[Event] Golden Roses (Akeya/Leila Vergious)

Event Details:

Ignoring the stares from the humans crowding the streets Akeya wandered through a town most familiar to her, even though anyone who knew she had history with this place had long since disappeared. Granted even if those people were still around she currently looked so vastly different from what anyone might remember that they probably wouldn't have recognized her anyway. It was solstice, the longest day of the year where the sun was at its highest, the weather at its warmest and the light at its strongest. And because of Akeya's rather unique balance between light and dark that meant that her scales and hair were now a gleaming gold and her skin notably pale. Given that she usually went with her darker appearance this was a bit of an odd feeling for her, especially since she didn't decide on this herself: apparently when the summer reached its peak her light side forced itself to the forefront whether she liked it or not.

The reason why she was walking through the streets instead of flying high above them was pretty straightforward: she wanted to reminiscence a bit. She couldn't be called a very nostalgic person, as she almost always focused on the present and the future. However even she could spend some time recalling what has been and how it contrasted with what was. Clover Town was the home of her first guild, Blue Pegasus, which had stood proudly as one of the greatest and most famous of legal guilds before eventually those same mages who had built its legacy each disappeared one by one, leaving behind a group of mages who lacked both vision and unity. Standing at the foot of the hill which once had supported the guild Akeya looked up at what little remained of it. The guild hall had been nonsensically big, a symbol both of importance and of how much some mages liked to indulge themselves (Shuhei must have been behind that one). After it had been abandoned it'd stuck around for a while before slowly being disassembled with the materials used to construct a whole bunch of more reasonably-sized habitats. The only thing which could really be called a remnant was the large library that had been built in the middle of it all: Blue Pegasus had been known for its impressive library once and it was about the only useful thing left after all the mages had went their own way.

Those last couple of months had certainly been disgraceful when you compared them to Blue Pegasus at its peak. Akeya was essentially the veteran of the guild at that point with all those more famous mages having left for one reason or another. Aspiring young mages who were looking forward to joining one of the most prestigious of guilds found that all those legends were a thing of the past, and the longest standing member was an antisocial dragon who wasn't even so much antagonistic as largely uncaring. It had come as no surprise that those months were marked with infighting and quibbling, newcomers and veterans (such as there were any) both trying to breathe new life into the guild while simultaneously pushing for their personal vision to be brought to life. The official declaration that the guild was disbanded was almost like a mercy kill.

The dragoness took a deep breath, closing her eyes briefly before shrugging them and moving on. She'd spent long enough thinking back to those days. Time to get to work on what she actually came here to do, walking or flying. Of course it was somewhat comical how she'd moved to the centre of the city when the fesitivies she was here for were more prominent near the edges, the centre being too filled with buildings for it to be a good location for festivals. The coast of the island was much more suitable, and now that she was no longer wasting time thinking about a guild long since gone Akeya spread her wings and flew up into the sky, heading towards a patch of coast near the harbour where she should find the person she was planning to meet up with.

For some reason that Akeya had yet to completely discern for herself she'd ended up having made an agreement with Leila to meet up for the solstice festivities in Clover Town. She was also fairly certain that somehow she was the one who first proposed the idea, which just made the question of how that came about more important. Was she just looking for an opportunity, an excuse, to revisit this place which, for pretty much her entire adolescence, had been her home? Possibly, although she would think that rather unusual behaviour from herself. Or was she just trying to be a bit more considerate of her friend's desire for some friendly interactions? She herself had been fine with the working relationship they'd had so far, but the assassin was pretty sure of the idea that the white-haired nature mage also wanted to feel like the two of them could hang out for the sake of spending time together. It was curious that someone who could best be described as some kind of goddess had such a desire for things most commonly sought after by social creatures for whom grouping up started out as a very effective survival strategy.

But that wasn't for Akeya to judge. She did want Leila to feel like the dragoness actually appreciated her presence. As she'd stated many times before, Leila was friendly, cooperative and did not bother Akeya too much with things she knew the dragoness didn't have much interest in. Given that her life had become a lot more... open? Flexible? Varied? Akeya shook her head. Ever since she'd taken in the powers of light and managed to survive the procedure she'd found that she could consider things outside of training, researching and working with the occasional small hobby. She wasn't even sure whether it was the element of light or whether that near death experience had given her a new perspective.

Either way, she was now flying above the coast and scouting the ground below for signs of her friend. She wasn't sure where exactly the girl would be or how she would be recognizeable (other than the magic power and the white hair of course), but she figured that even if she couldn't find Leila the other mage would have no difficulty spotting the practically glowing golden dragon flying slow circles above the beach.

