightmare, fighting like she was the construct of war, Brigitte looked over her shoulder. Defiantly, she refused to turn her body. “Bite me, mutt,” she said as she tossed her cloak askew and slapped the pretty bottom that Shadar had given her.
Jackal screamed like the monster he was. It blasted to every corner of the arena, and the illusionary light, as if disgusted with his lack of control, flew apart with it. For a moment so small it would fit through the eye of a needle, Brigitte saw the arena. The foliage hung unsupported overhead like cloud cover and at least another three pillars stood solemnly, their bulbs intact and shimmering under the false light. To Brigitte's right, a body lay in a broken heap on the ground. Though it had the shape of a man, it was nothing but meat, a squished and battered dummy with the mark of her talons on one leg. Then, darkness fell once more. The fact that her only successful attack had been another ruse should have disheartened her. It didn't.
“Bite this!” came the expected retort, then the sudden fiery glow of the bomb flying at her.
As if you would do anything else.
Brigitte had kicked of the wall and spun into position even before seeing the bomb. Her single wing, wrapping her from one shoulder to another, swept out and upward, volleying the bomb directly above her head. It hung there for less than a second before she orchestrated the most difficult move her new arms had ever attempted. She slapped the insidious thing right back at its maker.
Darkness was ripped asunder again, this time with blinding fire. Brigitte's body was forced against the glass as if the whole room had rolled. It only lasted a second, though. A second in which she thought she heard Jackal scream in pain. She smiled gloriously through the drying tears and the misting blood.
When the glare faded, she realized that the light reaching her side of the glass was brighter than before. She turned with her shoulders still against it and realized that she was perfectly in line with the woman on the other side. Her head was also turned, their eyes connecting. This time, she understood the message, though it confused her. "Sorry for what?"
Suddenly, she was seized. Corrupted and decaying limbs sprouted from the darkness as if a dozen caskets had been thrown open, their occupants furious. Two of the hands gripped her head, pinning it to the glass as surely as the rest of her body and forcing her to stare directly into Jackal's inferno eyes. The Shadar puppet underneath smoked and smoldered, no longer recognizable.
“Scream, bitch!” Jackal demanded.
“You aren't invited to the effigy,” Brigitte answered.
The darkness crowded close, erasing all but the very center of the arena where, back to back, stood two warriors victoriously. Two blades, moving as perfectly as reflections, pulled back and thrust through their chests. Both points met at the same spot. The mirror cracked-fractured-shattered as the women died, victorious still.
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