Glowing?!

It was true. Teysa could see a faint luminescence pouring out from between the gaps in her armor. She lifted one arm and turned it to see the bare patch at her elbow. Golden light pulsed and dripped, as though she had been dipped in amber. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The air around her seemed warm, the particles charged like the moment before a lightning strike. She could faintly smell ozone.

She had no time to think about what this might mean. "Come on!" she shouted. "Let's go!"

The drow fell in step behind her. Aliara had changed into a tight-fitting suit of dark leather armor. Overlapping segments provided her some protection without impeding her movement. She had a knife in each hand, and Teysa knew that there were at least a half-dozen more blades secreted about her person.

The noise of battle grew louder as they passed through the warren. Teysa could hear screams, the rattle of steel, and a peculiar buzzing hum. She turned one last corner and gasped.

The scene before them was straight out of a nightmare. The western entrance was a vast, high-ceilinged cave, and it was thronged with people. Teysa could see at least three dozen driders surrounded by a horde of human-sized figures. The Matron was easy to pick out-- she was at least a head taller than any other drider. Many of the attackers carried torches, and her face blazed with fury in the firelight. The webbing along one wall was a curtain of flame.

Bodies were strewn about the floor, most of them drow. The attackers wore baroque iron armor so festooned with barbs that they looked like walking weapons. They wielded pikes and swords of the same dark iron. Vexillaries among them carried banners with an unfamiliar sigil: a hammer and anvil blazing with orange fire. The driders facing them were mostly unarmed, although a few carried massive leaf-bladed spears. In between them surged chittering waves of spiderlings. Their crushed corpses littered the ground, but the living trampled over them without breaking stride. Occasionally they would mob a screaming soldier and drag him down to the ground, where he would vanish under a living carpet of furry black bodies.

The driders lashed out with their spears, their fists, and their magic. As Teysa watched the Matron held her hands out as though gripping some invisible orb. Dark lightning crackled between her palms and shot out like a barbed tongue. It caught one drow on the breastplate, forked, and jumped to his neighbor. Each drow touched by the bolt jittered and twitched in his armor. Their flesh turned to grey powder and blew away and their armor collapsed to the ground, accelerated rust overtaking it and crumbling it to nothing.

Still the soldiers pressed forward. There were many more of them than there were driders, and they moved with military discipline. Here and there they had isolated lone driders from the pack and surrounded them with steel. As Teysa watched, one drider went down beneath a press of flashing blades. She screamed like a lost soul as she vanished-- a scream that was abruptly cut off. More of them lay dead, surrounded by the corpses of their enemies, and many of the survivors were wounded, missing legs or bleeding from deep cuts.

At the rear of the throng, sitting astride an armored lizard, was a tall, thin man wearing an elaborate suit of plate mail. His face was invisible behind his mask, but he whole posture suggested boredom, the look of a wealthy noble out on a day's hunt who had tired of the sport. By his side were a dozen archers. As Teysa watched, they took aim and sent a volley of arrows towards the Matron and her honor guard. She held up one hand and a wavering bubble of **** sprang up around her. The shafts struck it and slowed to a crawl, then fell to earth like raindrops.

Teysa had no more time to think. Up ahead she could see a knot of soldiers flanking the Matron's position. Two of them whipped on a giant lizard with a black iron ballista mounted on its back. Another was slotting a six-foot barbed arrow into position while two more cranked the windlass. Teysa wasn't sure if the Matron's bubble could stop something that size, but right now she didn't even look like she had seen it. She broke into a run.

No time to check if the drow were still behind her. Teysa pounded forward and hefted her mace. She built speed slowly, but with a sort of ponderous unstoppability. With each step she felt lighter and lighter. Soon she was jogging, then sprinting. The armor seemed to weigh nothing at all. She lifted her mace and was surprise to find it as light as a feather. She was twenty feet away from the soldiers now, fifteen, ten... the first of them turned to see her and his jaw dropped. She took one more step and her feet left the ground.

