Welcome to Gaia! ::

It went better than she’d expected and she felt proud in a way because if anything the fact that it had started with just a hand coming from the fog to this over the years. Watching on she tried to tamp down that feeling of anxiety, the need to run and get out of here. She was winning, well her creature was and after that second hit, they surely couldn’t call that princess… right?

Staring as she shifted back a few more steps into her fog, keeping away from the downed mauvian she couldn’t help but watch and take in what she’d brought through. It reminded her of the ghosts she’d seen at the sleep study, the one that looked almost the same and she wanted to say something to it and wanted to know if it would respond this time. She’d gotten this far so would it be able to talk to her as well instead of whoever she had it attack?

Then she snapped back to reality as she heard the shout and felt fists pounding against her back and the back of her head. Turning, she reached into Meissa’s chest out of habit more than anything, fingers curling around their starseed and holding onto it. There wasn’t a way out of this, not after all the work she’d done to actually piece things together. Her face, for probably the first time ever, was serious, and that joking she always did was gone when she finally spoke. “We’re going. It’ll be okay, there’s friends on the other side.” Wrapping her free hand around their wrist, she teleported with them in tow to get things back on track.

Even as she struggled to rise to her knees would Illyria acknowledge to herself that she had bitten off more than she could have handled on her own. The Mauvian should have attempted to stave off the decision that Meissa had held of only involving the two of them. It should have been simple but the smallest of miscalculations, in which power levels were not taken into correct accord, had resulted in this disastrous result. Her back still flared with agony even as yet another lash landed on her kneeling form. Getting a little too personal now, was what went through her head even as she heard Meissa’s cry of alarm and the sounds of flesh hitting flesh before things fell silent. There were words spoken although Illyria could not make out what they were. And then … she was alone. The power signatures of a corrupt eternal senshi and an order super senshi had simply vanished.

No … no … no.

Even as she withstood one more lashing from the creature that lived in Beatrix’s magic, did Illyria push herself fully to her feet to peer through the haze to where she expected to see Meissa locked in a pitched battle only to see nothing. Where had they disappeared too? The fog was letting up and the creature on the horse simply melted into nothingness. Agony still radiated from the lashes that she had taken but a new, sharper, stinging agony washed through her mind.

She had failed a senshi, once again.

The mental anguish, coupled with the physical damage she had endured, was enough to have Illyria collapse to the rooftop once more. Her senshi appearance disappeared as once more she reverted to her feline form before falling prone. In this state she was vulnerable but her lack of power signature would make it harder to be located by potential enemies until she could find a safer place of refuge.


[fin]