A woman scorned

Amber Stone

Be ready for the Queen of Rocks.

Tag: @tag
HP: 500/500
MP: 500/500

Amber's fingers twitched as she looked 'round at the devastation that had been visited to the innocent village that had once stood around her. Once it had been a prosperous and thriving farming village. To her eyes, shadows of the past stood like ghosts, telling the history of the place. Buildings rose and fell, were inhabited by generations, had seen family after family grow and love within their walls. Hundreds, thousands, of people had lived here, working the fields and raising beasts. Their ghosts shone like trails of faint light, snapping into color and clarity as she focused on them. Once, this had been a place of life and love. Now, only ruins stood where there had once been houses and barns and silos. The fields lay fallow, scorched to the earth. Nothing would grow here for a long time. Her fingers twitched again, itching to undo the destruction that had been wrought here. With her Time Arc, it was possible. It was even possible to bring back those who had died, though the effort would leave her exhausted for just a single soul. An entire village would kill her. With a regretful sigh, she turned her thoughts away from what had been and back to what was. Some of the burns marks were still smoldering. The perpetrator was likely to still be within the area. Amber burned to capture them and bring them to justice. Unlike most of her guildmates, she could not rejoice in death and destruction. Not when it was done to innocent people such as those that lived here, in this place. Only when it was against those who truly deserved it could she revel or glory in killing.

Lost in her thoughts as she was, the lioness was startled when Medeia's head snapped around. Amber was here with the angel, her lover and mentor, as well as their mutual 'friend', Kyra. The angel had said little about the why of being here, only that she was chasing rumors of a demoness who had destroyed a handful of villages like this, among other acts of ruination. As her lover suddenly started off in a different direction, the lioness followed her, tilting her head back to sniff the air herself. On the light breeze she caught a scent that was tantalizingly familiar, but she couldn't quite place it. It was an annoying sensation, like an itch in the back of her mind. It seemed, however, that it was more familiar to Medeia, judging by the expression on the lovely wizard's face. Amber opened her mouth to ask, but took another look at her lover's face and closed it again, deciding to keep her thoughts to herself. For now.

Amber Stone

Be ready for the Queen of Rocks.

Tag: @tag
HP: 500/500
MP: 500/500

Amber's initial reaction at the sudden and unexpected reappearance of her long-lost sister was one of pure elation. She had just took a step forward, ready to spring onto Jen in a full-body hug, when her finely-tuned senses tingled, warning her of something. She took one look at Medeia and understood. To an outsider, it would seem as if the angel was perfectly calm and collected, but Amber knew better. She had been with the angel for long enough that she could see the truth, outlined in every line of the angel's face, in every curve of the body the lioness knew better than her own. Her soul and Medeia's were intertwined now, allowing her to see past the surface. Her lover was furious.

As Medeia began speaking, Amber took a step back and to the left, just behind the angel. Her broad arms, strong but gentle, made their way around her lover's waist, pulling her against her body and offering the comfort of her warm body and embrace. She pressed a gentle kiss against the angel's hair, waiting for her to finish speaking before adding her own piece in a quiet tone. "Jen... I thought you were dead. You vanished without a trace... I would know. I looked for you, just after you disappeared... And I found nothing. If I had had a single hint that you were alive, that you were out there... I would have rent the earth asunder to find you." The earth rumbled and shifted beneath their feet as a counterpoint to her soft speech, echoing the turmoil inside her. "I'm a lot stronger than I was before. If I had known... Nothing on this earth would have stopped me from getting you back. Especially with Med by my side. It's not fair to blame us. We never forgot. I never forgot you. We had just started to be sisters, after so long apart, when you disappeared. I was heartbroken. You can't even begin to know how happy I am to see you alive right now."

Amber Stone

Be ready for the Queen of Rocks.

Tag: @tag
HP: 500/500
MP: 500/500

Amber held Medeia in a loving and supportive embrace, listening to her and Jen talk. Her ear twitched as the angel stroked it, but she managed to keep her composure through sheer willpower. It wouldn't do to melt into a puddle in front of her sister, not to mention Kyra. Not in a moment like this. She kept her silence until her sister had finished her story, then carefully let go of her angel and strode forward, closing the distance between herself and her sister. She stood there for a moment, then leaned down and touched the metal shackle around Jennifer's ankle. A moment of focus and the shackle shattered with a loud crack and spray of sparks. Her sister's other bindings suffered the same fate, and then the Lioness threw her arms around her sister and pulled her into a tight hug.

