Despite the creature’s thrashing body, Anora’s energy shackles--strips of glowing purple with veins of gold pulsating in the translucent color--held. She did not so much as hesitate to drive her blade home as a cascade of decay gushed from its mouth, the shackle around its neck bursting into mist to allow the knife entrance. When its life appeared to have all but completely slipped away, Anora stepped back, pulling the knife from its flesh and releasing her hold on the shackles on its arms.
	She watched it fall in a lump to the ground, her body tense and ready to defend herself just in case. But then it fell still, turning into nothing but the corpse it should be.
	Despite the situation, despite the aura that pulsated in the air and the danger of the reptilian woman still lurking, unseen, somewhere around her, a small smile quirked at her lips. She had killed a monster with a taste for human flesh, saveing any it would have gone after. This. [i]This[/i] was part of what was missing. [i]This[/i] was what she was meant to do. She felt it in every fiber of her being.
	“Okay, you cowardly gecko!” she called, emboldened by her defeat of the ghoul. “Where’d you--”
	Her words cut off in a gasp as another, stronger wave of the aura crashed over her. She took a few steps backward, away from the dead end, her gaze darting around. The image of the man intensified once more in her mind’s eye, the silvery outline rolling from him much like the aura saturating the air. The feeling that not only was he the source of the aura, but that he and her dreams were connected made her inhale and hold her breath as a single word... no, a [i]name[/i] whispered through her mind and echoed around her head.
	“Pahnjaka,” she breathed, the name familiar, even [i]natural[/i] rolling from her tongue though she knew it had never formed it before. 
	If he held the key to her dreams, she [i]had[/i] to find him. No matter what it took.
	The ground rumbled beneath her feat, making her attention snap back to reality. An answer about the dreams that had plagued her would have to wait. Something deep inside her clawed at her, pushing her to put a stop to this before it escalated any further. Tossing aside any thoughts of the reptilian woman, Anora turned and raced toward the opening. She closed her eyes and bent her head, unsure if charging through the spot where paralysis had threatened her would work or not. 
	An icy air rushed over her, and her paced slowed for a terrifying minute as exhaustion threatened to settle in her. But just as quickly as she had run into it, the sensation passed, and she was sprinting down the backroads toward the grocery store as fast as her legs would carry her. Her car would make locating Pahnjaka that much easier. Her injured shoulder stung as she ran, and she could feel her sleeve sticking to her skin from blood that had soaked into the dark fabric around two narrow tares, but she gritted her teeth and ran on.
	Her pace slowed for a moment when she realized the once crowded streets had been abandoned, then ceased, a look of horror on her face, when what sounded like an explosion rose from the direction she was heading. She craned her neck up as the light of the noon sun flooding the backroad changed. Flames shot past in the sky, licking harmlessly at the tops of buildings. A veil of smoke quickly followed after it.
	Breathing heavily from both the exertion of her run and panic, she glanced to the road ahead of her.
	The moment she emerged onto the sidewalk of the main street, she froze, her lungs refusing to work as she took in the destruction that had ravaged the area. It looked as if she had walked onto the set of apocalyptic movie. Cars were on the sidewalk as if they had been blown off the streets, some dented from ramming into streetlights or each other. Alarms sounded from every vehicle in a deafening drone, their headlights flashing as if even they felt the panic hanging thickly about them. A couple fire hydrants had blown from the sidewalk, leaving only geysers of water in their place that spread an artificial rain on the cracked concrete around them. That water joined leaks spraying up through the broken concrete from busted pipes below. Glass glittered in the sunlight from the shattered windows of every shop down the strip.
	A few blocks away, she spotted the source of the damage. Though his back was to her, she could almost [i]see[/i] the power radiating from a man. His gray-skinned opponent with what from her current position looked like a bleeding wound on his palm, stood in what the only remaining intact patch of concrete down the entire strip of road. Tendrils of every color wrapped around one of the powerful man’s arms, waiting to strike. 
	Anora had the feeling she was going to be late for work.
	Swallowing hard, she ducked back into the side street and pressed her back against the wall. The sheer strength it would take to create such devastation was way out of her league. But she did not know if anyone else could even [i]see[/i] the two. She had to do something before they took out more than just the one road, but if she got in the middle of [i]that,[/i] she may as well sign her own death sentence.
	A distraction. She needed to create some sort of distraction, something, [i]anything[/i] to bring to light the destruction they caused. Even if it would do no good, at least she could say she tried.
	She quickly wiped her knife off on her pant leg, returned it to her boot, then dove to where the hood of a car had nearly collided with a storefront. She crouched behind it, only her head visible over the hood. Though she had completed what she had in mind on a small scale a few times, she only hoped she could accomplish it on a larger one, and from such a distance. If she failed, there was no telling what would happen to anyone inside the buildings if things continued to escalate.
	Taking a deep breath, she lowered her chin in determined concentration as she exhaled, and raised both hands toward the duelers. Her eyes locked on a spot between the two, and began to glow with a fierceness unlike any they had ever shown before. 
	A pool of the familiar purple mist streaked with golden particles, her magic in an un-molded form, bubbled over the ground. It began to slowly rise upward in a spiral until it was twice as tall as both men measured together. Tongues of the magic reached out to either side, and the glittering particles rained down as the mist condensed into the swirling, particulate form of a massive falcon, its beak pointed toward the sky and wings stretched out to their full magnificent span.
	Anora’s breaths quickened, and fatigue made her legs shake. She was pushing her use of her powers further than she could handle. She knew the feeling from when she had first started using them. Still, she ground her teeth and pushed on.
	The bird gave a mighty beat of its wings, then turned its head, its unseeing golden gaze shifting between the two men. Then, it opened its beak.
	“Enough,” Anora whispered, but her voice emanated from the bird’s mouth with a crackling fierceness demanding respect. “You’ve had your fun.” Anora faltered, sinking partially to her knees as her world began to spin. The giant bird’s gaze focused on the gray-skinned man. “Now [i]leave,[/i] lest the destruction you have caused be dealt upon you tenfold!”
	The bird let out a sizzling screech, then raised its wings above its head. The moment the misty feathers collided, the entire form imploded into a tight orb, then burst into a shower of violet mist and golden electrical sparks. The display cascaded to the ground around the two men, the sparks closest to them lashing out with electric fingers.
	With a groan, Anora sunk behind the car, her stomach doing queasy flips and darkness threatening the edges of her vision. She leaned her back against the wheel and sat there, limply. She closed her eyes, trying to stop the frantic spinning her world had been thrust into and keep down the contents of her stomach. She could only hope the men would not bother trying to find the source of the spectacle.