WC: 1,089
TWC: 1,089/1,500

It didn't take too long after she began her aerial scouting before Akeya picked up on a familiar magic presence, one which stuck out like a sore thumb in terms of raw power compared to all these civilians and lower level mages. Looking down the dragoness spotted her friend, although for a moment she was distracted and left confused by the fact that Leila was dressed a whole lot differently than she usually was. The white-haired mage seemed to always show herself in rather simple clothes, worn down by travelling and whatever else she was up to when Akeya wasn't around. Now instead she was wearing traditional attire which was in pristine condition.

Surprise or no, that didn't remove the fact that it was definitely Leila. Akeya entered a dive as she rapidly descended until she reached the ground, at which point she pulled up and flapped her wings to slow herself down, until her clawed feet softly touched the ground in front of Leila. The dragoness looked her friend over from up close, emerald eyes picking up on every trait before settling on Leila's blue eyes. "Greetings. I see you've dressed up for the occasion." She glanced at herself, her clothing the same as always except that, together with her golden scales and pale skin, her clothes had also inversed from their usual midnight blue to what could best be described as the colour of the noon sun. "I've never been that good at dressing up." Her practical mind had difficulty with concepts like fashion after all. In the past there had been some events where she'd tried to dress herself appropriately, but they had been few and far between, and she didn't think she'd been very successful.

"Well, regardless, it suits you." Honestly the dragoness hadn't even thought about what Leila might be wearing since she simply wasn't the kind of person to think a lot about those kind of things, but she assumed that this attire was meant to match Leila's nature as a rose dragon slayer. Planting one hand on her own waist she looked around at where the humans were enjoying the festivities. "I invited you to experience the festivities together, so we might as well get started. Do you have any suggestions for where we start? The mortals seem to have put forth a great many different things, but I feel like there's something else here as well..." She narrowed her eyes as she felt something in the air, the ground, the world around them. The sun was illuminating everything, the day was warm and pleasant... An upward glance had her looking at the sun for a moment before returning her gaze to Leila.

"Are you picking up on anything strange?"

WC: 457
TWC: 1,546/1,500

Even Akeya could understand that one would be happy at the prospect of being able to attend an event without it being interrupted by some threat or another. Cynical as she was she took it in stride when things didn't go as planned, but eventually even the most cynical person would begin to lose their patience if there was always something or somebody causing trouble. "It does seem like it's impossible for a celebration or festival to occur without some force, be it mortal or immortal, to rise up and try to strike as everyone's guard is lower than usual. It does get annoying after a while." The question was whether today would face that same issue. So far it didn't look like anything was going wrong, but it was very much possible that something would jump out at any moment.

Leila's commentary on the dragoness's current appearance earned her a snort as Akeya pointed towards the sun which was positioned high above them all. "It seems that during the summer solstice the element of light is powerful enough that it causes my appearance to alter to suit it. I guess it's as fitting for the occasion as anything, although I can't say whether I'm happy that my colouration would change without my explicit permission." Being stealthy while she was a combination of white and gold definitely wouldn't be easy. She could use her shapeshifting ability to give herself a less extravagant appearance, but she'd rather she had full control over both her light and her dark side, and the ability to suppress them under any and all circumstances when necessary.

The claim coming from her friend that there was nothing out of the ordinary, and that the elements of light and fire were always strong at this time of the year, didn't manage to completely settle Akeya's unease. While it was true that the light was at its strongest today she felt like whatever it was that filled the air was a bit more persistent than just an overflow of light essence. However she didn't have any lead to what might be going on, so with Leila already having dismissed it the dragoness could do little but stay on guard. "As you say then. If you don't have anything specific you want to see we might as well walk around and see what we find. It'll be a long time before twilight falls." With some luck she'd regain control over her appearance by that point, as the solstice's powers waned.

Taking the lead she guided Leila through Clover Town as the people celebrated, her emerald eyes scanning their surroundings to see if they could find something that piqued their interests. There were certainly a lot of folk out and about today, enjoying themselves and setting up a wide variety of activities. Sadly most of them either seemed a tad silly to the dragoness or too easy when compared to the kind of challenges one dealt with as an adventuring mage. She was about to ask Leila if she'd spotted something interesting yet when suddenly a new voice sailed through the air, clearly directed towards Akeya given the content:

"Hey, you! Lizardbrain! I'm betting you couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with those misshapen hands of yours! You must be hanging out with another girl because no man would want to hang around you!"

