Her body screams, aches, each impact and wound a small fire of living electricity, sending pain arching up to her brain and back. Now that she's not moving, she feels all of it crackling through her system, and there's nothing she'd like better to curl inward, bracing herself against it and shutting off the world.
Weak.
The word thuds in her brain.
Pathetic.
Losing to two inferior Gems that never should have beat you.
Do you want them to beat you?
Do you want to go back?
She draws a breath; it chokes through her lungs. For a moment she feels like spun glass, hollowed out and bird-delicate, as though her insides have been scooped away.
She doesn't want to go back. But she's losing.
Through her eyelashes, she knows they're there: The blasters over her head, wary in their circle. She can see their shadows on the earth. If she moves, they'll fire and she'll shatter. It's done.
Her fingers curl in the dirt -- a small, slow movement hard to see from far away.
She can't win. For the second time, she can't.
A crack forms in the surface of the glass, spreading outward in a hairline fracture.
Useless.
Remember what they did to you.
How they used you.
Fight back.
Loud. So loud. It grinds in her mind like ocean waves ramming into cliffs, wearing away the rock beneath. She's tired, so tired, and she's not even done. Lesedi's spell beats into her consciousness, demanding, insistent: Attack. Cripple. Destroy. Now. Now. Now. MOVE.
The crack is getting bigger.
She wants away.
She has to get away.
She has no plan, only reaction. The mud behind Frisk and Sans rises silently, oozing upward, reforming, reshaping: A last great pillar that doesn't even wait to form the full-fledged fingers of a hand . . .
A hand that slams downward towards the pair in a torrent of water and ooze.
At the same moment, Lapis uses the last reserves of her strength to shove off from the ground, wings re-blossoming, beating, making a last mad escape attempt for the sky.
no subject
Weak.
The word thuds in her brain.
Pathetic.
Losing to two inferior Gems that never should have beat you.
Do you want them to beat you?
Do you want to go back?
She draws a breath; it chokes through her lungs. For a moment she feels like spun glass, hollowed out and bird-delicate, as though her insides have been scooped away.
She doesn't want to go back. But she's losing.
Through her eyelashes, she knows they're there: The blasters over her head, wary in their circle. She can see their shadows on the earth. If she moves, they'll fire and she'll shatter. It's done.
Her fingers curl in the dirt -- a small, slow movement hard to see from far away.
She can't win. For the second time, she can't.
A crack forms in the surface of the glass, spreading outward in a hairline fracture.
Useless.
Remember what they did to you.
How they used you.
Fight back.
Loud. So loud. It grinds in her mind like ocean waves ramming into cliffs, wearing away the rock beneath. She's tired, so tired, and she's not even done. Lesedi's spell beats into her consciousness, demanding, insistent: Attack. Cripple. Destroy. Now. Now. Now. MOVE.
The crack is getting bigger.
She wants away.
She has to get away.
She has no plan, only reaction. The mud behind Frisk and Sans rises silently, oozing upward, reforming, reshaping: A last great pillar that doesn't even wait to form the full-fledged fingers of a hand . . .
A hand that slams downward towards the pair in a torrent of water and ooze.
At the same moment, Lapis uses the last reserves of her strength to shove off from the ground, wings re-blossoming, beating, making a last mad escape attempt for the sky.