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[color=gray][sub][right][color=white][b]Location:[/b][/color] Uhladein, Eastern Marches
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[i]Keep moving,[/i] Rain thought, dashing and flailing through the swarm of voidlings. What her claws touched they destroyed, cleaving apart with fiery ease, but the goblins still found purchase when they dug into her flesh. She tried to push her ember further, make herself molten, but it was too much. She knew pain, she could ignore it, embrace it, but sometimes she forgot that even if she was a Hunter, her body was still a body. Even with so much experience her vision still blurred and her knees still buckled under the heat and strain and god it felt like her heart was melting out of her chest. By the time she had drawn closer to the Ogre, she was hunched practically to a crawl, half swiping at the seemingly endless mass of voidlings surrounding her, and half dragging herself across the liquifying stone. 

[i]Keep moving. You’re going to die. You can’t die. You cannot die. Fucking[/i] move,[i] dammit[/i].

[i]Move—[/i]

Another explosion, just as beautiful as the others, only those she’d seen from afar. This one struck close, [i]so[/i] close that the blast threw Rain many feet onto her back. Her focus was rocked and she cooled near-instantly, sitting up on her elbows as the storm pelted her once again. She saw the Hunter responsible then, a woman with a long braid, a gleaming eye, and an absolutely [i]massive[/i] fuckoff cannon on her shoulder. 

[sub][COLOR=92278f]“What?”[/color][/sub] Rain squeaked, blinking, still in something of a daze herself. 

Thankfully, the Ogre was there to snap her out of it. Roaring with fury, it reeled through the fire and smoke, still intent on her, as were the voidlings recovering from the explosion. Rain scrambled to her knees, igniting herself and her claws in time to cut down a few of the more eager bastards before the rest poured in. The Ogre drew closer, arms raised above its head, poised to smash down, but Rain could hardly crawl an inch without having to shove and rip and bite through a dozen goblins. [i]No![/i] the thought tore through her head, made her whole self shake. [i]No no nonono.[/i]

To her credit, she didn’t shut her eyes, or look away. 

And yet despite that she still hardly the pink-haired hunter coming. How could someone so big move so quickly? And while carrying what looked like a giant fucking [i]door on fire[/i].

“[color=lightpink]Watch it![/color]” the woman yelled. Her voice was loud even over the storm, and startled Rain just as much as the explosion had. In a blur of steps she was standing before her, shield raised like an idiot. You couldn’t [i]block[/i] something like that. 

She blocked it. 

[COLOR=92278f][i]“What?[/i][/color]

The voidlings’ attentions split now between the two of them, and the shieldmaiden, as if it were nothing, used one hand to swing a sickle that looked like it had been forged from blood and hellfire. Rain found her bearings easily, finally getting back up to her feet and returning her focus to the Ogre. The Ogre, however, was thoroughly distracted. 

By the granny? 

It had been hard to make out much of the white-haired woman through the storm in the outskirts, and on the wall Rain had gotten a sense that something wasn’t quite…right about her. Now, so close, it was impossible to miss. Yes, there was something wrong with her. There was something [i]very[/i] wrong with her. Arms didn’t look like that, swords didn’t move like that, [i]flesh especially[/i] didn’t move like that. If not for the barest baseline silhouette of a woman Rain might not have thought she was human at all—or, as human as Hunters could be, anyway. 

She tried in vain to make sense of what she saw, and failed just in time to see that grotesque arm pop like a zit and splash the Ogre with a generous amount of hideous bile. The woman hardly seemed to notice, like she’d been born with on arm pre-exploded. Steady as stone, she raised her sword again.

[COLOR=92278f][i]“WHAT?”[/i][/color]

[i]Oh god,[/i] Rain thought, volcanic heart pounding as she looked around between the swordswoman, the shieldmaiden, and then up at the flashes of blue flames and awesome explosions. [i]Oh no. They’re all cool. Oh they’re [/i]really[i] cool.[/i]

Rain hunched with the effort that came from stoking her ember. White-hot pain rushed through her veins, and in the work of moments the rain turned to steam on her skin and she was dry once more. Her claws grew bright, her teeth glinted in the haze, her feet melted into the stone to brace.

[i]But not cooler than me![/i]

In a blast of heat and fire, Rain rocketed up at the Ogre as its focus settled onto the swordswoman. Stupid monster never should have taken its eyes off her, now it was gonna pay for making her look like some fucking damsel. 

She impacted on its chest, but wasn’t there long enough to give it the chance to swipe her off. Another blast took her up, digging hot claw-marks all the way up to its wounded shoulder, where she let go and flew high over its head. Torquing her body around, burning herself into a bright bolt of fury, she plunged down for its head in a violent corkscrew. It roared, more annoyed than pained, and when it found her it reached up to snatch her out of the sky like a gnat. 

It succeeded—sort of. It did reach her, but it would have had better luck grasping lightning. Rain pierced through its hand, taint and flesh and bone and all like a bullet through wax paper, and continued tearing down its arm in a bloody spiral. The hand had slowed her though, not enough to stop, but enough that when she reached the gaping wound in its shoulder she didn’t quite have the momentum to breach it. She did get deep, and her claws scorched its collarbone clean in two, but reach as she did, and short as she was, she couldn’t quite get to its giant, ugly heart. 

So she remained there for a few moments, a burning tick jammed into the flesh and bone of the Ogre’s neck. For a brief moment she thought she might not be able to get out, but then to assuage her worries, the agonized creature gripped her by the leg and yanked her free with the hand that now bore a tiny, hunter-sized hole in it.  

Hanging there, upside down, she stared into the Ogre’s void-touched eyes and found herself cooling again. She’d pushed herself hard, her skin was severely blackened all over, as was her hair, and though her tongue was burned beyond tasting, she knew the familiar texture of melting bone in her mouth. But it was a different pang shooting through her, different from heat, and pain, and even panic. It was fear. 

The Ogre reeled its arm back and spiked her into the earth, and even wounded as it was, there was more force behind it than anything Rain had ever encountered before. Dust and dirt and mud and melted stone showered the air. Rain’s whole world went blindingly white, then horrifically dark. 

[i]I’m dead.[/i] She thought, momentarily unaware that dead people did not think, and could not feel that their bones were broken. She wasn’t dead, not yet at least. She lay in a small crater, utterly ruined, as her ember worked ferociously to repair her, and stared up at the massive creature through the blur of smoke and blood and one busted eye. 

Body quaking in protest, she tried to crawl out, tried to get back to her feet. The healing process was slow, but it was working. Her skin was coloring again, her splintered bones mending. What remained of her teeth clattered from her gums onto the ground as new ones grew in their place. 

[COLOR=92278f]“Stupid…fuckin’…Ogre…”[/color]

[i]Stupid fucking Ogre, indeed.[/i][/indent][/indent][/indent]