For a brief moment all festivities in the area stopped as a killing intent sharp as a knife flared up. Then Akeya breathed deeply and the people around them returned to their business, although a bit more slowly than before. The golden-scaled dragoness looked at the source of the voice, a man sitting atop a board which in turn was located above a large tank filled with water. He was dressed like a jester and was sticking his tongue out towards Akeya and Leila. Apparently he wasn't impressed by Akeya's ruthless aura because he just kept going.

"What, can't handle the truth? Tell you what, knock me off of this board and I'll admit I'm wrong! Not that it'll ever happen, you could aim at the ground and still miss!"

Akeya's tail slammed against the ground behind her, sending dust flying as she walked over to the tank and grabbed one of the balls located there without a word. The man who was responsible for selling the usage of the balls to avoid people throwing countless balls wisely kept his mouth shut, because he was within claw distance of a very angry dragon.

Bringing her arm back the assassin narrowed her eyes, then threw the ball with enough force that it blurred through the air before missing the bullseye, bouncing off of the plate and dropping into the water. As a hiss escaped her lips Akeya could hear the jester laugh and yell more things, but she wasn't really listening to that any more. Narrowing her eyes further she glared at the plate, noticing the subtle weaves of magic around it. Something to deflect the balls? No, that would be too obvious, it'd immediately be spotted if someone aimed correctly. Something more subtle... It was hard to sense, but she was pretty sure there was an enchantment in place which prevented the balls hitting the plate as they should. As the laughter continued the dragoness raised one clawed hand, then sharply brought it down. The ball which had sunk to the bottom of the tank suddenly disappeared, bouncing upwards from behind Leila before quickly being snatched by Akeya's tail, which in turn deposits it back into the assassin's scaled hand. Even during this bright day the water inside the tank created shadows at the bottom, enough for Akeya to transfer the ball from one shadow to another. Taking a firm hold of it Akeya brought her arm back once more, but this time with a little less tolerance behind it. The ball, poorly weighted and meant to be difficult to aim accurately, began to glow in her hand as more and more light energy was poured into it.

The jester sitting atop the board blinked, then quickly brought up his hands while licking his lips nervously. "H-hold on, are you so pathetic that you have to resort to cheating to-"

While one might admire his dedication to his art, Akeya wouldn't be one of those people. Her answer to his latest taunt was to throw the ball, which rather than a projectile looked more like a beam of light as it moved from the dragoness's golden claw straight towards the plate which was all that stood between the jester and a wet costume. The enchantment meant to prevent direct hits wasn't meant to deflect this amount of force, the light-infused ball slamming dead centre into the bullseye of the plate. With the amount of force behind the impact the result was inevitable: the board immediately gave way as if the hinges had been shattered, and the jester was dunked into the water tank without ceremony.

The dragoness huffed, then glared at the man who was in charge of the balls before she turned around and walked back towards Leila, her eyes still narrow. "Next time I'm aiming at the fool's head." She stated rather matter-of-factly, although clearly the insults to her prideful self had left her in a worse mood than before.

WC: 1,228
TWC: 2,774/1,500

Akeya's frown deepened as she stared at Leila, both because of what the woman said and because of what the woman did. She'd seen how her friend had paid that jester and his partner in annoyance for the ball that Akeya had used to throw the fool into the water. While the dragoness preferred to not make a scene when possible, which in turn made paying for services the smarter option than blatantly stealing everything or refusing to pay, she wasn't in the mood to give those two men money for the grand service of insulting her and then letting her get her revenge.

As for the warning that if she threw the ball at the man's head like that it'd be trouble... well, Leila wasn't wrong. A normal civilian would be in trouble if she began hitting them with enhanced projectile attacks like that. Which under normal circumstances was good motivation for her to restrain herself. It was just extremely grating that right now the reasonable course of action was to let someone treat her as someone subhuman without some form of comeuppance. And she wasn't in the mood to admit that either. "They'd have to catch me first." That was the only response she gave before turning away and putting her focus somewhere else. Somewhere that it wouldn't leave her thinking about the best way to stealthily do something less than ethical.

Her glare was directed at the flame sprite when it showed off and tried to entice her into trying out another game. Leila seemed happy to follow along, but the dragoness found that she couldn't care less. Watching her friend trail after the little fiery entite towards a tub filled with water, ice and apples for a game of 'catch something with your teeth' the assassin considered whether she'd bother going along herself before deciding that right now, at this moment, she wasn't very inclined to indulge either Leila or some silly little talking flame.