Golden wings ten feet wide snapped into being behind her. They beat once and vaulted her into the air. Teysa flew the last ten feet and landed in the middle of the soldiers with a thunderous crash. The earth split open beneath her feet and sent jagged cracks zig-zagging away in all directions. The **** of her impact knocked down the nearest soldiers. Those behind them stepped forward and into arm's reach.

Her first swing lifted a soldier off his feet and sent him tumbling. Her second shattered the sword lifted to block it. The sword's owner had a moment to gawk at his ruined weapon before a third strike shattered his breastplate and knocked him to the ground. The other soldiers stared in horror and drew back. But Teysa wasn't paying attention.

Her chest was full of light and heat. She could feel it, as though she was standing in a sunbeam. When she opened her mouth to breath golden light misted out. It rolled off her like steam and shone from every crack in her armor. The nearest drow hissed and flinched away, covering their eyes. When she took a step towards them, they retreated in disarray. She could see her distorted reflection in the steel of their breastplates: she was an indistinct, luminous figure, haloed in golden light, her wings folded behind her. She couldn't feel them, but when she turned her head she could see them. They looked insubstantial, as though they were made of sunlight poured and molded into shape.

The rest of her little band had caught up with her. They stared in wonder. Lil'esh squinted against the brightness, but it didn't seem to burn her eyes the way it had the foe's. Aliara looked Teysa up and down with frank awe on her face. "Tey..." she breathed. "What's happening?"

Teysa's heart soared. She didn't know exactly how to put into words what she was feeling, so she didn't try. "Agamor!" she said. "I can feel Him!" She turned to her troops and pointed at the cowering soldiers. "Into them!"

They needed no second urging. Teysa led the way with her mace held high. The soldiers, to their credit, tried to hold the line. They drew together and braced their spears against her charge. Had she run directly onto them, she would have impaled herself. Instead, a few steps before she reached them, she jumped. Her leap carried her ten feet off the ground and then down again with the **** of a meteor. She shattered their formation and knocked them sprawling like tenpins. The drow and Aliara followed in her wake, blades sweeping left and right to silence the enemy before they could regain their footing.

"Tey!" Aliara shouted. She turned in time to see the lizard bearing down on her. On its back, the last of the soldiers was tilting the ballista. He grinned wickedly at her and pulled the lanyard. The wire snapped taut and the huge bow twanged.

Time seemed to slow. Teysa realized she could see the huge arrow flying towards her. It moved as though through treacle. She braced her heels, raised one hand and caught it between her thumb and cupped fingers. There was a terrible squeal of metal on metal, and the gigantic arrow glowed cherry-red with friction. It slid between her fingers for six inches, then stopped. By rights the impact alone should have knocked her back, but she had not budged an inch. She let the arrow fall and jumped towards the lizard. Her descending mace pulverized its skull, and as it collapsed, she grabbed the ballista in one hand and tore it off the thing's back. Metal straps tore and buckled in her grip. The drow who had been riding the lizard tumbled into the earth just in time for the creature's bulk to land on top of him with a final, decisive thud.

She could feel power coursing through her. It had come before, in the heat of battle, but never like this. A mere trickle of Agamor's light had given strength to her arm and allowed her to smite His foes. This wasn't a trickle, it was a flood, and she could feel it carrying her forward. She looked down and was unsurprised to see her toes floating a couple of inches off the ground. Aliara saw it too, but she had concern written all over her face. She looked like she wanted to say something, but Teysa could feel the river of power tugging her onward. She pointed towards the nearest enemy formation. "Forward!" she shouted, and there was a strange resonance to her voice, an echo without anything to echo from. She felt as though someone was talking through her, as though she was just a conduit. She didn't know how long this manifestation would last. It was like a wildfire raging inside her. But what was it consuming for fuel? She couldn't think about that now.

