I'm baaaaaaaaaack! ^_^
Bibi's head lolled on her mother's shoulder. Her breathing was shallow, haggard. Her skin was damp and sticky with sweat, her forehead creased with discomfort. Isa carried her back down the tunnel, temper seething through her veins. She could feel the feebleness of her daughter's heartbeat, the battle her body was going through just to keep her alive. It was only once they were above ground, away from the heat and the darkness below, that she could see the true extent of her daughter's condition.
Her beautiful blue marks, so vivid and defined, were now dark. The ones on her hands, up her arms, were blacker than a winter's night, greying the ones decorating her neck, dulling the last of the blue upon her face. Even the brown of her skin had paled, sickly and worn. She moaned, shivering in Isa's arms, discomfort melting to pain.
Deprivation.
To Deprive was to kill. An agonising, warring slog, wrought from the isolation to an imp's element. As nature's magic failed, marks lost their vibrancy. They darkened. They Blackened. In a bid to keep the imp alive, the last of their power sacrificed the rest of the body.
Isa looked at Bibi's face, heart twisting. Tears burned, she felt sick. Once the last of that colour was gone, Bibi would die.
And there was nothing she could do about it.
Well, that wasn't strictly true.
She could make them pay.
"She's here! She's got the prisoner! Form up!" Isa glanced up, hearing a clattering of armour, the thumps of boots. Fae Guard rushed in from multiple directions, bashing their shields as they made three measly lines against her, spears bristling over the top. The buzzing of wings and she looked up, seeing another dozen notching arrows, aiming at her head. Bibi groaned, as if she could sense the targets on her, turning her head into her mother's shoulder. "Aim! F-" The order was never finished. Isa stomped her foot. Hundreds of gallons of water reacted to her immediately, rushing up from the ground to stretch through the sky, as though it had never once tasted freedom. She could see the Guard yelling, raising their shields and bashing their weapons on them, but the noise was lost to the roar of the stream.
Inclining her head, the water bowed to her will, folding on itself. It gouged through the earth with ravenous fury, ripping up sod and grass, closing in on the Guard with no mercy. They were screaming, but she could not hear them, ducking behind their shields in a last ditch effort to keep what little ground they held.
Nidas rounded the corner. Isa's back was to him, but he could see she held their daughter and smiled, relieved. Large puddles were shivering under her temper, coating piles of groaning, injured, waterlogged Guards. Weapons lay in splinters, shields in pieces, helmets and armour plating scattered. Angea zipped past him, Lody stumbling along at his side. As they neared Isa, he felt the young fairy hiding behind him, holding onto his arm nervously.
"It's alright," he reassured, patting her head, "we're going to get out of here and-"
And then he saw Bibi. All his relief, his joy at their victory, the hope to go home and have done with this, was gone, torn from him with the force his wife wielded her element. "No." He croaked. "No, no, what-?" He touched his daughter's forehead. Angea had landed on her chest, curled into a little ball and sobbing. Angry tears speckled in Isa's eyes, teetering on the edge of losing it altogether.
Time crawled to a halt. Nidas felt numb, could see his hands shaking. He kept touching Bibi's face, her arms, as if the Black could come off under his fingers. There had to be some way he could fix this, he fixed everything else, he could fix her, he could- there had to be something- no. Isa had not spoken, but she didn't need to.
There was nothing, no solution, no remedy. It was over.