Vines and twisting thorns appeared in the path of Cassarae's blade. She was sent flying backward, all of her forward momentum coming to a grinding halt in the same instant.
It only now became obvious from the corpses that littered the ground, and the spirits drifting off to the underworld, that Cassarae hadn't taken a single step back this entire time. As though an arrow peeling through the air, shattering the winds and splitting the clouds, she had flown straight and true…
Until now.
Matriarch Valeria gripped the armrests of her wheelchair so tightly that it seemed a miracle in itself that it didn't explode. There was a pulsing in the air, but when she tried to call on her Aether, she coughed up a mouthful of blood, her body shuddering down to its very soul.
Her body almost seemed to shrivel up, and the blood she spat out came in a rusted color that dried up almost instantly, flaking like the broken metal pieces of a steel bar left to the elements for too long.
