In hindsight, throwing a demon-god's sentient weapon on the floor while he was right there was probably an extremely stupid idea, but Aryel was not one to pass up an opportunity to piss off someone who thought they were above her.<br/><br/>When it came to Dradiro, though, he quite possibly<i>was</i>above her.<br/><br/>The sudden increase in temperature was little bother to the tiefling, who had a natural resistance to heat, but it nevertheless let her know that Very Bad Things were about to happen. This was confirmed by the sudden boom of a voice echoing through the throne room. Female in tone but undeniably inhuman, and oh so<i>outraged</i>. It made her ears ring, and despite her conviction, she was almost driven to her knees by the sheer volume. Holding the sword with her tortured arms had been difficult enough, and they now flared with pain as she raised her hands and clapped them over her ears, staggering.<br/><br/>When the voice faded away and she recovered herself, she looked up to see the blade in the tyrant's hand once again, his face a dark mask of fury. Dread, cold and heavy, settled in her gut, but the glare she gave in return to his question was as fiery as ever. "I don't serve false kings," she responded, her tone just as low as his.<br/><br/>Those would be her last words of defiance for some time.<br/><br/>She saw his lithe form shift in preparation, but his attack itself was too fast for her eye to follow. One moment she was standing, already trying to step between Dradiro and Gabiriel, and the next she was tumbling across the stone floor to land in a bruised and bloodied heap on her side. It felt like she had been hit by a tidal wave, but it took a moment for the actual pain to sink. But when it did, it was enough to make her finally regret her actions.<br/><br/>The searing, electrifying pain of her severed wing was the first sensation to push through her shock. It was the kind of pain that couldn't even be justified with a scream, and so she remained mute, but for the hollow, wheezing death-rattle of her breaths. Aryel's eyes were wide open, her pupils dilated wildly but seeing nothing. Warmth pooling at her back told her that the wing's stump was gushing blood, trickling between the flagstones to stain the mortar. A sharp pain with each inhale and exhale denoted a cracked rib somewhere in her torso, maybe two--the result of his point-blank energy blast to her side and her wild launch across the room, along with numerous scrapes and rapidly-forming bruises from tumbling across the floor. Her remaining, broken wing was crumpled under her body in an awkward twist, the midnight-blue feathers soaked with sticky crimson.<br/><br/>There was no room in her mind for thoughts, only pain, and a desperate attempt to cling to life. That animalistic instinct to survive was all that kept her breathing at the moment. Already pale from her weeks in the dungeon, Aryel's skin was taking on a dangerously-grey hue as she lay there, the product of both blood loss and shock. Her stomach heaved in her bruised abdomen, and she convulsed suddenly, retching up the thin, watery gruel that had been her prison fare and adding it's pale, grainy texture to the blood she was lying in. She didn't see Gabiriel's headless corpse fall to the ground, the stump spouting silver ichor in contrast to her more humanoid vitals, but even if he had still been alive, there was nothing she could do for him at the moment. There was barely anything she could do for herself beyond resisting the urge to slip into the blissful nothingness of death.