"I don't care what you say." She said after a moment. "You're still my sister, and I still love you. I will always love you, no matter what happens, no matter where you go. For the majority of my life I didn't know you even existed, but now I couldn't bear to lose you. I'm so sorry you had to go through all that." She held the hug throughout her speech, holding it for a moment after she finished speaking, then pulled back and looked Jen in the eyes, holding her at arm's length by the shoulders. "Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to wreak retribution on those who hurt you. Nothing but having you come back to the guild. Come back to us. Come back to your family. Come back to me."

Amber Stone

Be ready for the Queen of Rocks.

Tag: @tag
HP: 500/500
MP: 500/500

The golden-haired lioness blinked in shock as the normally quiet, mild-mannered Kyra exploded, slapping her sister in the face so hard Amber felt the shock through her hug with Jen, then went off on all three of them before storming off, leaving behind a trail of blood and tears. Then suddenly, Jen was running after her and Med was going off in the other direction, leaving the lioness alone and at a loss for what to do. She'd been with Medeia long enough to know that going after the angel was a bad idea. As much as she wanted to hug her lover again and calm her down, at this point it would likely only lead to another outburst and perhaps more hard feelings. She definitely didn't want that, not when their relationship was going so well. She could go after Jen and Kyra, but she felt that that would only cause Kyra to get overwhelmed again, possibly even leading her to lose control of her darker half, which would only make things bloody. That was even worse than bad feelings between herself and her lover. Besides... Kyra's vitriolic accusation had actually touched a nerve with the earth mage. She didn't want to shed even more blood, certainly not that of innocents. But the thought of her sister being trapped in a dungeon and tortured set her own blood afire with rage. She would have no qualms about visiting some justice upon those who had done that to Jen.

Instead of going off in one direction or another, Amber kicked the ground, raising a rock shaped like a chair out of the earth, and sat down on it. She then began to trail her fingers through the dirt between her feet, feeling what lay below. Veins of basalt and granite rippled far below, flowing in waves that lead back to a nearby mountain. It must be a dormant volcano that erupted long, long ago. She could feel no tectonic activity anywhere nearby, though she could just barely sense the fault line that had spawned the volcano, miles away. Growing bored of what lay below, she turned her gaze back up to the ruined village. The itch returned, and this time she gave in to it. With a sigh she rose from the stone seat and walked back to the village. Trying to bring the people back would certainly kill her, but she could at least restore the buildings and land to what they once were. Green magic circles sprang into existence an inch above her palms, others twining around her forearms. Emerald light washed over the ruins as she walked through them, the houses and shops and other sundry buildings restoring themselves under the influence of her magic, the land beneath returning to it's fertile and life-supporting state. She even reached into the bones of the earth and shifted the rock beneath, diverting a nearby river to flow closer to the village, widening and deepening the channel until it could support barges to facilitate trading by water. Getting carried away now, she reached for the veins of granite and drew them up, shaping the stone into walls that surrounded the village, all of one piece and theoretically impenetrable to all but heavy siege engines or destructive magic. She formed a gate of the same obdurate stone, the doors twenty feet tall and five wide, and one foot thick, but perfectly balanced so that one person could push them open with ease. She added a thick bar to lock them, pivoting on one side and slotting into latches formed out of the gates themselves.

The mage sat down in the center of the village square, her magic flowing out across and into the land, turning what had once been a village into a fortress that even her sister would find a tough nut to crack and should support a thriving populace for centuries. They could mine the nearby mountains, which were filled with precious minerals, and trade them via the river she had redirected. The walls would defend them from bandits and monsters alike, anyone trying to destroy their way of life. When finally her magic was exhausted, she left the fortified village and went back to her stone seat to await her guildmates, her feet dragging tiredly through the dirt. She wondered if any of them had heard or felt the rumblings her tampering with the earth had caused. It was all she could do for the people. She would come back in a century or so, assuming she hadn't been killed yet, and check on the inhabitants. Hopefully they would be nothing more than prosperous miners and farmers, living in the safe place she had created. If not... She could bring down those walls as easily as she had raised them.