...and dueled.

She landed with a heavy thud. Shards of stone flew up into the air around her. The impact was heavy enough to throw the nearest soldiers off their feet, but the dark figure barely moved. It turned slowly towards her and tilted its head up. Teysa's breath caught in her throat.

It was another drow, dressed in the common clothes of a laborer. At least, it had once been a drow. The body before her looked as though it had been dead for weeks. Scraps of skin were drawn so tightly over the skull that they had cracked in places. Much of the drow's hair had fallen out, and his teeth were rotten pegs. What was visible beneath the cracks was not bone but a sort of eldritch unlight. If the holy golden radiance that poured off of Teysa had an opposite, that unlight was it-- it was filmy, unclean, not just darkness but what was beyond darkness, a void that rejected even the possibility of light. As Teysa watched, the cracks wriggled and twisted, but the unlight that shone from them did not change. It hurt her eyes to look at. It was as though the humanoid shape of him was just a mask, a bad and flimsy one that was already starting to shred away. His eyes were empty sockets that poured forth more of that greasy shadow. He moved like a puppet, his arms and legs twitching constantly. One arm jerked up to point at her, the hand on the end flopping around for a moment before extending one finger.

"You!" the drow hissed, and his voice was wrong, too. It sounded as though he was shouting from a distant cave and she was hearing only the echoes. "Interloper!"

"What are you?" Teysa asked. Her voice was filled with revulsion. This thing, this walking corpse, offended her on a visceral level. It was polluting the world by standing in it. She could barely bring herself to look at it, so total was its hatefulness.

"The past," it sang. "The future. What are you? Glow-worm, light-bearer! Mocker!" It cackled madly and a beam of unlight shot from its fingertip. It struck Teysa in the middle of the chest and she reeled at the impact. It felt as though she had been stabbed with an icicle. She staggered back and looked down in disbelief. Her skin was unbroken, but the ray had cored a neat hole through her armor. The light radiating from her chest had dimmed noticeably, but even as she watched it regained its former brightness.

Teysa set her jaw and held out her mace. "I don't know what you are or where you came from, but you don't belong here. Leave now and take your soldiers with you."

It stared at her for a moment. Its skin was drawn too tightly for anything but a rictus grin and its eyes were hollow pits of blackness, but she thought she could see anger in that expression. And, hopefully, fear.

"Die!" it howled, and lunged at her.

It moved like the wolves: not running but gliding. It slid across the gap in a series of jerky flashes that Teysa's eyes couldn't track properly. One second it was closing in on her, the next it was right in front of her and bringing one hand around to claw at her face. Its fingernails were cracked and broken but talons of rancid unlight sprung from its fingertips. She barely managed to duck back in time. The talons raked across her cheek, laying it open to the bone. She howled in sudden pain and shoved hard two-handed. The creature stumbled backward and its next blow, which would have torn her throat out, hissed through empty air.

It scowled at her and came again, both arms windmilling. She caught one blow on her mace handle, turned it aside, then swept the heavy head in to meet its oncoming fist. Bone splintered under her blow. The creature hissed and held up its mangled hand for inspection. It looked more annoyed than actually hurt, though the fingers were twisted and shattered.

Blood washed along Teysa's cheek and down her neck. She could feel a faint tingle on her face. The light there ebbed and throbbed and slowly the blood slowed to a trickle. There was still pain, but it was a dull ache rather than the sharp agony of a fresh wound. She grinned, winced at the tightness in her cheek, and lunged forward.

Her hammer crunched into the creature's chest and she felt a rib break beneath it. It stumbled backward and held out its ruined hand. Blackness enveloped it, squirting forth like blood from the wound, and cocooned the hand in a dark bubble. The bubble sprouted a single long, curving talon, like a mantis's forelimb. The next time her mace descended, the talon caught it and turned it aside. A blow that would have cracked a boulder rang off the talon and sent a shudder all the way up Teysa's arm. Her foe grinned-- he was rangy, emaciated, but his limbs were full of unholy strength. He slashed at her and she barely managed to duck. The blade caught the edge of one of her wings and scythed a few golden feathers loose. A sudden icy chill spread across Teysa's shoulder blade, and she stumbled backward in shock.

