<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype;"><span style="font-weight: bold">“You are never brought to your knees, so speaks you,”</span> it was that poison again, riveting on her utterance, <span style="font-weight: bold">“a challenge, as it sounds.”</span><br/><br/>Q’Chae kept her attention spanned, and refused to let her mind take reprieve in idleness. Into the canopy above she stared, where amorphous leafs and their cleaner-edged kin whispered noiselessly, yards from where her expanding fingers could reach. There was the jade and cobalt of their varied breeds, intermingled with emerald of rich depth and their ghostly, dying counterparts. None of this, brought air to her memories, her past was still petrified, and it started to bother her the more the minutes aggregated. She breathed in, filling her lungs to their seams, scenting the perfume of certain barks and spice ferns nipping at the back of her throat. The world was indifferent, to her, it was without the prevalent alteration of time…and yet she could not help but wonder: what was she missing? A looming black blanket carpeted a large spanse in her mind, and it would seem she lacked the gusto to pick its flank and pull back, revealing whatever lay beneath. Only when the human tripped in slight, his weight yoking her as he did so, did Q’Chae blink her lapis stare in a flutter of lashes. <br/><br/>What he said prior, had not fallen on deaf ears. <span style="font-style: italic">Ebony</span> however, did not ring to her as a divinity of the Drow, and therefore went void of special mention in her head. She replied, abstractly. <span style="font-weight: bold">“A pawn, hah!”</span> She was being beyond hypocritical, though that wasn’t something he needed to know. She had a god too, did she not? If not for him, she would be generic as the remainder of her kind with irises of crimson and complexions ranged from pewter to schorl. Q’Chae was apparently different than them though, from the hefty horns sprang from her skull, to the vivid coloration swathing her figure. <span style="font-weight: bold">“In you, perchance,”</span> she stated openly. Did she search something in him? Assuredly, their brains did not ride the same wavelength. They came upon a precipice, and she loosened from him easily. Dust formed in wafts from where a threshold was abruptly made visible, and with a narrowed stare, she observed. It took her a moment to trail after him as the human meshed palms and mass to the surrounding walls. What stood within was a carver’s feat, the shapely figure of that goddess, and Q’Chae went no further. Deities were a testy bunch, some of them sour and others more pleasant – she never bothered to toe their personal waters.<br/><br/>What she watched from there, beyond his collapse to the floor, was orbs of energy, imprisoned by him and then liberated. Q’Chae was speechless, she saw them march about, flitting and twirling, their faces imprinted through a slog of wiry, faintly translucent strands – the very hairs of life itself. She tilted her skull. <span style="font-weight: bold">“Does this render you a murderer?”</span> The human would appear rather rejuvenated from the happening, though Q’Chae…was along the lines of opposition. The sensation in the stale air nibbled razor teeth at the nubs of her spine, and she found herself prepared to retract. Walled spaces anyhow, were no favorite of hers. As she prodded out the ceiling, he came toward her, cutting the space between them. <span style="font-weight: bold">“Q’Chae is empty of search and directionless.”</span> She answered him spry and generalized, soon to be ushered back the way they had come. If she could delve into her head, undo the blockage that was cousin to a reflective wall of ignorance, she would respond with steady articulation. The external realm greeted them with a hushed exhale, and to partner, was that buzzing. Feigning daftness to his voice, she stepped forward, examining the brambles and boughs around them. It was in this, her glance honed on a would-be victim.<br/><br/>Beating the air on translucent appendages, it was a humungous wasp, sizable to her torso in length and thickness. She approached it, and as the monotone insect noticed her, its fearsome stinger lowered from its sheath. Q’Chae elevated an arm and straightened, putting her palm forth and concentrating. What she expected to occur was the bug to puncture itself, bent by her invisible will and ultimately killed. It wavered from where it hovered, and it took her another moment to latch on and slam the buzzard down. Even then, it was able to struggle, fighting her all along – which should not have been. She sprinted to where it lay, and with devastating quickness, speared the mongrel with her tail tip, driving through its exoskeleton to the soil below. Her prey wheedled for a few seconds thereafter, oozing dark innards in a pool that then dribbled upon her skin when she lifted the carcass. She brushed a fingertip in the goop and rubbed the substance on her tongue, tasting the grassy, salted flavor. <span style="font-weight: bold">“I am of battle and for a decade, I was war.”</span> With a lightning snap, she arrowed the dead wasp into the crown of a nearby tree, its body disappearing from view. <span style="font-weight: bold">“War has ended.”</span> She flicked the pyramidal point, freeing her flesh of any leftover excrement and spinning herself back in his direction. <span style="font-weight: bold">“At least as I see it, as humans now caper these forest as though they are victors. This must not be true. I do so believe I dismantled the last cavalrymen.”</span> Their faces appeared in her head again, the few of them, standing in a knightly, protective circle about the mages they were defending. She had killed them, had she not? If her doing was not the culprit, the acts of her countless fellows surely were. <span style="font-weight: bold">“I am uncertain as to what remains.”</span><br/><br/>There was that hum, the strong, screaming vibration of a hundred or so wings, rattling against their partner in combined friction. Q’Chae glanced above her shoulder, seeing a shadow rise and gather from behind the leafs. It whirled, moving as a single arm that when risen before the sky, revealed a raging hive, sisters to the single entity she had disposed of. Her face went flat and she palmed her brow, focusing on some unknown place deep inside of her. As the remaining wasps took formation, she set both her hands to them, trying to tap into a mighty force that had once been damning and colossal. Instead, all she mustered was shoving their thundering numbers apart, placing patches between swarming individuals, and that was the extent of it. She should have thrown them to opposite sides of the forest, a side off the cliff, the other to unreachable depths in the greenery. Something was wrong here, direly so. The cloud of wasps arched, eclipsing what remained of the sun, and she stepped back. Not all of her strength was gone? Could it be? Q’Chae clenched her fists, and then as the multi-bodied monster descended, she engaged. Fleet as someone who was apparently skilled and seasoned, she combined her talons into a single spire and slashed, tearing bug torsos in two, serrating wings and crushing heads with her feet. Her tail too, was used to slash in waves, thumbing wasps from where she twirled, chunking their buggy flesh in a wake of goop and quivering legs.</span>