[sub]in collaboration with [@Wildeyes][/sub]

[h1][center][i][u]"A Dragon and her Shadow"[/u][/i][/center][/h1]

Lorelai paced the small clearing near camp.  She hadn't heard from Alphonse yet,  and she should have by now.  Sousiel either although she was less concerned about that.  The cost of the expedition had been far too high,   blooding Taran unceremoniously,  hours of wasted time,  and... Vespa.  She closed her eyes against the threat of tears,  Lorelai didn't have time to mourn,  not yet.

[color=00aeef]"You better not have fucking died on me Alphonse,  I'll... kill you?"[/color]  She laughed bitterly into the silence of the clearing.

[color=ed145b]"Oh, no, please don't. I have so much to live for." [/color] Alphonses voice reached Lorelai's ears, apparently from no where. She turned around, to see Alphonse standing not three feet away from her, clutching his stump, wrapped in his cloak. 

[color=ed145b]"On second thought, they all require two arms, so go ahead and just end it all."[/color] Alphonse held his head up, revealing his neck.   [color=ed145b]"Just make it quick."[/color]

[color=00aeef]"You're not that lucky are you Al?"[/color]  Lorelai grinned at Alphonse,  wincing when she noticed the stump where his arm used to be.  She made her way over to him and pulled away the cloak to inspect the damage.  [color=00aeef]"By the hells Alphonse,  what happened to you?"[/color]

[color=ed145b]"The whole place was set up for an ambush. I was able to avoid detection by most of the revenants, but if the rest had earned their attention....it didn't look pretty. I sprung the trap, it cost me an arm, and...."[/color] Alphonse sighed, [color=ed145b]"Sousiel's gone, Lorelai. I'm sorry."[/color]

Lorelai's eyes widened in a near panic.  [color=00aeef]"She died!?"[/color]  She retrieved her ritual dagger from its sheath at her hip.  [color=00aeef]"How long ago?"[/color]

[color=ed145b]"No more than a few hours. She fell in battle while protecting me and the coven. She was a good friend to me, for the short time we knew each other."[/color] Alphonse maintained a solemn tone.

[color=00aeef]"She sometimes does that yes."[/color]  Lorelai replied distracted.  She bared her forearm and with her dagger made a long jagged cut along the bottom.  Her blood and an acrid black smoke seeped from the wound.  [color=00aeef]"She doesn't get to die until I say so however,  so rude."[/color]

Alphonse's brow furrowed, as Lorelai proceeded with her apparently dark arts. [color=ed145b]"Wait."[/color] Lorelai proceeded heedless to her friend.

Lorelai pressed against the borders of the world as her blood thinned them.  Her voice lifted in the Dragon's Tongue,  exalting Sousiel's might and tenacity in that gutteral language of demons that held no words,  merely intent.  Her blood,  which had pooled on the ground beneath her arm,  began to boil.

The boiling blood expanded across the ground,  far faster than its volume should have allowed.  Faint screams could be heard as the inferno yawned open with Lorelai's blood as the medium.  All the while her song continued,  growing in volume and fervor.  Finally Sousiel's arm appeared,  reaching out of the now black blood to gain purchase on the world above,  the witches nostils were assaulted with the stench of brimstone and fresh viscera as she pulled her self screaming from the pit.

Trudging slowly towards her mistress Sousiel ran her tongue across the cut in Lorelai's forearm,  the wound closing at its touch.  Her eyes were drowsy and pained as she turned to Alphonse and gave a small wave.  "Hey."  Before collapsing.

"Sup", Alphonse responded, as she hit the ground.

The blood,  and the verge it represented,  evaporated back into acrid black smoke as Lorelai ceased her chanting.  She stooped over the prone and naked form of her familiar.  Removing her cloak she covered the demon.  [color=00aeef]"You don't get to die until I do... Didn't I tell you that Sousiel?"[/color]

[color=ed145b]"It would have been nice if you had told me that you could do that."[/color] Alphonse said dryly. Certainly not filled with relief. Nor irritated that he had gone through the emotional rollercoaster of witnessing yet another friend's death.

[color=00aeef]"You'll have to excuse the fact that it slipped my mind,  you know,  amid the rest of my responsibilities?"[/color]  Lorelai quipped back,  slight irritation in her voice.  She sighed,  her voice calm again as she continued.  [color=00aeef]"The others made it out,  a little worse for wear,  largely thanks to you I presume."[/color]

[color=ed145b]"I'm glad to hear it. Oh, before That slips my mind, I'm pretty sure that elder Ruvina is dead. I'm not sure how, but she's a wraith now."[/color] Alphonse's cocky smile was back. [color=ed145b]"I don't have concrete proof, but the undead in that castle were made by a wraith. There aren't exactly a lot of people who could be a wraithly necromancer."[/color]

[color=00aeef]"I've got your proof.  We encountered her and most of her soldiers on our approach."[/color]  Lorelai's voice was bitter.  [color=00aeef]"The whore just couldn't let go... and now Elina's without a leg and Vespa... Vespa's."[/color]  she trailed off.

[color=ed145b]"Is the old bitch at least laid to rest and out of our hair? Or better yet, damned."[/color]

[color=00aeef]"She's left to roam here,  for an eternity alone,  with no hope of being restored to life through whatever foul ritual she'd devised."[/color]  Lorelai spat bitterly.  [color=00aeef]"I'll come back here in a century or so,  to see how mad she's gone,  and laugh at her pathetic state."[/color]

[color=ed145b]"Sounds good and damned to me."[/color] Alphonse said with bitter satisfaction. [color=ed145b]"I don't think I have anything else to report. Do I need to hear anything else?"[/color]

[color=00aeef]"Just that Medusa will have to answer for this... in blood Alphonse.  Her incompetence has cost us enough.  And me more than that."[/color]  Lorelai said grimly as she scooped Sousiel into her arms and began to make her way back towards the carriages.