Flora flinched at the blaring sound of the horn just beyond them, and a potent, almost overwhelming sense of regret nearly caught her up and dragged her to stillness. She could've stayed in her shop, but it was far too late for that. The knights ahead were ready to impale both her and the half orc ahead of her, and with the magic slick that had poured over the street, she had a sudden flash of vivid imagining, of coming down face to face with one of those warriors of the Empire, speared through by an unyielding iron point, another dead body to toss aside in the siege. She brought her whip down in a swing towards the half orc and latched him in two rings of it, knowing that she might harm him some with the barbed thorns on the whip but feeling with a critical certainty that it was better he be nicked by some thorns than hoisted onto those spears. She had nowhere near the strength she did-- it'd be a miracle in itself if his momentum didn't snap the magically charged whip, but she tried at least, she<i>tried </i>to stop him, if only to keep him from such an immediate, fruitless death.<br/><br/>Taking in the situation as a whole, she regarded the white robed figure behind the brigade with a taught, snarling expression, still yanking and tipping all of her body weight backwards against the half orc's charge. A Merasheel worshiper-- a conjurer of magics who would use his gifts for evil and death. She despised the god privately, if only because it seemed that anyone who followed the patron of science and knowledge ended up corrupted by a need for power. As holy as that man looked with his clean white robes, as quickly and efficiently as he had channeled the spell to slick the streets with black oil, she could have no respect for him, that he'd use the gifts of his god, the power bestowed upon him, to see her beautiful town toppled. All of these warriors with their preparation and battle positions, with their relentless onslaught of Eastborne made her seethe and regain in herself over her fear, a determination to fight back.<br/><br/>To what end was this conquest? To own the world? To give it to their god? And then what? When all was Merasheel's, when everyone believed only in Him and those who did not or would not were dead or gone, what conquest would they take on next? It was a poisonous desire, this powerful effort to overtake everyone who was not like them-- it was....<i>unnatural. W</i>hile Flora had long left behind the ideals of her brethren, the attention they dedicated to the natural cycles of the world for society's constructed ideologies of normalcy, she could not abide this, could not find it to be anything short of a despicable and self aware evil.<br/><br/>However, despite the nearly tangible feelings of hatred she felt just then, she found she may have to abide it and suffer whatever will these men had for her-- if she couldn't stop this half orc, if he dragged her into the slick, onto the spikes, into the grasp of these warriors, than she, the half orc himself, and well... likely the city all together, were probably done for. All turned to ash and blood under the powerful force of Merasheel's disciples and the Empire's armies.