Chapter 161: Freezing A Mother’s Fury

Veena eyes blink open as she lays splayed out in the middle of the battlefield, her lashes push aside dust and blood as she sits up slowly, sputtering mud and dirt, looking around her through a haze of pain as she tries to find her bearings.

Behind her, Virelle comes barreling across the field in a little, frilly dress flapping around her.

"Did I..." Veena mutters, half to herself. " Did I just hear my mo—"

The tiny demon-kin tackles her sister straight into a hug tight enough to knock the wind clean back out of Veena’s lungs for the third time that day. "What happened? Are you okay? There’s blood in your hair! You look terrible! "

Veena clutches her ribs, wincing through the pain as she half-heartedly tries to fend off her sister’s enthusiastic hugs and squeezes.

"We got our asses kicked," she groans, "...because you and Mom decided to show up an hour late!"

Vexena bites her lip and sneers at Syraleth, looking at her from over her shoulder. A wordless promise that their discussion was far from complete. The queen then hurries to Veena’s side and hauls her daughter upright with careful, practiced hands, wiping away mud and blood before pressing her palm flat against her daughter’s chest.

"I’m no healer," Vexena says, her voice low and warm, "...but this should help."

Warm golden magic surges through her fingertips in visible waves, the glow of it bright enough to briefly light both their faces from below, softening every hard, regal line the Demon Queen normally carries on her expression as her magic weaves across Veena’s body, crudely healing torn muscle and setting broken ribs.

"Are you all right, Veena?" Vexena asks, voice gone soft and gentle, brushing mud-caked hair back from Veena’s face with maternal touch of her fingers, suddenly nothing but a worried, doting mother kneeling in the mud beside her battered daughter. No longer the Demon Queen, most feared person in Elthrea.

"I’m fine, Mom." Veena scoffs, already pulling away from Vexena’s grip. "You really don’t need to—"

"You still need proper healing." Vexena insists, reaching to the bruises on Veena’s cheek, "I could only a patch it, barely, it won’t hold. You need to make sure you—"

"Mom." Veena snaps, gripping her mother’s wrist tighter, steady despite the pain still written plainly across her face, forcing Vexena’s eyes away from the wound on her daughters face. "Can you please focus! There are bigger problems... right in front of us!"

Vexena clears her throat, just slightly, jaw tightening as she straightens back up to her full height, shoulders squaring, horns glinting against the sunlight as the air around her seems to thicken all at once, pulsing and charged with a sudden, voracious impatience and raw, coiled power that makes even her own soldiers nearby take an involuntary step back. The temperature itself seems to drop across the battlefield, fingers of frost creeping faintly across the churned mud at her feet with every step she takes toward the baroness. Every flame and ember on the field guttering low in her presence.

A blink later, the space where she stood blurs empty and she stands, instead, in front of Syraleth, close enough to touch, close enough that the raw, crackling pressure of her presence alone seems to physically press down on reality around them.

Syraleth gulps, eyes quivering slightly before she starts to visibly shrink. Slowly but surely, her monstrous, towering Baroness form collapses back down onto itself. Muscle and bone unwinding, horns retracting, wings folding tight against her spine revealing her usual, still infuriatingly elegant, shape a few seconds later. Some instinct older and stronger than even her own impossible ambition, deciding of it’s own volition, that this was not the moment to be caught looking larger than the woman bending reality in front of her.

"For what it’s worth. I did warn them this would happen." Syraleth says, trying to look her most reasonable. "If they’d simply handed over the Prince, nobody would have gotten hurt."

"I don’t care about the construct," Vexena says, a low growl building in her chest with each word she utters, and each utterance landing with the weight of a guilty verdict already decided. "I don’t care about your goals, your army, or your endless hunger for things that were never yours to take." Her eyes flare, twin roaring furnaces catching sudden, bellowing flame. "But you decided to hurt my daughter." She breathes, flat and final. "And for that... you die."

"Vexena," Syraleth opens her mouth to answer. "I know this—"

Vexena’s hand shoots out toward her neck, faster than her eyes can properly follow, the Demon Queens fingers, crackling with raw, magic power, curl into a claw already halfway to closing on Syraleth’s throat.

Until she suddenly freezes, fractions of an inch from touching skin, faint flickers of Vexena’s magic licking against the baroness’ chin, close enough that Syraleth’s own breath catches in her throat, forcing her to swallow hard as another monk collapses lifeless behind her shoulders, robes crumpling empty to the ground around him.

"IT’S OVER, BARONESS!" one kitsune shrieks, voice cracking with panic.

Both twins were now visibly swaying on their feet, faces gray and hollowed with magical exhaustion. "We can’t! We can’t hold the Queen! There isn’t enough left to give! WE CANT HOLD HER!"

Vexena looks to the chanting monks then back to her hand, tilting her head in genuine curiosity, briefly cutting through her fury as she stared down at her own frozen appendage. It hangs suspended in the mid-air, trembling faintly, moving... impossibly, agonizingly slow. Like it’s fighting its way through water thicker than the world should ever allow, each fraction of an inch costing her visible, grinding effort.

"Is... is this... " Vexena hitches, struggling to find the words. She slowly lifts here eyes back to meet Syraleth’s face, pupils narrowing to thin, dangerous slits as the reality of the situation slowly dawns on her.

"This... is temporalmagic." she mutters, half in disbelief. The two words landing heavier than anything else spoken during the battle.

And even Syraleth, for the first time since she’s set foot on dwarven soil, looks briefly, genuinely uncertain of how her day would end.