She does not enjoy the principality's cries but a God-King does what it must. Until the principality retaliates, something Illyria expected but has no means to counteract when it sends its holy fire howling at her.
Immediately, she severs contact. The pain flares, the flames having surpassed the physical presence of the shell and set themselves smoldering at the non-corporeal thing inside it. It is not the awful, overwhelming wrench of the rift's edge shredding at all that she is but it is near enough agony for Illyria to retreat from both the rift and the principality before it.
One arm curls around to hug at the shell, useless as the gesture is - human, no doubt, a reflexive disgusting motion drawn from the instincts of the shell. The flames will choke and die now that the principality is not within striking distance to stoke them with its energies but they take longer than they should to gutter out.
Even before they have, Illyria glowers at the interfering creature.
"This is not your battle," she insists, the edges of her pain leaking into the words despite her efforts. "I intend to free myself regardless of the cost. To what end does it concern you, principality, if it means that in doing so I destroy yourself? To remain trapped, endlessly walled inside this miserable smear of a universe within a shell that cannot contain my true self - it is a fate worse than death. Is that what you wish for me?"
The emotion inflecting those words is new, and it takes significant searching of the shell's memories to define it. The pain hardens into icy displeasure when she locates the word - desperation.
no subject
Immediately, she severs contact. The pain flares, the flames having surpassed the physical presence of the shell and set themselves smoldering at the non-corporeal thing inside it. It is not the awful, overwhelming wrench of the rift's edge shredding at all that she is but it is near enough agony for Illyria to retreat from both the rift and the principality before it.
One arm curls around to hug at the shell, useless as the gesture is - human, no doubt, a reflexive disgusting motion drawn from the instincts of the shell. The flames will choke and die now that the principality is not within striking distance to stoke them with its energies but they take longer than they should to gutter out.
Even before they have, Illyria glowers at the interfering creature.
"This is not your battle," she insists, the edges of her pain leaking into the words despite her efforts. "I intend to free myself regardless of the cost. To what end does it concern you, principality, if it means that in doing so I destroy yourself? To remain trapped, endlessly walled inside this miserable smear of a universe within a shell that cannot contain my true self - it is a fate worse than death. Is that what you wish for me?"
The emotion inflecting those words is new, and it takes significant searching of the shell's memories to define it. The pain hardens into icy displeasure when she locates the word - desperation.