Someone near and dear

Sorndyn.

Draegloth of House Eilsana.

Her half-brother.

A breath of laughter slipped from her lips, low and sharp, touched with something dangerously close to delight. Aluziira watched with glee as the mage panicked. His spell, hastily loosed, detonated point-blank, a roiling sphere of flame that burst against Sorndyn’s chest in a violent bloom of orange and gold.

Sorndyn did not move. The draegloth just smiled, sharp teeth on display as the spell exploded in a whirlwind of flames. The mage’s own protective enchantments shrieked as they failed, unraveling in the blast, their fragile shimmer burned away in an instant. He staggered backward, robes smoking, skin blistering beneath the backlash of his own power.

Sorndyn, being part fiend, tanked the explosion like a true champion. He still stood, white chest fur mildly singed but otherwise unharmed. The scent of burnt hair mingling with the acrid tang of scorched magic.

With a single, deliberate stride, Sorndyn closed the distance. His claws, sheathed in dark adamantine, glinted as they slid behind the mage’s back. There was no pause. No ceremony.

Metal punched through flesh with a wet, crunching impact, slipping between ribs, carving through muscle and sinew with brutal ease. The mage’s breath hitched, cut short, eyes widening in silent, dawning horror. Then, Sorndyn pulled.

The sound was obscene.

A tearing, splitting rupture as bone gave way and flesh parted, the body rent in two like parchment. Blood fountained outward in a hot, arterial spray, painting the polished marble in thick, glistening arcs. Steam rose where it struck still-warm stone. Behind Sorndyn, Brinalla moved.

Her hand crossbow snapped upward, the string releasing with a sharp crack just as the assassin spun, his own weapon loosing in the same breath. The two bolts crossed paths in the air. Sorndyn grunted as the projectile struck his thigh, sinking into dense muscle with a dull, resistant thud. It barely slowed him.

Brinalla’s bolt found its mark more cleanly.

It struck the assassin’s leg, biting deep despite his attempt to twist away, drawing a sharp hiss from between clenched teeth. He stumbled, balance faltering, boots scraping against the now blood-slick marble. Instinct drove him. His hand darted into his coat, fingers searching frantically for something concealed within, and failed.

His heel caught the edge of the bed. He went down hard, the impact jarring, breath **** from his lungs in a sharp exhale.

Aluziira did not hesitate.

Her hand slipped into the hidden seam at her chest, fingers finding the slender hilt of her stiletto. She drew and threw in one fluid motion, the blade spinning through the air with lethal grace, its edge catching the ambient light in a brief, wicked glint.

The assassin rolled.

The knife struck only air, but the motion cost him. His hand snagged in his coat, fabric twisting, trapping him for what should be a fatal instant. Sorndyn surged forward. A blur of muscle and mass, claws outstretched. Then Aluziira saw it.

‘WAND!’

A moment of confusion flickered across Aluziira’s mind as the Drow pointed the wand not at Sorndyn, but at himself. Just before the trigger phrase could be said in full, Sorndyn’s monstrous hand closed around the elf’s smaller one. A grinding, pulverizing crunch as fingers collapsed, crushed into powder remained composed, almost serene, concentration etched into every line as he **** the final syllable through broken breath.

The draegloth fell forward when the man underneath him vanished. Her psionics surged back into her mind like a flood released, filling the hollow void left behind. Power coiled once more at her fingertips, eager, responsive.

‘The coward teleported.’

Brinalla was already at her side, her presence a steady anchor amid the chaos. Behind them, Sorndyn roared, raw and furious, his fists slamming into the ground again and again. Each blow fractured the marble further, chips and dust scattering with every impact, the sound echoing like distant thunder.

“You’re hurt, you need medicine.”

Aluziira might have punished such redundancy under other circumstances—but the poison burning through her veins tempered her response. Charity, rare and fleeting, won out.

The draegloth paused his fit of rage hearing those words, rotating to eye the wounded psionicist. The intensity of that gaze was suffocating, predatory, yet not entirely hostile. He rose to his full height. Eight feet of coiled muscle and demonic presence. Blood clung to him; thick, dark, dripping from his claws, streaking his fur, pooling at his feet as he stepped forward. The scent of iron and heat followed in his wake. He prowled toward them.

Aluziira straightened. Pain lanced through her side and leg as she rose, her body protesting the motion, but she did not falter. Her chin lifted, gaze unyielding as she met him eye to eye, silver-flecked ruby against burning crimson.

‘He touched you.’

She snorted. She hid her grimace while lances of pain shot through her lungs at such minimal movement. ‘He did not. He onl-’

‘He TOUCHED you.’

Deciding this argument could be had once she was no longer hurtling towards ****’s door, she turned away to order Brinalla to prepare the portal.

Four hands seized her.

The larger pair, monstrous and clawed, gripped her shoulder and uninjured thigh, firm but not crushing. The smaller, more elven hands followed, settling at her hips, pulling her forward with unyielding strength. She was drawn against him.

Heat radiated from his body, oppressive and constant. His breath washed over her, hot and thick with the stench of sulphur and something distinctly male. It curled into her lungs, heavy and invasive. His face loomed before hers.

Something else flickered there. Possessive. Protective. Claiming.

She held his gaze for a long moment. Finally, she relented to his unspoken demand