Much as Ellisaria dislikes the intimation of weakness, she dislikes being impaled on a mountainside even more. Her human form is simply more subtle, and thus better suited to evading the gronn.
Unfortunately, it is also conveniently sized to be eaten in one gulp by the mirror-faced snake (what) that comes out of literally nowhere.
At least she is alive to be indignant, even if she's no longer in Outland.
The elementals are just as fast, and close rapidly to harry, hurt, and slow.
She calls on magma to rise from the deepest depths, the fire and pressure of the mantle to crack the mountain's roots.
There's something odd in her way. A great shadow wound about the roots of the world. The magma is sluggish, distant, like it can't hear her through the shadow.
Still, she can pull some towards her, get it responding increasingly to her call. Something stirs beneath it.
She's more concerned with killing her enemy than anything else that might be stirring.
Her enemy dies, smothered by magma, body crushed by falling earth, pulverized by elementals.
He wasn't very far down, as these things go. He'd turned away a few miles from the mantle, unwilling to pursue the gargantuan tunnels that wend down even to there.
Something moves through those tunnels. Something of shadow, dark and hungry.
It wedges - a tendril, perhaps, or else a leg - through her trap, nudging the body towards it. The hollow of its presence - for she can't really sense it, nor any point where it steps - is about Brisingr's size.
There's larger hollows, though, now that she's paying attention to the depths of the earth.
And something very, very large, deep down. Something turning in its sleep.
...This stirs something within her. Vague dreams, half-remembered, of ancient and nameless fear.
Best to let it lie.
She allows the magma to subside naturally, and tasks the remaining elementals to collapsing the tunnels around themselves.
"And you're very exceptionally terrifying," she says with a grin. "Still, I'm not used to my main role being attempted counter-song."
The orcs seem not entirely at all eager to tangle with dragons, and lack the core of even vaguely competent leadership Gundabad had. They also felt the fight - many have started fleeing.
Brisingr quite appreciates that! The halls can be quickly filled with charred orc bodies.
"That it does. Well, perhaps by the time they get around to reinhabiting the place, the corpses will have moldered somewhat."
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
