Auriel Lavai

After her own part in the demonstrations Auriel was feeling somewhat drained. It’d been a harrowing day and she wasn’t used to using her mageblood at all, much less for something so impressive. She immediately made her way back to the barrels to get something strong to drink, only loosely paying attention to the other demonstrations.

By the time the demonmancy demonstration arrived, she’d downed a tankard of Dwarven ale already. For a moment she wondered if it was the drink affecting her vision as the room shifted to the appearance of the Inferno, but she wasn’t normally so much of a lightweight. No, it had to be the demonmancy teacher, and the crazy bastard seemed to have lost control.

Her thoughts were distracted quite suddenly as an Imp leapt over her and turned to make a face, sticking its tongue out at her. Her hands immediately went for her weapons. The demons expression changed quite drastically as Auriels axe swung at its neck. It ducked barely in time, but that didn’t save it from the lower slash from her dagger. Its infernal blood poured out of the deep gash for a moment before it was sucked screaming back into the inferno. Moments later, all the other demons were being torn apart by roots and tree-creatures, and when Auriel looked around the room again, she saw that none of the students were harmed by the demonstration.

She decided to pay a bit more attention to the teachers table then, and sat down just in time to see a pink haired teacher raising a toast. Auriel, of course, went with it, raising her own tankard in the air before bringing it to her lips. That turned out to be a mistake as the moment the golden liquid passed her lips the world around her changed and shifted.

[i]She was on her knees in chains in the centre of her village in Ghannos. Every house and tree nearby was charred and blackened from fire, yet still retaining their shape perfectly. A crowd formed of all the people of her village surrounded her, forming a circle around her. Every one of them was silent, directing cold, accusing looks at her. She tried to say that she didn’t do it, that it wasn’t supposed to be like this, but instead felt her face twist into a satisfied smirk.

With that, Siala stepped out of the crowd and strode slowly and purposefully towards her, clad in the ceremonial armour of a Warden of Ghannos and bearing a heavy recurve bow almost as tall as her, a viciously barbed Shrieking arrow already knocked. She bent at the waist and brought her face close to Auriels, to whisper in her ear. “Run prey, run.”

Auriel lept up then, her chains seeming to fall away. She broke into a sprint and the crowd parted before her. In moments she was clear of the village and among the burnt husks of the trees. The moment she thought she was not being followed, she heard the sound of a Shrieking arrow as it sped through the air towards her.

The first arrow sped past her arm, the barbs grazing over the scars left from the first time she ran. This time, instead of cutting her lightly, a great and deep gash was torn into the flesh of her arm. She cried out and stumbled, but kept running. The second arrow skimmed over her leg, tearing at her clothes and flesh. She cried out again and kept running, now with an uneven gait. Once more, an arrow swooped past her, this time its barbs cut her ankle down to bone. She screamed in pain and fell, the ash covered forest floor rushing up to meet her.

She slowly managed to roll over, sending sharp jolts of pain through her body as she did so. Now on her back, she could see Siala standing over her, disappointment etched into her face. The huntress-warden raised her bow and slowly drew back the string, this time with a simple straight-headed piercing arrow knocked. Siala released the arrow once it was fully drawn, the massive dining hall swimming back into focus as the arrow pierced her breast and cut to her heart.[/i]

The snap back to reality was sudden and jarring. Auriels free hand went straight to the faintly visible thin scar on her arm, feeling for wounds. To her immediate relief she found none, and even though she could not feel any injury her hand also quickly checked the spot the final arrow had supposedly impacted. Nothing. It had felt so real, but she knew that events had not come to pass in that way, and given that she seemed unharmed now, she determined that it was an illusion of some kind.

An extremely unpleasant illusion.

Auriel glared at the pink haired woman on stage even as the illusory memory competed with the real thing, throwing her thoughts into disarray. As if to add a final insult to the injury the psychomancy ‘teacher’ Satori then wished everyone a long, happy life.

Auriels tankard came down hard on the wooden table, a good amount of liquid sloshing out as it did. She stood slowly and with measured movements before walking up towards the teachers table, light on her feet but fairly naturally. Only once there were only a few meters between her and the pink-haired bitch who’d decided to make her live out her worst nightmares did Auriel act. She whipped her dagger out of its sheath in a reverse grip even as her feet left the ground in a bounding leap, animalistic rage in her eyes. She intended nothing less than to spill Satori’s lifeblood across the stage.

No sooner had she begun her leap, however, than she felt the familiar sensation of bark against her skin, combined with the unpleasant feeling of all her forward motion being suddenly and completely arrested. She cast her head about quickly to locate what exactly was holding her back and saw roots twisting about her arms holding her in position. [i]Mages.[/i] They’d be the death of her.