Turning around she wandered in another direction, leaving Leila to entertain herself with the elementals and the tub of apple water while she looked around at the other festivities in the area. Most of the people there took quick notice of how much Akeya's mood had soured, making way and moving in a wide berth around her while the golden-scaled dragon herself moved forward as if anything that came into her path would be pushed aside by sheer annoyance alone.

As she walked it didn't take very long for her to hear people yelling in excitement, quickly followed by disappointment. Since apparently she was feeling masochistic she headed towards the crowd, rather than the sensible option of moving in exactly the opposite direction, to see them standing around some contraption of a long pole with a bell at the top and a plate at the bottom. A rather old-fashioned but popular game for festivals: hit the plate as hard as you can and hope that you can launch some block high enough to make the bell ring. A test of strength and proving that you can hit a target when it's not moving and literally right in front of you. Given how a lot of people drunk themselves into a stupor during festivals the latter achievement was often as tricky as the first.

There was one man who clearly had the role of administrator for the game, standing there with muscular arms folded and looking proud as nobody had managed to make the bell ring yet. Seeing Akeya (the crowd parting as her aura was nearly tangible currently) he did a double take, but courageously tried to give her his usual spiel. "Welcome ma'am, to our little contest of-"

"One more word and I'll let you celebrate this solstice by planting a sun in your stomach." Akeya's words where sharp and hard as ice, immediately silencing the entire crowd and the man as well, whose face turned white as the dragoness glared at the contraption meant to symbolize a test of strength. After several seconds of utter silence she nodded. "Smart man. Now, I'm sure you've also got some lovely trick in here to make things difficult for participants, so don't bother me as I figure it out. Try to hurry me and regret it."

As a sort of consolation prize for having to endure her bad mood she passed the man some coin, payment in advance for her attempt to beat this hoax of a game. She even paid him a little bit more than needed since she was aware she was terrorizing everyone right now. It was just that at the moment it was easier to pay those innocent of her ire as compensation than to not display her displeasure. The man, to his credit, silently took the coin and didn't comment on there being more than needed.

Folding her arms the dragoness glared away, her emerald eyes narrow as she felt the magic that flowed through the world, concentrating where there either was some form of enchantment, spell usage or just a creature with high magic power. As she'd expected this game once again had an enchantment in it, and once again it was in the plate. Now that she knew for a fact that there was cheating going on she studied her opponent thoroughly, mentally mapping the magic and unraveling it to figure out what it was meant to do. It looked like some force manipulation enchantment... But it also had transmutation in it. It took her several minutes to be entirely sure, at which point she nodded. "Well, at least you've put some effort into this thing."

The trick was pretty simple once you figured it out: the plate was enchanted to absorb most of the force exerted upon it and use that force to harden itself. Not only would the absorbed force not aid in launching the block upwards but the hardening of the plate would make it stiff and heavy, making it harder to move. In effect the plate used your own strength to reinforce itself for the duration of the strike to ensure you'd never be able to launch the block high enough. Simple, but it must have been a real challenge to get it functional and contained. Direct force manipulation and transmutation without an intelligent mind to regulate it was very difficult magic.

One solution to this trick was to just dismantle the magic. However Akeya didn't want to do that: as annoyed as she was she acknowledged that the owner of this stand hadn't done anything wrong. Destroying the enchantment would get in the way of his business. She'd have to beat this thing without ruining the game for any future contenders.

Another solution was to use sufficient force that even with a large portion of it ended up being negated the leftover amount was already sufficient to ring the bell. For a normal human or even most mages this would be impossible, but as a dragon she was blessed with sufficient raw power that she could pull it off. However she wasn't sure if the contraption could handle that kind of force, clever force manipulation magic or not.

The third solution... "Well, here goes." The crowd had remained silent all this time, not wanting to draw Akeya's ire after she'd made it so clear she wasn't up for chitchat. However now they watched with renewed intensity as Akeya declared that it was time for her attempt. The dragoness herself just flexed her arm, then stepped forward and suddenly turned into a blur of motion as her clawed hand turned into a glowing fist which made an arch through the air before slamming into the plate, almost instantly followed by the clear ringing of a bell.

At first Akeya had thought that the enchantment was just in the plate, but her thorough study had paid off: part of the enchantment was in the hammer that the contestants were supposed to use. An extremely cunning setup, it was what she had given the owner credit for. Given that the owner couldn't just activate the enchantment without everybody quickly catching on an automatic force absorption enchantment would have ended up absorbing the energy from the sun and anything else it came into contact with. The plate would already have become so hard and heavy that any fool would have noticed that it didn't budge an inch no matter how hard you hit it.

