moments of vulnerability. (accepting!)
[Stuck] My muse is stuck, unable to free themselves without your muse's help. (e.g. under rubble, in a burning house etc.)
Come on. Just a little closer. A little closer...
Her eyes glinted in the dark, hinting at a predatory sharpness with the intent to kill. She was lying in wait, drawing in her cloak as she became one with the shadows, holding her rifle to her shoulder as naturally as she would an extension of her own arm.
She was ready. High on a portion of the stone ceiling that had crumbled away with the passage of time, she kept her eyes trained on the skirmish below, her finger rigid and in-line with the trigger. She just had to focus and keep a level head on her shoulders, without letting her emotions get the better of her. Well, better said than done in this case.
There was too much at stake for her to pretend that this was just another hunt.
Steady now. Focus... Get out of the damn way, Lae'zel, unless you want a hole in the back of your head!
As useful as she was for intercepting at ground level, Lae'zel was proving more and more to be a nuisance. She had become loose with her anger, swinging her sword at anything that moved, while wholly unable to locate the orthon.
But there was still hope. She had been watching the battle unfold as she slunk back into position, not breathing so much as a whisper. The orthon may have cloaked himself with some form of invisibility, thinking that it would turn the tides in his favor; but with any trick like that, it had its weaknesses.
For one, he had to reveal himself in order to stage an attack. And two, he wasn't exactly light on his feet. She could see his footprints in the ashes left behind from his fallen merregon soldiers, previously dispatched by Shadowheart and Astarion.
... It's alright. He's holding his own just fine... and it's about time that ugly red glutton showed his face.
Tender reassurances aside, she knew she couldn't afford to slip up now. She watched as the footprints came to a sudden halt, widening their stance as if preparing to attack. This was it.
Time seemed to slow down, as everything else outside of her became an afterthought. She exhaled slowly, her breath leaving her lungs, releasing all of the tension throughout her body as she lined up her shot, eyes burning wildly with anticipation as she saw the glossy sheen of his invisibility roll back--
Catching him dead in her crosshairs, she fired, the bullet whistling through the air and hitting the orthon directly in the eye, caving in the side of his head.
Good. Finally. She almost felt a touch of relief, smiling faintly as her expression softened and she lowered her rifle. Their quarry was dead. And if that infernal tempter was true to his word, he would have to translate the scars on Astarion's back. Astarion would--
She hadn't realized it in time. For the moment the orthon had released his invisibility, he was already mid-swing, throwing a clutch of bombs in her direction, skulls rolling like scattered marbles across the floor until they caught themselves in a crevice--
--A crevice situated right underneath the broken platform she had been using as a perch. By then, it was too late.
The fuses burnt away, and all she saw was a bright flash of white, the force of the blast shattering the ground beneath her feet, blowing her away with the rubble to the sunken depths below.
As she felt like she was floating, weightless, likely falling to her death--she caught a glimpse of Astarion, rushing over to the edge as if trying to catch her.
Was that... worry, strewn across his face? Was he worried about her? She almost felt like she should apologize... it was her fault, her own petty negligence that caused things to turn out this way.
One moment, she was falling to her death.
The next, she was gasping for air, choking on hard bile, and unable to move. She was... alive? If so, barely. She could taste blood rising up in the back of her throat, coughing with her whole chest as she grievously spat out as much as she could to clear her airways.
Where... how? Questions that rose to the forefront of her mind purely on instinct, but were quickly forgotten as she felt the adrenaline coursing through her begin to subside, her whole body convulsing with an immense, searing pain shooting up through her leg.
She was pinned to the ground, buried from the waist down underneath a pile of rubble. No wonder she couldn't move, but her leg... She was bleeding profusely, a break or a laceration she had likely sustained during the fall. She saw blood--her blood--seeping out through the cracks, steadily draining out in a pool across the floor...
Was this it? Was she going to die slow and in agony, in some hole in the ground? She should have been angry? Scared? Even now, should she try to keep her dignity intact, without begging or pleading with the Gods to spare her life?
... No. Fuck the Gods. She had never once believed in anything so clandestine. She would never put her fate in their hands, not while she still had a will to call her own. She would bite and scream and rage against the dying of the light, desperately clawing at the floor and chipping her nails until they bled.
She wasn't going to die here. The others would find her. She had more faith in them than she had in anyone else. Companions she could strangely rely on, and who could rely on her in return.
And Astarion... No doubt he would smell her blood. If there was any chance of her being found before death claimed her, it was him.
She wanted to apologize. She would stay alive long enough to say it to his face, no matter how much he might beg her not to. Gods be damned.
