Umbra Inimicus

Shadow of My Enemy

She had never been truly alone against a foe.

Which was not to say Daleah Svansri was any sort of coward, no—she had just always been lucky enough to have allies nearby. When she'd confronted the Sons of Svanir, The Undead Dragon, The Inquest and the Risen, she'd had the Pact, or a partner, or a guide; even when she'd defeated Issormir, at the beginning of all this insanity, Eir had been by her side.

The chamber rocked with the force of the massive creature's weight, and claws twice her size slammed into the Omphalos Chamber, scrabbling to reach her. Leah threw herself backward, rolling and coming to her feet just in time to be smacked aside by one of the thing's vine tendrils. The thorns tore at her leather coat, not breaking through—yet—but stinging nonetheless. She hit the floor of the chamber hard, grunted in pain, and hopped back up, letting loose a volley of bullets from her two pistols into the vine as she went.

She had, of course, hunted alone in the past. Many a time; in fact, that was most of her story, hunting alone on the fringes of Norn society, hoping to go unnoticed and unsung. Strange behavior for a Norn, certainly, but she had her reasons.

This was the first time she'd confronted any major enemy completely on her own. The Pale Tree lay nearby, breathing—barely—but unable to do much more than that. The thought sent a shiver of fear down Leah's spine, but she grabbed hold of it and hardened it into cool anger, because that she could use.

Hunting, she realized as she leapt to avoid the creeping, stinging little nettles the Dragon's Shadow kept releasing in the chamber, that is the answer. She had never fought alone, but she had hunted alone.

It was time to become the hunter instead of the hunted.

With a growl, Leah sheathed her pistols, whipping the thin black staff from its place on her back. There was one large vine tendril remaining, and something told her if she could kill it, it would make the Shadow vulnerable.

Then it was a matter of a few choice shots, and this one was as good as hers. She had defeated Zhaitan, there was no way some mere puppet of Mordremoth was going to take her down.

Gathering her strength, Leah pounced at the last tendril. She landed hard enough to crack the floor, and the tendril whipped toward her while the Shadow roared outside. She set to with her staff, whirling dervish attacks that beat the thing into the ground, over and over, not letting up.

So focused was she, she didn't notice in time when the ground begin to burble and boil. She barely registered Kas' scream of "Look out!" from far below before the Shadow stomped the chamber. The ceiling held, but the entire structure shook hard enough to send her bouncing. Leah felt something in her shoulder give and heard herself yelp, but there wasn't time to sit and cry. Back to her feet, she put two more bullets into the tendril before it crumbled entirely. While the Shadow screamed, she cast about for her staff. It had fallen from her numb fingers when she was thrown and now rested precariously against the edge of the Omphalos Chamber nearby.

Don't lose your weapon, idiot.

She itched to go retrieve the staff, but just then, the creature itself landed nearby, clinging to the walls of the chamber and panting heavily. It seemed defenseless for now, and that was too good an opportunity to pass up. Leah shouted a challenge as she began firing, small bullets ripping into an incomprehensibly large head and neck. She roared her frustration; it would take an eternity to kill the thing at that rate, and eternity was a luxury she did not have.

She was not wrong: she had barely scratched the surface of the Shadow's skull before it took off again, and the floor started to ripple again. Leah hollered as she rolled to safety, toward her staff, gritting her teeth against the strengthening pain in her shoulder. She got up and snatched the staff as she went, whirling it as she turned.

Three more vine tendrils, these bigger than the last; and to make things interesting, now there was a thrasher in the mix too. Leah hated thrashers.

"Watch out!" Braham's voice boomed up from below. "It's heading to the rear of the chamber!"

That meant it was getting ready to stomp again. Leah quelled her anger and threw herself at the thrasher. It meant leaving herself vulnerable to vine tendril attacks and traps, which may just kill her, but if she let the thrasher be, it'd harry her every blow, sapping her strength and killing her just as surely. Best to get that creature out of the way immediately. The thing spun as she approached, letting fly a miasma of boiling, noxious liquid that burned and stung wherever it touched bare skin. She could feel the heat of it through her boots. Thorns assailed her from the vines, scratching at her hair and skin.

