Stained Glass (Chap 5, Path of Fire)
When a stray fireball from Balthazar takes out half of the wooden stairway, Teraphany summons wings of light to bring her up instead, just barely making it onto the next ledge. “You’re fucking dead when I get back!” Her hands dig straight into the rotting wood, and she pulls herself up before continuing her reckless sprint. “I’ll never forgive you! I’ll--!” The whole world shakes around Teraphany, nearly knocking her back off the edge. Balthazar lets out a loud, rippling laugh, and it’s enough to set Teraphany on fire alone. “I’m the one who gets to decide if I want to fight,” she rasps, and even as the desert itself quakes under Balthazar’s wrath, she continues to drag herself up the steps, then the rocks, carelessly cutting her palms on the jagged cliff face. “I’m the one who decides if I want to put my life on the line! NO ONE tells me what to do! I’m not under anyone’s control but myself! I’m doing this duty with you because there’s nowhere else in this stupid, godforsaken world that I’d choose to be!” She leaps across a final gap in the bridge, and finally, she pulls herself up onto the top of the spire. “Do you hear me, Erin?! I’m--” There’s nothing left on the peak except clear desert skies and a burnt corpse. Teraphany doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t even realise what she’s doing until a bird perches onto Erin’s broken body, landing as gracefully as snowfall. Her hands fly to her greatbow to shoot it out of the sky, because she can’t-- no fucking desert scavenger is going to pick at Erin when she’s-- "What are you doing?” When Raven speaks to her, voice as cold as the snowstorm where Erin found him, Teraphany knows that there is no more playing pretend. “She’s already dead.”
Path of Fire, huh.
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