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[color=gray][sub][right][color=white][b]Location:[/b][/color] Uhladein, Eastern Marches
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The pain must have been fucking with her vision, because as Rain crawled to a knee, body knitting itself back together, ember flaring back to heat, she could have sworn she saw the Ogre’s [i]head[/i] split open. The shieldmaiden had blown out its shin before being thrown away, but whatever the state of its bones it stood up anyway. 

It didn’t look like an Ogre anymore. It didn’t look like anything. In the lightning its silhouette was singular and otherworldly. Rain had been right, what she felt was fear. How could anyone look at this and not feel it too? 

But Rain didn’t process fear well. At home, fear was chum in ravenous, hungry waters. If the other kids saw your fear, they knew they could eat your food and take your teeth and that you wouldn’t do anything about it but cry. Rain didn’t cry. She handled fear in the same way she handled everything else she didn’t understand. 

She got mad. 

The thing let out a sound with no mortal origin, the mirth and fury of the unknowable that made thunder shrink and made her insides curl. She met it with a roar of her own, not nearly so loud, but the anger sent molten soulfire spilling from her still-sealing wounds. Rain forgot she was going to die just long enough that, if the Ogre was any faster, it would kill her before she got the chance to remember. 

And it [i]was[/i] fast—but not fast enough. Its horrific clawed arm lurched down, and met the marriage of steel and flesh that was the swordswoman. Rain’s sense caught up with her and her she fell quiet, watching in awe as the Huntress matched the Ogre’s horrible strength and pulled the blow aside. Before she could say anything else though, she felt something wrap around her, and briefly considering getting angry again instead of panicking. She realized though that the something was in fact some[i]one[/i]. The swordswoman—kind of. A tail had burst from her, sizzling against Rain’s body, and then just as quickly she found herself tossed wholly away like a steaming tumbleweed. 

Now [i]that[/i] was worth getting angry over. Rain wasn’t exactly substantial, but dammit, you did not pick her up and you most definitely did not [i]throw her[/i]. She had ripped out molars for slights a fraction as heinous; this Huntress was going to owe her a whole jawbone’s worth of teeth. She—

She was dead. 

The Ogre’s other arm came down, and…it was like blinking. The woman was there, and then she just wasn’t. Bits of her were there. And there. And waaaaay over there. Rain’s eyes followed the sword as it tumbled through the air, embedding itself into the nearby tower wall. She stared, dumbfounded. 

[i]She saved me.[/i]

[i]She’s dead.[/i]

[COLOR=92278f]“But...”[/color] she babbled like an idiot, like the first time papa had ever shown her a magic trick. People died at these things, that’s the way it was. Obviously that meant Hunters too, didn’t it? Rain had never seen it happen before, it always sounded like it was nearly impossible to do. But she was gone, just as fast and easily as the guards. 

[i]You didn’t move. Now she’s dead.[/i]

Something bubbled up within her. Something new, and strange, and its pangs felt like pain, but she was already hurting and she could still tell it apart. She didn’t understand it. 

So she got mad instead. Real mad, real fast. Her ember practically exploded with heat, and it filled her up like she was a sponge dropped into a lake of fire. Her bones melted back together, her blown-put eye formed anew in its socket. As fast as her skin could boil and blacken, it healed again. Beneath her the dirt and mud and stone hardened like bedrock as she pushed herself to her feet. She stared at the sword. 

The Ogre’s eldritch wail shamed the thunder again, but Rain hardly heard it this time. She felt it though, felt the wind tearing like skin as the back of its other, unmutated arm came swinging at her, but she couldn’t take her eyes off that stupid fucking sword. 

With a slicing, searing sound, the Ogre’s arm connected with her—and as if it had tried to swat the edge of a blade, its hand was severed by the heat, and Rain remained standing, unmoved. She looked down at herself, at her claws, they’d never gotten so bright before. 

[i]Wow, fuck. This hurts.[/i]

Rain spun on her heel, crouched low, and took aim of herself as the Ogre reeled back away from her. 

[COLOR=92278f]“Eyes open big girl!”[/color] she shouted to the shieldmaiden.

A blast of fire sent Rain hurtling into the Ogre, and just as it got steady, she slammed into its chest, almost exactly where she had before. This time however, she wasn’t going aerial, and she wasn’t trying to bore into it. She’d tried being a drill, and it hadn’t worked. So now she was done with the precision shit. 

Dynamite made holes, too. 

She channeled her heat into her claws, dug them as deep into the Ogre’s flesh as she could, and then released it all at once. A violent, massive explosion [i]almost[/i] rivaling the ones from the cannoneer enveloped the Ogre’s chest, and sent a torrent of flesh, blood, bone and void into the sky. 

Rain flew in a streak of smoke and hit the ground, cooled, burnt, but in her wits enough to see that she’d blasted the monster’s chest wide open. Ribs, too many ribs and too big, were snapped and blackened and busted open like a cage. And there within it was the twisted songbird—the heart.[/indent][/indent][/indent]