[b]Vasilia![/b]

You fought with Bella once before, deep inside the Eater of Worlds. Back then, she threw herself at you like an animal breaking out of a cage. She foamed at the mouth without a shred of decorum and fought against your firearms with her claws. Just a reckless, arrogant, above all [i]stupid[/i] creature with no regard for her own safety. And yet your instincts have always told you that you were the lucky one to get away unscathed. 

This time is nothing like that. Bella does not fight like an animal or even like a monster might. She stands still for an unusually long time in between each explosive movement with her spine held so straight and rigid that you can't help but wonder if she's letting her ELF run under her skin to shock her into the posture. And then she snaps in a direction, and her body turns into a blur that inevitably kills the next thing it touches.

Sometimes it's a table or a bench. Sometimes she craters the floor or tears a hole in the ceiling. Her claws rip a stone column in half, and the aftershock of the effort blows the whole thing into little chunks that rain down with indiscriminate malice. Like before, she dodges nothing. There's no need; lightning incinerates everything before it can touch her. Her body is lit in a halo of destructive energy that makes her dangerous just to stand near. 

Previously you fought Bella: servant of the Empire. Her Royal Highness Princess Redana's bodyguard, using arts she was accustomed to even if she'd rather they had been kept secret. Now you fight a creature that has been told in no uncertain terms that its next failure will be its last. Her teeth clench hard enough inside her mouth to draw blood, which runs from her lips down to her chin in tiny rivers. Steam hisses from her escaping blood and the extremities of her trembling body. How hot must she be burning herself to generate this much power? How much does it hurt her? You don't have time to do more than register the thoughts before you have to zip out of the way again of another deathblow. 

This is like fighting a storm. And like a storm, it doesn't care what it hits or how much collateral damage it might cause while its rage burns down. This is power that shouldn't exist at a human scale. This is strength to threaten even a god, given the right opportunity. Your only consolation is that she either can't or won't direct it all directly at you. Not that it means you don't have to dodge and tumble just to stay alive, but it means that you [i]can.[/i] That's a blessing right now, no matter how you look at it. 

Bella's claws smash the ground with a crash that drowns out every noise around for hundreds of meters. Her leg snaps through the space where you used to be and throws a shockwave that splinters a mural depicting the taming of the first djinn. You let your glaive pull you at odd angles through strange gravity, and she chases after you with raw stupid strength. Or she doesn't, and just stands there letting so much raw electricity roll off of her body that the now quickly rousing guards have no choice but to turn all of their focus on her. Only on her. 

Like it matters where they're looking. In another minute if things keep going this way there's not going to be a building left for them to guard. Bella screams, and the sound she makes defies description. It splits the room with thunderous force, inhumanly loud and inhumanly horrid. Rage, terrible rage, and something underneath it that's much worse. The wetness in her eyes burns faster than it can fall, so when she rushes at you there's no way to tell if it was tears or blood. 

All of a sudden she's on top of you. You bend out of the way the grace of your gravity arts, and she snaps several bones in her arm following you anyway at what should be an impossible angle. Her iron clawed grip snatches round your ankle, and it burns. It burns so much you want to scream too, though of course you don't. In this last and worst of moments, your brain takes the time to stupidly register that despite all of the destruction she's wrought in this short while, and for all that it's pattern seems obscenely delicate, there's not a single thread out of place on Bella's dress. You should pay your compliments to her tailor, if you and she live long enough to meet each other. 

Bella snarls, and throws you like a discus at the now advancing Azura guards. She plants her feet and reaches across her body to wrench her elbow back into place, and squeeze her forearm until the shattered bones realign into useful shape. The ELF quiets, and focuses into more of a cage-like accessory than the brutal storm-wings she'd let it be till now. Her eyes are mismatched pools of trembling anger, but her shoulders are heaving with exertion from her effort. Fresh steam pours off her skin from every pore. So she watches.

Roll to Overcome, if you would, and tell us what fresh technique you used to save your life. Why are you alive, Vasilia? Why. Are. You. Here?!