By dividing the enchantment into two parts, one side in the plate and the other in the hammer, the owner had ensured that the enchantment would only activate when the two parts collided. That way the energy would flow away afterwards, returning the plate to its normal state. This also meant that people wouldn't notice that the plate wasn't getting warmer despite how long it was exposed to the sun.

Straightening up the dragoness gave the owner a very slight smirk, showing her fangs. "A nice little challenge, but not very fair to most folk. I don't need any prizes, so just give whatever I won to whoever manages to get it the highest after me." With that she turned around and walked away again, the crowd quickly returning to their former enthusiasm now the sour dragon wasn't around to silence them. One of the reasons why this trick hadn't been figured out before was that the setup looked too heavy for anyone to even consider striking the plate with their bare fists. To someone who wasn't extremely suspicious and expecting cheating it would stand to reason that you'd absolutely need the additional leverage from swinging a hammer.

Akeya had to admit that she felt a little better now that she'd successfully beaten the strength contest, but she wasn't exactly back to normal yet. Still, she should probably find out what Leila was up to now. She doubted that the silver-haired mage would just have sat there at the apple bobbing stand waiting for her to come back.

WC: 1,668
TWC: 4,442/1,500

Finding Leila was a simple task, since she just had to home in on the strongest magical power present at the festival. Still, Akeya was surprised that it looked like her friend had actually decided to wait for her at the apple bobbing stand. Was she expecting something? The dragoness didn't know.

Although those thoughts were rather rudely shoved aside when she first noticed two light elementals jumping up into the air and gathering their magic power, followed by black tendrils filling the area for a brief moment before disappearing just as quickly. Watching the spirits fall back down the dragoness dug her claws into the ground to speed herself up, running over towards where she was pretty sure something had just happened with Leila.

Was she worried? Not exactly. Those black things had been from her friend, so it was more likely that any assailants had already been dealt with. However for Leila to use that kind of attack was in itself a bit odd, so the noon-scaled assassin was quite curious about what was going on with Leila.

However before she reached her friend she first stumbled across the thoroughly beaten light elementals, who were doing their best to get away from the woman who had trashed them so soundly and without even really putting any effort into it. Their attempts were halted when they were grabbed by two shimmering claws and lifted into the air, where they struggled weakly as Akeya looked at them with one raised eyebrow.

"I don't know what you two did, but I suspect that you pissed off the wrong person." She tightened her hold a little, her tail slapping the ground behind her. "I'm thinking you two should praise whatever power you follow that you didn't suffer worse. Now go away before I decide I'm hungry." With that said she dumbed them on the ground, practically tossing them away before she resumed her search for Leila.

It was a short walk before she reached the silver-haired goddess, the golden-scaled dragon approaching her from behind before halting and deciding she'd rather not stalk up to someone who apparently was in the mood to lash out. Circling around Leila she instead walked up to her from the front, giving the silver wolf plenty of opportunity to notice her and react to her presence. "I saw you taking care of some light elementals. Why were they attacking you though?" So far Akeya hadn't seen any signs of the creatures of light and fire planning to cause an uprising, so the assault on Leila was rather surprising and puzzling.

Seeing the tears on Leila's cheeks Akeya stared with some surprise. While it had been clear before that her friend wasn't in the best of moods she hadn't thought that the silver-haired goddess was actually crying. She wasn't entirely sure what to do about it either. She guessed that walking away would most definitely not be the correct answer, since doing it once was probably which caused this situation in the first place.

"Two light elementals just tried to attack you but black tentacles fended them off. You weren't aware of it?" For now she'd just address what felt like the less sensitive topic, although she felt like she might be walking on a minefield at this point. Was Leila genuinely not aware of what she had just done? Or had the dragoness misinterpreted what her friend had been trying to say?

She'd have to talk about that in depth later, because right now it didn't look she'd get a proper discussion started as Leila clearly was in a very bad mood, to the point that it was concerting how out of sorts the silver-haired goddess was behaving. The complaint that Akeya apparently was enjoying herself more than enough on her own had the dragoness frown, then sigh and place one clawed hand on her hip. "I wouldn't call that being content. I was offended and frustrated so I went and found a way to relieve some of the stress. Would you have preferred it if I lashed out at you directly rather than teaching some of these stand owners to stop trying to use cheap tricks to deceive their customers?" Of course Akeya didn't really care if anyone else got cheated: she just didn't care for being tricked herself. But she wouldn't say that part out loud.