The soldiers turned to face her as she thundered towards them. She crossed the ground in bounding leaps, each step taking her a few feet off the ground. A nimbus of golden haze surrounded her and lifted her up. She made straight for a group of three driders who had been surrounded and cut off from the main pack. They were menaced on all sides by drow soldiers and stood at the center of a shrinking ring of steel. One of them waved her hands and summoned up a mass of black webbing which tangled up the advancing drow and dragged them to the ground. The others, though, were hard pressed. They carried spears and used them to fend off the attackers as best they could. One drow, braver than the rest, darted forward, but before he could strike the nearest drider bore him to the ground under three of her legs and trampled him into the stone.

Teysa crashed into their formation like a comet. She howled as she came. Her war-cry had been honed on many a surface battlefield, and it served her well down here. "KIIIIIIIIIIIIII-AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" This time, her voice boomed like thunder and sent the enemy reeling, covering their ears in pain. She swatted two of them down and blocked another one's stroke. Her arrival clearly dismayed the drow, but surrounded by their fellows, they weren't about to fall back. They pressed in on her, jabbing and thrusting, and she had to give ground. She caught one spear behind the head and yanked its wielder out of formation. He stumbled forward, a look of sick terror on his face, and her mace sent him flying back into his cohort with a loud clang.

Her trainees filled in the space around her. Teysa stopped retreating and took a step forward. Now she was not a warrior cut off among foes-- now she was anchoring a formation. Untrained, yes, but brave and skilled enough. She stepped forward and her trainees stepped with her. The driders, emboldened by their reinforcements, lined up behind them. Teysa recognized Jez'ria among them. "Vhat haz happened to you?!" she asked.

Teysa had no time to answer. She took another step forward and held her mace in front of her. The soldiers before her drew back into a defensive line. She could see their fear and tension. They were close to breaking. She focused and saw her wings unfurl. The light pouring off her flared and crackled, and the soldiers were thrown into disarray, covering their eyes and screaming in pain. Teysa darted forward and laid into them to left and right. Furious anger welled up inside her. She could see, just beyond the line, the gutted corpse of a drider staring blindly at the ceiling. Her legs had been pulled from her body like the wings of a fly by a cruel child. Her blood was still drying on the blades of the soldiers in front of her. Teysa's scream of rage had an almost physical ****, and the soldiers not blinded by her light or flattened by her mace were sent scurrying in the face of her wrath.

She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and turned. Shadows were flowing over the ground like oil. They pooled and slid from corpse to corpse, from stone to stone. She looked at them, bemused. Not shadows, she realized-- shadow-wolves, vaguely lupine shapes made from solid darkness. They hissed and spat as they came with a sound like the last embers of a dying fire. She held out one hand and golden light flared from her palm, but it did nothing to dispel the shadows. If anything, it seemed to enrage them. They growled as they came, a deep sound like the scrape of stone on stone. Slate-grey teeth sprouted from their tenebrous jaws.

They moved almost faster than the eye could track. One moment they were thirty feet away, the next they were leaping. They glided silently through the air and descended on Teysa and her troops. She held out her mace and swatted one leaping shadow-wolf out of the air. The mace-head passed through it as though it was an insubstantial as smoke, and a faint yip echoed in Teysa's head as it dissipated. The rest, though, landed hard. One of the trainees-- Thi'vo, Teysa remembered-- braced her spear against the ground. The tip passed right through the shadow-wolf and out the back. It ignored the steel and leapt for her throat. There was a bright flash of blood and Thi'vo toppled backward with a hoarse scream. The wolf pounced on her and her scream cut off in a wet crunch. The other trainees gaped in horror and fell back. The wolves seized one, Dirreg, by the leg and began to drag him backwards. He yelled in panic and flailed madly with his hands. Jez'ria reached down and grabbed him under the shoulders. She gave a hard tug and he shot forward out of the wolf's grasp. His foot hung at a sick angle, blood drizzling from his shattered ankle, but he sobbed with relief.

"Back!" Teysa shouted to Aliara. "Get them back! I'll handle these!" Her mace seemed to be the only weapon that could hurt them. One of the driders threw up a wall of webbing as the drow retreated. The shadow-wolves tore at it with their teeth, but broke off as Teysa approached them. They spread out to encircle her and growled low in their throats.