The creature raised its hand and fired another bolt of darkness. Teysa caught this one in her palm, and the impact nearly drove her to her knees. She could see threads of unlight squirming across her hand, warring against the celestial golden light filling her body. Pins and needles tingled in her palm. Gradually, the light pushed out the rancid darkness. She took a deep breath and lunged forward. She rained blows on him, not letting up for a second. High left. High right. A sweeping right-to-left arc that caught him on the cheek and spun him around. He turned, spat out a tooth, and stabbed his blade towards her. Teysa knew she got out of the way-- she knew she had been fast enough. Somehow, his blade squirmed like a living thing and impaled her through the thigh. It burst out of the back of her leg in a welter of blood. She screamed and he joined her, his howl triumphant and hateful. He wrenched the blade out and Teysa staggered. She could see her body trying to mend the awful wound, but even the power filling her struggled to knit her flesh. Her leg went out from under her. She scythed out with her mace as she fell and caught him on one ankle. She had meant to knock him off his feet, but the joint, already emaciated, parted entirely. A jagged spur of bone poked out from the bottom of his calf. His victory yell turned into a screech of dismay as he fell.

Teysa **** herself to her knees and crawled towards him. He was rolling around screeching like a tea kettle on the boil. He saw her coming and tried to raise his talon, but she was too fast. She leapt on him, straddled him and pinned his wrist to the ground with one hand. She almost vomited at the touch of his skin. It felt cold and slimy as a corpse-grub. Where her flesh touched his, light and shadow warred, forming a bubbling miasma that hissed and popped. He struggled against her, and he was monstrously strong. She knew in a second or two he would have her off, but a second was all she needed. She raised her hammer like a blacksmith and brought it down on his elbow. There was a loud crack and his arm bent the wrong way and went limp. The talon fizzled into nonexistence.

She raised her mace to deliver the finishing blow and he spat in her face. What came out of his mouth was a wad of solid darkness. It clung to her face like tar and it burned. She screamed and clawed at it with both hands. Half her vision went dark. She could feel her face burning, bubbling, melting...

Something heavy struck her in the chest and sent her flying. She landed on the ground a few feet away from him and rolled over. Before she could get to her feet, he lunged at her, clawing with his remaining hand. His ruined arm flopped at his side. His claws parted her breastplate like silk and gouged into her ribcage. She raised her mace and he batted it aside. It flew out of her hands and clattered away across the floor.

Her breath rattled in her chest. She could smell him, the rotten odor of decay and putrefaction. He grinned down at her and reached out his hand towards her neck. It wouldn't end like this. It couldn't. It couldn't.

Teysa leaned forward and tackled him as he came. His arm flew past her neck. She could feel the breath go out of him on impact. Before he could react, she wrapped both arms around him as tight as she could, heedless of the filth, the rotten sliminess of him, the smell, the revulsion of having to share her space with something so foul. Her wings unfurled, beat once, and launched them into the air.

Higher and higher she went, fighting for every foot of altitude. The monster in her grip thrashed wildly. His hand curled into a fist and hammered blows in her side, her back, her stomach. She felt two of her ribs crack. Blood drizzled from puncture wounds all along her side. She did not let up her grip, not for a second. From up here she could see the driders, the soldiers, the lizard-rider, Aliara and the drow trainees... all eyes stared upward, all mouths gaped in awe. She reached the top of the cave and hung there for a moment, stalactites all around her like strange upside-down trees in some hidden forest. Then she folded her wings up, tilted her body downward and plunged.

Wind roared in her ears. The stone walls of the cavern blurred. The ground rushed up to meet her. Blood thundered in her ears. Just before impact, she closed her eyes. Aliara, I'm sorry...