Another arrow caught Rain in the back, just below his shoulder, piercing his lung. Excruciating pain dropped him to one knee and set his chest on fire as he wove Air to keep the lung from collapsing. A dozen Eld slipped past his shattered weaves and advanced on him, arrows and blades flying.

"Hold on, Mama," Ellysetta pleaded. With every second, she could feel her mother growing feebler, her life seeping away. She couldn't wait for the Fey to help her. She would have to find a way to weave healing herself, in spite of the sel'dor shackles.

Gathering her strength, she stretched out her hands over her mother's wound. "Bright Lord, aid me," she whispered, and drew the magic up from the shining well within her. Sel'dor burned like fire at her wrists, but she set her jaw and persevered. She would summon magic. She would weave it. She would save her mother. The burn became agony shooting up her arms. A low, guttural, moaning cry of defiance rattled in her throat. I will do this! I will! Please, Bright One, help me!

A weak trickle of Earth flowed into Lauriana's body. Not enough, not nearly enough to save her, but enough so Ellysetta dared pull the Mage blade free. She flung the evil thing as far across the room as she could while keeping one hand pressed to her mother's chest.

Her mother stirred, eyes fluttering. Ellysetta choked back a sob. "Hold on, Mama."

Lauriana heard her daughter's voice calling to her, muffled as if it were very far away, but growing louder. When the Mage had stabbed his blade into her heart, her world had plunged into darkness, and her consciousness had been cast on a cold, black sea where relentless, currents tried to drag her towards a terrible abyss. She'd fought against the currents, afraid of what lay waiting in the abyss. The fight had sapped her strength. She was tired now. So tired.

But the currents had stopped, and her daughter was calling. With effort, Lauriana opened her eyes, and her laboring heart skipped a beat.

For a moment, she thought she was dead and a winged Light-maiden of Adelis had come to fly her to the Haven of Light, but then she realized the Lightmaiden's face was familiar. Different-so bright and beautiful-but familiar. A face Lauriana had loved since the moment she'd first laid eyes on it twenty-four years ago.

"Ellie?" she whispered.

A halo of light surrounded Ellysetta. A glorious beacon, fierce and untainted, blazing like the Great Sun. The light swirled and spun, reaching out to Lauriana as if Ellysetta were trying to weave the brightness to chase away the dark of Lauriana's approaching death.

"Oh, Ellie," Lauriana breathed. Awe, love, and regret bloomed in concert. Whether by the Bright Lord's will or the proximity of her own approaching death, Lauriana knew she was seeing, for the first time, the shining glory of her daughter's true soul. A tear trickled from her eye. All these years she'd been so blind. All these years she'd worried that the power trapped in Ellie was evil, yet now she could see how very wrong she'd been. "You're so beautiful ..." She tried to lift a hand to her daughter's face, but her limbs felt heavy as stones.

Ellysetta caught her mother's faltering hand as it started to fall and clasped it to her cheek. Tears spilled freely down her cheeks. She could feel the cold invading her mother's flesh as death crept inexorably closer. "Stay with me, Mama. Don't leave me”

"I promised the Bright Lord, my life for yours." Her mother's lips curved in a faint smile. "It was a good bargain." Her voice grew thin and her words slurred as breath and strength faded from her. "I love you ... kitling ...”

A sudden flash of darkness crowded the edge of Ellysetta's vision, and rough hands grabbed her shoulders, hauling her to her feet. Two Eld soldiers had broken past Gaelen and Rain's defenses.

"Let me go!" Ellysetta fought their hold. "Mama!”

"Mama!" one of the men echoed in a mocking, falsetto voice. "Mama! Mama!" His face went hard. His black sword slashed down. Ellysetta screamed, and Lauriana's eyes opened wide on a silent gasp as the blade sliced through her neck.

Ellysetta screamed again as her mother's head rolled grotesquely free of her body. "No!" she cried out in horror and disbelief. "No!”

"Mama's dead, girl," the man sneered. "Gone to meet her maker, and now you're coming with us to meet yours.”

A red Fey'cha thunked home in his throat. He gave a choked sound and dropped stone dead to the floor. Beside him, his partner met a similar end.

Ellysetta barely registered their deaths. Numb and frozen with shock, she stared at her mother's body. A memory played in her mind, of Rain speaking of Sariel's death. They cut off her head so she could not be healed. Not even Marissya could heal Mama now. She was gone. Irrevocably dead.

A strange, frighteningly empty place opened in Ellie's soul, a cold, barren, aching place where always until this moment there had been a glow of warmth that corresponded with the presence of her adoptive mother. Anguish burned like concentrated acid, searing into the deepest, most guarded part of her soul. Rage and something else rose up to greet it. Strong and wild and violent, that dreadful something swelled within her, straining against the confines of the barrier within her mind.

Her head, her body, her entire being felt as if it were on fire. Pain gripped her with stabbing, thorny hands. White agony crowded her vision, and violent tremors shook the ground beneath her feet. Tremendous pressure strained her senses, relentless and intensifying beyond her capacity to bear. She screamed again, a ripping shriek of anguish, denial, and fury that reverberated with wild force through consciousness and soul.