Buildings had once stood here, housing the griffon-mounted soldiers of Waterdeep. They were mostly rubble now and those still standing had random holes blasted into their walls. Corpses of a few straggling militia and their mounts lay partly buried beneath the debris. Others had been reduced to small piles of ash.
In the centre of all this sat the Dark Lady, her robes fluttering in the streams of raw magic. To most people it would have seemed that she sat in empty space. A few, more powerful, beings would have seen that she sat on the bottom step of an ever-changing stairway, a Celestial Stairway in the Planes, her legs dangling in the air.
The magic ran into her body, but unlike Vale's hands, her flesh did not blister or burn. Instead her body was surrounded by an expanding halo of darkness. Tiny red lightning bolts forked across it.
Her eyes opened wide when Tiamet entered the newly cleared summit. Magic clung to him in a shifting cloak of radiance.
"Why won't you just die?" her voice rose in a howling shriek, a bony finger pointed out at him.
"The same can be said of you," the deity came to a halt, "I believed you to be destroyed many years ago."
"But I survived… Survived the full extent of you wrath," she spread out her arms, her hands splayed, her head lolling loosely on her neck, "I am truly invincible, truly immortal."
"You're deranged!" snapped the dragon god, his hands clenching beneath his sleeves.
"I see clearer than you," the Dark Lady rocked back and forth on her heels, snatches of words in a multitude of languages escaping her mouth before dissolving into a mad giggle. Behind her mask her mouth formed into a crooked grin.
From the top of a still standing eyrie Chel sat, eyes narrowed, ears twitching and swivelling to best catch the conversation.
"I assume its time to resume our age old battle. To fight, fight, fight to the end," the robed female jumped down from the Celestial Stairway.
"Are you too cowardly to face me without your mask?"
The masked female swayed,
"Without the mask? Is that your final wish? To see what you created?" her hands went to the clasps of her mask, long fingernails tearing away the leather straps even as she undid the buckles. She lowered the mask down, tossing it to one side where it lay with its demonic grin in the dust.
She would have been beautiful and had been, at some point, gifted with cold and savage exquisiteness. But now her flesh was covered in old burns, at some places the flesh had been burnt away completely to revel bone. Her lips were gone and in their place was a frozen grin, teeth long and pointed like an animal's maw. Drool ran from her mouth and a thin stream of the stuff dripped from her chin.
One of her eyes was partly closed, the eyelids sealed shut at the corners. The other was bright green and danced crazily in its socket, ceaselessly rolling around. It focused briefly on the dragon lord, remaining still enough for its slit pupil to become visible, before rolling completely backwards into her skull.
"Did mortality make you mad? Or were you insane before?"
"Brilliance is always mistaken for madness," a pink tongue emerged from her mouth to lap at the saliva on her face.
"Brilliance? You plunged the Planes into chaos! You caused damage that took eons to heal!"
"You cannot understand, but then again that's what it's always been like. Haven't we always been complete opposites? Two halves of a whole. The Light and the Dark. The Brother and Sister Deities. Tiamet," she placed a hand on her chest, "and Tiamat."
On his perch Chel's heart stopped, his hands flying to his mouth. The conversation continued on the ground.
"You can never understand my goals, my plans for our race, brother. I am the smarter one," her eyes narrowed, "How many other deities can strip another of immortality whilst trapped in a mortal frame?"
"You did this!" Tiamet roared.
"I hope you appreciate the irony of being trapped in the form I've spent so long in."
"Sister, I will destroy you for what you've done!" magic crackled around the male deity in a halo of lightning.
"What for this time?" said Tiamat, sounding bored. She waved a hand in the air, "Is it for your flock? Your precious Aber-Troil?" she grinned wickedly, "Or is it for the high priest who broke his oath with me? The cleric I killed? Could it be that maybe you still fight for her? Yes, your beloved Kereska. I still think of her death, you know, and the way she pleaded at the end-" the female deity was cut off by an abrupt blast of magic cast by her enraged brother.
She lunged out of the way, hands forming arcane gestures. A wave of fire shot towards her opponent. The true battle began as the distraction raged on in the city.
Jessi: And now you see why being flamed about Tiamat was so irritating!