Darkness Swoops In
Blue smirked at one point, clearly focusing mostly on the fireball that Rayel was gradually making. She probably things she has me defeated already, Rayel thought as she tried to shield her other activities by making the fireball. But Blue was not completely naïve. She caught on to Rayel's intentions soon enough, yet Rayel was at least one step ahead of her. Just as she loosed the fireball she completed her other weave and put all her strength behind releasing it into the air before her.
As her shards of earth and fire sprinkled down from above, a scream ripped through the hallway, but it was not Blue's or Guydin's. Nor was it Rayel's. Something had clearly happened to the woman Rayel had freed from the shield earlier. She wanted nothing more than to stop what she was doing and look around, to find out what had happened, but she forced herself to concentrate on her own situation. A moment's hesitation could well be the end of her here.
She began immediately to weave some protection around herself as her weave began to do its work. The shards of hot fire and sharp earth began to swirl around Blue, and some of them found their target, burning and slicing at the woman's skin and further damaging her beautiful silks. The woman grit her teeth against the pain but, impressively, never once called out in pain. She did call Guydin's name once or twice, and that was when Rayel, who was trying to weave a protective shield around her to ward against fire weaves, realised that the other Black Sister had been inactive for quite some time. She made the mistake of giving in to her curiosity this time and craning her neck in search of Guydin even as she continued to work on her weave. She did see Guydin slumped against a wall a small distance away – whatever had brought Rayel's companion down had evidently drained Guydin of strength also – but at the same time she lost control of her weave.
She had made too many hasty moves in a row, demonstrating the depth of her exhaustion. The effort she had expended throughout this day in channelling had steadily worn her down. She could hardly believe that she was still standing considering all that she had done and was still doing. But she supposed that she continued to fight because she had no choice, or none that she was willing to take. She kept fighting to stay in control, and somehow she succeeded for a long time.
Finally she had set a fire shield in place, knowing that she was still open to every other kind of attack that Blue could throw at her. She suddenly realised that Blue didn't seem to use Fire all that much. In fact, her favourite types of weave seemed to be anything but Fire ones. I should've made a different shield, she thought miserably, wanting to sit down and start crying but finding that she was incapable of doing so. Light, what was I thinking?
And then she was hit, at last having been caught by surprise in her exhausted state. Blue was nearly falling over by this stage as well, and it seemed the two of them had worn each other down at an approximately equal rate, but although her weave was slightly off target, it did strike Rayel's shoulder. A sharp triangular shard of ice, about ten centimetres thick at the base, dug its way into the flesh of her shoulder, piercing her skin and flesh until the tip came to rest against her bone. It began to melt immediately, for Blue clearly did not have the strength to maintain the weave. The woman stood there in the middle of the hallway, wavering, trying to keep her eyes open, as Rayel screamed in agony.
The chip of ice was sending the coldest chill through her body, and that chill came to rest in the very heart of her marrow, chilling her to the core. Her teeth began to chatter and she fell to her knees, and then slumped onto her side, unable to close her eyes while, further down the hall, Blue was unable to keep hers open. Both women were on the floor now. Rayel was unaware of very little besides the pain that was gradually being numbed by a deep chill that settled into her, and the sight of the floor tiles mere centimetres from her face. Then darkness swooped in and for a while, at least, she knew nothing but a voice telling her to be steadfast and reminding her in a rather panicked voice that the way back indeed only came once.