She'd nearly killed it when another massive concussion shook the chamber and sent her bouncing again, this time straight into her enemy. The thrasher hissed and punted her into two nearby vines. They wrapped around her arms, dug their thorns in, and yanked.

Leah screamed at the pain, shoulder giving entirely and merciless thorns raking the flesh of her arms. If not for the coat, they'd have savaged her; as it was, the sleeves of her jacket tore off entirely, leaving her arms bare, bleeding, and susceptible to more attacks.

She would have noticed, if she'd been able to think at all. Agony was thundering through her senses as her shoulder ground against bone and the stinging nettles surrounded her again, poking and stabbing. Leah called forth her healing and focused as hard as she could, knowing her life was forfeit if she did not. Her shoulder snapped back with an audible pop! and the slashes on her arms disappeared. She took a deep breath, letting the cool soothing magic work its way through her.

When she finished, she was surrounded by three tendrils and a very pissed off, near-dead thrasher. She shot it once more to kill it, and then dodged the tendrils and started shooting again. Between shots she tried to find her staff, but couldn't, and it was then that she registered Braham's howl of horror from the main hub.

"Leah?!" he bellowed, and she could practically see him casting about for a way to get to her, cut off though she was. "LEAH!"

A vine tossed her perilously close to the edge of the chamber, and she found herself looking straight down at her friends. They seemed very far away, but she could see that Braham held her staff. So that's where it went, the wayward thought shot through her head. Eager to reassure them—especially the man holding her weapon—she took half a second to shout down, "I'm all right!"

That half second cost her.

"Behind!" Taimi's shrill voice screamed, and Leah didn't even think, just rolled to her left. One of the vines stabbed the very spot she had just vacated, its end sharpened to a deadly point. That was new too.

"Leah, here!" Braham shouted again, and she looked down one last time to see him holding her staff steady before he threw it, like a javelin. The black glass flame on the end of it whistled as it flew her way, and she reached far as she dared, catching the weapon deftly and rolling back onto the safety of the chamber floor—

Pain lit her entire world in bright red light, shaking every thought from her mind and blasting through her consciousness. It originated in her very core and spread like foefire to the tips of her fingers and toes. Fire ripped through her, and then ice, and she gasped at the cold, pressing a hand to her chest against the agony of it.

Or tried to. Something sharp and woody was in the way, pricked her palm. She looked down to see a strange thorn plastered to her chest, covered in bright red liquid and jammed too tight to move…

She realized, dreamily, that it wasn't stuck to her chest, it was one of the vines, stuck through her chest.

Oh Raven.

She tried to focus her healing magic, but her mind seemed too overloaded to properly grasp it; and besides, she couldn't heal herself with the massive thorn still impaling her. She knew that. Groaning, Leah twitched, suddenly noticing that her feet were not touching anything solid, and blinking hard to try and understand why. It seemed to take forever for her sluggish brain to catch up with reality, but when it did, her blood ran cold.

The Shadow was roaring his victory in the background, and Leah was being held over the edge of the Omphalos chamber, on display for all the world leaders to see. But she only had eyes for the small knot of companions directly in front and below her.

Rox's ears were plastered straight back against her furry skull, and her face seemed caught between the most extraordinary rage Leah had ever laid eyes on, and complete and utter despair. Kas was leaning heavily into Jory, one hand covering her mouth while the other gripped her lover's arm mercilessly. Jory's face was a mask of horror. Taimi was screaming something, Leah couldn't understand what, there was cotton stuffed in her ears, but the poor girl's legs gave out and she nearly slipped from her golem. Leah twitched—Braham!—but she needn't have worried, the Son of Eir was already catching the tiny Asuran, holding her tight against his tattooed chest.

Braham Eirsson had paled further than Leah'd ever seen, and that counted the time he broke his leg fighting Scarlet. His green eyes were almost comically wide, and shining with unshed tears. Even from here, Leah could see him shaking as he held Taimi close, though his eyes never left hers. Darkness was edging its way into her vision, and she gasped back a sob; an ache in her chest that had nothing at all to do with the vine protruding from it.

I'm sorry.

Then she was flying through the air—again—and it was nearly peaceful for half a moment, until the unyielding bough that made up the floor of the chamber came rushing up to meet her. Leah screamed, a raw, primal sound of anguish as the pain intensified past what she ever thought possible.

