She felt his fingers tighten at her defiant words, and saw the way his blade shifted in his grip. Maybe he intended to lop her head off then and there, but if he expected her to grovel and beg for her life, he wouldn't get the satisfaction. As he stepped away, however, he suddenly laughed aloud, the sound echoed by the seething tendrils holding her and the angel down. At his revelation that she would indeed<i>not</i>be killed, the tiefling felt a knot of uncertainty twist within her. Aryel had long since accepted that her path in life wasn't likely to end with her passing away peacefully in her sleep. Knights risked their own lives to protect those of others, fighting off monsters, invaders, and anything else that threatened the inhabitants of Aetus. As the leader of a resistance fighting a shadow war against a living god, she knew that her day would eventually come--all she wished for was the opportunity to sow the seeds of hope before she was snuffed out. Death wouldn't be pleasant, certainly, but it would at least have been quick.<br/><br/>She wasn't naive. She didn't think for a second that Dradiro was sparing her out of mercy. No, it was more likely that he believed he could inflict something even worse than death upon her.<br/><br/>If that thought frightened her, however, then she refused to let him see it. She strained against her bindings even as Gabiriel cried out in pain, the shadows searing his flesh. Trying to summon her own flames still proved fruitless beyond a few flickering candle-wisps, but that didn't stop her from trying, and when a man stepped forward to speak to Dradiro, she fixed him with a poisonous glare that suggested the first person to try clapping her in irons was getting incinerated. The god's certainty that neither she nor the angel were going anywhere incensed her, but before she could deliver a retort, there came a disturbance on the other side of the battlefield. Aryel's head snapped up in time to see one of her rebels making a break for it. The man was making a mad dash for the treeline, managing to outpace the soldiers trying to recapture him. Perhaps she had shown no concern for her own well-being, but upon looking back to Dradiro, cold fear entered her eyes as she realized what he was about to do.<b> "Liir, <i>stop!"</i> </b>she shouted to the fleeing man, inwardly praying that he would allow himself to be captured before Dradiro could murder him. Before the man could react, a crackling mass of energy suddenly shot from Dradiro's raised hand, catching Liir squarely between the shoulders. He fell to the ground convulsing, and at Dradiro's mockery, Aryel lunged forward with a roar of mindless fury, fully intending to tear him to pieces with her bare hands. Fortunately for Dradiro, the shadows checked her almost immediately, their cloying tendrils threatening to crack a rib with how tightly they constricted her, dragging her away from their master and back onto her knees. The motion knocked the breath from her lungs, and she watched helplessly as Liir was ripped apart from the inside, leaving little aside from a spattering of blood and bone. A cry of dismay rippled among the surviving captives, and the tiefling looked back to Dradiro, fixing him with a look of pure, frigid hatred.<b> "That man had a family," </b>she said, her voice grown hoarse.<br/><br/>Under the seething anger, she was thinking frantically, searching for some way out of this mess--if not for her, then for the others. When Dradiro turned away to give orders, she scanned the battlefield, counting heads. Thirty rebels had attacked the caravan. She could see twelve or so shackled, looking to her fearfully. The rest lay strewn across the ground. There were more of Dradiro's soldiers than she remembered seeing, and she realized that the crafty bastard must have had reinforcements waiting to join the fray and prevent them from escaping when she called for a retreat. He had laid a trap, and she had blundered right into it. Aryel's shoulders tightened with shame, head dropping.<br/><br/>When the raiding party never returned, it wouldn't take the others back at camp long to realize what had happened. They had plans for even the worst of scenarios, but to lose nearly a third of their numbers in one fell swoop would be difficult to recover from, nor did she expect them to be able to mount a rescue any time soon. Her thoughts were interrupted as the shadows suddenly yanked her and Gabiriel to their feet, pulling them along as if they were part of the chained rebels being herded forward. She dug in her heels stubbornly, charring the fallen leaves underfoot, but it was either walk or be dragged on her face. She grudgingly complied before they could send her toppling forward, but when Dradiro drifted back to stroll beside them, it became obvious that there was still plenty of fight left in the tiefling. As if sensing her intentions, the shadows pulled her back before she could lunge for the god again, giving their captive another crushing squeeze in warning.<b>"If you want me gone, then just kill me."</b>she growled, hands clenching in a way that suggested she was envisioning crushing his windpipe.<b> "I'm nobody's damn<i> toy</i>, and if you think I'll 'break' somehow, you're going to be sorely disappointed."</b>