Even as she talked she was pretty confident the situation was only getting worse. More of that black substance was appearing, and Leila was behaving... well, her face was not matching her voice. She sounded soulless, as if she was simply shaping the words without meaning or understanding behind them. Yet those were definitely coherent sentences and they were appropriate for the situation. Akeya's frown deepened as she took a step forward towards Leila, lifting one claw in a cautionary gesture. "Leila, it might be important for you take a deep breath and calm down. If you look around you you'd see that there's black energy forming, and it brings a bad vibe with it." Hopefully Leila herself would also realize that this was abnormal.

At the same time Akeya was figuring out how to take action if things got out of hand. She was half convinced that there was some kind of twisted influence inside her friend: she could handle Leila being upset and emotional, but this behaviour was completely unnatural. Should she move to save her friend if things got out of hand, or treat her body as being in control of an enemy and do her best to disable it? With how powerful the Silver Wolf was it would be a tricky job, especially since she'd also have to do her best to keep others from being harmed in the process... She had to appear like an ally of the citizens of Fiore if she wanted the law enforcement to leave her be, after all.

The good news was that it looked like Akeya had drawn Leila's attention for long enough by this point that all the civilians had shown the minimal amount of self-preservation and silently left as quickly as possible. Even the likes of cats and dogs weren't going to stick around when there was such a powerful entity showing signs of inbalance and possible loss of control.

The bad news was that the situation was only getting worse. Leila clearly was not thinking straight, spewing out whatever negative thoughts occurred to her. Akeya wasn't even sure whether this was Leila talking or whatever it was that was causing the silver-haired goddess to turn into... well, she couldn't call it anything nice. The fact that her friend was at the same time behaving as if she was in pain only affirmed the suspicion that this wasn't a natural result of Leila's frustration, but that there was something influencing her. That didn't improve the situation in the least, but at least it gave her some more information that she might be able to use if she thought about it more.

The worst news was that Akeya was beginning to lose her patience. Not that she was about to start ranting and shouting, but she had difficulty acting like the voice of reason and trying to calm Leila down when her instincts told her to treat this as a real threat. Her emerald eyes narrowed and her balance shifted to the balls of her feet as she listened to her friend's hateful words without much desire to take them seriously. However she'd at the very least still make an attempt: convincing Leila to calm down would be preferable over a fight, especially since while Akeya was confident in her skill she couldn't say that she was matching the goddess in raw power. And as skilled as you might be raw power was still a factor, especially if the opponent appeared to be using some unusual and dangerous ability.

"I wasn't the one who started things before, and I'm not starting anything now. There were two light elementals who apparently tried something because I felt your power surge and then they were fleeing as quickly as they could." Not that she thought those two elementals were very important at this point but she'd still state the truth as plain as day. However her next words came out rather harshly, some of her tenseness seeping through. "I did not think I would have to worry about an adult goddess breaking apart the moment her companion disappears for a couple of minutes. Usually they're more composed than that."

"Also, stop trying to pretend your current behaviour is reasonable. I don't know what power or entity is causing you to behave like this but it doesn't care about rationality." Around them the light and the dark began to twist and squirm.

"As proven by the fact you just tried to justify your actions by judging mine, as if me behaving poorly in your eyes means you should lower yourself to what you perceive my level to be. In fact you're going much further down the ladder of acceptable behaviour, because unlike me you're losing all pretense of control. If you'd pay attention to your surroundings you'd notice that everyone but you and I has fled because no sensible person would trust you to not strike down innocents just because you're angry. At this point for everyone around you you're just a danger, and the only person I threatened was the one who actually earned my scorn."

The dark was glowing and the light was obscuring. In the presence of the heretical dragon of sun, moon and twilight the laws of two opposite forces were being perverted. Akeya's scales glimmered and shone, fading in and out of sight as both dark and light dwelled in them, separated by those ethereal streaks of twilight.

"I once more ask you to take a deep breath and think about what you're doing. You're not acting like yourself, anyone with a brain can tell there's more to this. I don't know if whatever it is inside of you is listening, but I have the strong desire to track you down and eliminate your existence. As for you, Leila..."

Akeya raised her claw once more, but this time not with caution. This time she shifted her stance to a balanced one where she could easily move in any direction, her talons sharp and with light and dark swirling around them. "You're my friend, and I carry more fondness for you than most creatures in this world. But if I must I'll take you down just the same, even if I hope I can do so without killing you."