"Please," she heard the soft voice all around her, over the roaring dragon and her bellowing friends. Or was it inside her head? "Come closer."

Leah forced open streaming eyes to find the Pale Tree lying nearby, as weak as a kitten. I was supposed to protect her. The thought made her stomach twist and drove her to her side, much as it hurt. She reached for the Sylvari Mother's hand, crying out at the pain, tears streaming down cold cheeks. She was cold all over, not long now and she'd be—

She gasped when her fingers touched the Pale Tree's smooth bark. Heat and magic blasted through her, and she gripped the hand tightly to avoid being thrown again. Leah shuffled where she stood, breathing in sweet warm air, watching orange and red leaves swirl around her. Golden light filled the boughs of the close-grown trees, swirling dust sparkling like lightning bugs on the wind.

Wait, where am I?

She was not in the Omphalos Chamber, dying. She was standing on her own two feet in an unfamiliar grove, and she had never felt stronger.

"Listen," came the voice inside her head again, and this time she recognized it as the Pale Tree's, though it was halting and weak. "I must…share something with you." The air chilled, golden light turned pale, the dust turned to snow that covered bare branches in a winter wasteland. Leah shuddered as she was reminded of the areas of the beautiful Shiverpeaks that suffered from Jormag's corruption.

"I am fading," the Tree said, and Leah's heart broke in her chest. But she had not time to process the grief, for suddenly she was deep inside a vision such as she'd never experienced before. There was a cloudy sky, the color of the dawn, and four blinding pillars of light. A dragon circled—Mordremoth, she knew. Somehow.

A bright spherical object appeared in the center of her vision, and her bones ached with the weight of hope that filled her at the sight. This object, whatever it was, could save her friends, save the Pact. Save all of Tyria. She fell from the dawn sky and down, down, down, into a crystal room. The bright object was inside it, protected by the crystal shards, which cracked and then shattered at her presence.

Then there were vines upon vines, an endless tangle of thorns, and a dragon's growl, and everything went black.

Leah opened stinging eyes and was back on her feet almost before she knew it. Her pistols were in her hands, and she barely took time to register what she was doing before she shot the tendril to her left that was still dripping with blood—her blood. The thing went down with an unearthly screech, and the Shadow creature crashed into the spires of the Omphalos Chamber again, holding on, shaking, obviously in pain.

Good.

She let fly her bullets, full of a power and vitality she'd never yet known. Vaguely, some small part of her brain—the Priory part—wondered if it was the remaining life force from the Pale Tree, if the Mother's last act had been to bring her back and imbue her with power; but the thought was so horrific she let it slip out of her mind in favor of bringing down the creature. It was panting again, its skin ripped and black light bleeding through in many places. Seized by an insane idea, Leah sheathed her pistols and gathered herself for a jump. Her staff was in her hand, and when she leapt, she leapt straight for the creature's skull.

Her aim was as true as ever it was, and the fire-shaped glass that tipped her staff broke straight through the Shadow's bones, right between its eyes. She roared her own victory as she stood upon its head and shoved with all her might. The staff buried itself halfway down its length in what had to be a lethal blow.

The Shadow howled, the sound deafening. Leah held onto her staff—she was not going to lose it again—while the thing flailed its head this way and that, attempting to dislodge her and her weapon. It succeeded moments later, and Leah landed hard and wrong on her right ankle, shouting as she felt it crack. Outside the chamber, the Shadow was wailing its agony, tossing its head back and forth, and eventually falling several hundred feet before getting its wings under it. It flew off, still screaming.

Leah let herself fall back, breathing hard and staring unseeing at the blue sky above her.

A/N: Welcome, welcome! Yes, I have an unfinished multi-chap in my SPN folder, and yes, I'm working on my original novel most free moments, but! GW2's new Living Story is absolutely brilliant, and my Norn Thief's story won't quit scratching at the inside of my skull. So begins this oneshot series. It won't have much of a plot outside the Living Story Season 2 (at least I don't intend it to?), and the one shots will likely be out of order and sort of random, but I'm excited to write whatever pops into my head for it! Happy to have y'all along for the ride!

Special thanks to Reyavie, who's Canach-centric series "Defiance" is absolutely brilliant; and to Nova42, who's fault all of this is.