Simeon tore his gaze away from Ignall and looked wildly upon the Fey that held him. The Dark-Fey surrounded him in every direction, crouching and slithering near the inner ring of trees of Ignall"s Grounding. In the distance, the winged Fey hovered near the outer edges of the grove, waiting mournfully for the ritual to begin.
Chendrelle extended her awareness to him again, much stronger this time, but Simeon denied her firmly. When she moved to comfort him, he lashed out with his arm at her.
"Get back!" he shouted, instinctively grabbing for an absent weapon at his side. "All of you," he added, pointing coldly at Chendrelle.
Voraphet crawled to Chendrelle's side, her gurgling voice choked with laughter. "See for yourself now the value of the words of men Chendrelle, how quickly they lose their meaning," she mocked. "Descend upon him Sisters" his fate has come for him."
The Dark-Fey began to converge upon Simeon, baring fangs of all sorts as they approached him. He stood quickly, searching for a noticeable gap in their closing ranks. Chendrelle extended herself to him once more but he brushed her aside, putting his back to the broken shell of Ignall as they came close. He gathered himself to rush the Dark-Fey when a metallic glimmer caught his eye in the trees behind Voraphet.
"It is your fate that has come for you Voraphet," Tahletha said as she and a dozen or so winged-Fey emerged from the shadowed canopy above the grove. The raven-haired Fey held a silver spear in her hand as she looked down upon her dark sisters, her stern face burning into the black millipede's surprised expression.
Voraphet curled into a defensive coil, and spat curses up to her. "The decision has been made, lover of humanisaad" the Fey have spoken. Even you have given the sentence of death Tahletha, lest you forget your own words."
"Such is the consequence of trusting the Fey, sister," Tahletha mocked as she raised the spear to strike.
Voraphet began to reply, but Tahletha let the spear loose for the millipede's bulbous head. As it flew toward the gawking Dark-Fey, Tahletha and the winged-Fey that flanked her joined in a singular focus, folding the distance one hundred times before the spear found its mark. Voraphet's head exploded in a rain of flesh as the spear drove through it, spraying her vile sisters with pieces of carapace and fluid.
Simeon crouched in disbelief as Voraphet's worm-like body crashed lifelessly to the ground, spewing slimy blood from her headless neck. Time seemed to stop as the moment of violence left everyone totally silent and motionless.
"Drive them to the ground Sisters!" Nettamion commanded from nearby, as the silence devolved into bloody chaos.
Simeon watched as Sister fell upon Sister in the haunting shadows of Ignall's Grounding, pelting each other with powerful magics that dealt harm as they landed. He watched the Fey for a time, until he realized that they were not paying any attention to him. He knelt low to Ignall's base and looked around until he found Chendrelle far off across the grove. She struggled with a couple of small, quick spider-Fey as they spun sticky webbing around her, attempting to pull her to the ground.
He gathered his legs and in a quick rush, did the only thing that made sense to him run away.
As he bolted past the warring Fey, he jumped over the brush that lined the outer edge of the grove, his legs feeling strong beneath him as he ran. Through the clamor of fighting he could hear Chendrelle calling out to him. He ignored her though and pressed harder, trying to recall the feeling of folding the distance as he went. Again and again he failed to mimic the Fey trick, finally content to simply run as fast as he could out of the wood.
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