She stared coldly at the trio, eyes looking quite dead and a scowl on her pale face. "It certainly took you long enough," she continued, voice dripping acid. "But it's to be expected, I suppose, I do have resources of a... much higher quality than yours..."
Mhaiera began giggling to herself as Luna managed to somewhat collect herself and demand, "Why did you do this?"
Mhaiera abruptly stopped giggling and trained her eyes directly on Luna for what seemed like a terribly long time. Finally, she said, walking closer to them, "I would have thought that would be the first thing you would have realized, dear Luna."
"Enlighten me."
There was a flicker behind those icy purple eyes. "It seems I must. I... desire to see you hurt. This... seemed the most effective on short notice. And less messy. Depending on how you use the word 'messy', of course. And there is less blood on my hands, assuming you take the term literally. Which I am. So, tell me, did it work?"
Neither Alex, Luna, nor Mia chose to dignify that with a response.
Mhaiera beamed at them. "I'm always glad to know my work is appreciated. Now, then, you..." she pointed at Alex.
"What?" Alex said, more than a little harshly. "What is it?"
Eyes growing very soft, slightly wet, Mhaiera replied, half to herself, "You... you who did what you did to... him... deserve nothing less than to die by my own hand... I wish to fight you, brat. And... perhaps... if I am less than... you will be able to provide me with some... No, no, no... I mustn't think like that... not before I... before I... Damn you, will you fight me or not?"
Alex looked for a long time at Mhaiera. He couldn't bring himself to hate her, even though his hometown was lying now in burnt ruins because of her. She seemed far more pitiable than hateable, though the latter did seem like a decent option. However, someone as obviously mentally disturbed as her... Yes, Alex wanted to stop her, prevent her from causing any more harm to anyone, but that was about as far as he felt he wanted to go. "It wouldn't be much of a fight..." he said. "I mean, you're unarmed, and all..."
With a sneer, Mhaiera closed her hand around an indeterminate point in the air and pulled backwards, a long, silvery rapier coming back with her hand. "And your next objection is...?"
Alex sighed. "Nothing, I suppose..."
"Good. Now ready yourself, brat. And I would advise that your... companions get out of the general way... For their own health, of course..."
Alex barely had time to pull his sword before Mhaiera launched herself at him.
Though he was no longer the Dragonmaster, Alex still bore the Sword of Althena, though he wasn't really sure why. He was very glad of it at that moment, though, despite the fact that, in the hands of a non-Dragonmaster, it was nothing more than an ordinary (if of extraordinary quality) sword. Or at least, he was fairly sure it was ordinary; if it retained any power for him now, he had no way of accessing it that he knew of.
But now was not the time to ponder magical powers or lack thereof. Very quickly, he raised his sword to fend off Mhaiera's advance. Alex let her retain the offensive that he could see her general style of fighting so he could determine the most effective way of disabling her.
Mhaiera was by no means an expert swordsman, but she was easily the fastest Alex had ever encountered, excecuting at least three attacks to his one. Still, her overall lack of skill made her attacks easily defended.
But the fury with which she fought was remarkable. At least, the fury with which she started the fight with. As the combat progressed, her speed dropped drastically, and the bloody murder in her eyes gradually faded. This seemed less like her tiring out than her heart ceasing to be in it.
This was mostly evidenced by the fact that she was blinking away tears.
Alex maintained his speed as she slowed, and was soon matching her blow to blow. It seemed painfully slow to him, though, as he was putting little more force into his attacks than Mhaiera was, which was very little indeed.
Abruptly, she stopped dead, before Alex could realize that was what she had done, resulting in the flat of the blade colliding into her chest. The sound that it made belied the force of the blow, and Mhaiera's eyes went wide as soon as it touched her.
She stood absolutely still for a moment or two, then whirled away in a fashion better-suited to a ballet than a battle. Alex stared, quite dumbfounded, wondering what she could be doing, and more to the point, why she was doing it.
What she was doing was, as a point of fact, launching an attack. However, neither of the other three present recognized it as such, as the attack was not targeted at her supposed opponent.
Her target was Luna.
Luna didn't even realize it until she had the very tip of Mhaiera's rapier a scant half-inch away from her throat. She stiffened almost immediately and lifted her eyes to meet Mhaiera's. "What are you--"
"I would not, were I you," Mhaiera answered icily. Her voice was steady, her arm and hand were not. Luna looked nervously at the trembling sword; it was not in a place that had much room for error. Mhaiera turned her head to look at Alex, who was advancing. Mia stood about a dozen feet away.
"I should stay put, dear brat," Mhaiera calmly half-called, half-said to Alex. "My hand might slip, you know?"
Alex stopped dead. There was enough chance of 'something' happening as it was without anything intentional occurring.
Mhaiera grinned wildly. "Well, now, this is an interesting situation we have here, is it not?" She then proceeded to rant on all the various things she could be doing at the current moment.
Luna decided to sieze upon this opportunity and very, very slowly lifted her hands towards the naked blade at her throat. Carefully, she lightly took the sides of the sword between her fingers and gently pushed it down and away.
Mhaiera's head jerked back to stare at Luna. She said nothing, just stared for a while. Then, quite abruptly, she tossed the sword away, the air swallowing it as soon as it left her hand.
She thrust her left arm up into the air, palm flat and open. Her eyes went distant and she began to say something at a level barely above a whisper. Three blue lights appeared in the air around her and began to whirl.
"Get away from her, Luna," Luna heard Mia's voice behind her. "She's casting some sort of spell, and I don't think you want to be as close as you are."
Luna nodded and backed away from Mhaiera, keeping a careful eye on her, but not focusing on the increasingly faster-moving lights.
Alex moved closer to Luna and Mia. "Can you stop her at all?" he asked Mia.
Mia shook her head. "I don't think so. Usually, once a spell is started, it has to be seen through to the end. The best we can do is hope that whatever she's casting is relatively weak..."
The lights surrounding Mhaiera stopped whirling, hung in the air for a split second, then formed a perfectly straight line in the direction of Alex, Mia, and Luna. They hung there as Mhaiera lowered her arm to align with the lights. She sneered, then said, "I've underpowered this severely, I don't need the extra energy expenditure. If it doesn't work, we can just try again. But let's end this foolish game as soon as possible. Grand Alignment."
A brilliant blue beam of light blasted outwards from her hand, piercing the balls of light and slamming into the trio, scattering them in three different directions.
As they struggled back to their feet, Mhaiera looked distinctly disappointed. "Pity," she said. "But an amendable mistake. I'd really like to hurt you more, but you're far too dangerous to have around. I'm sure you understand."
She raised her arm again and restarted her spell. The sheer magical energy flowing around her was tangible, so thick one could almost taste it, even to Alex and Luna, who weren't particularly magically sensitive. The whirling lights were almost white in their brightness and seemed little more than a blur.
It was when Luna felt the energy flowing around her that she remembered the instructions she had been given. Muttering, "You'd better be right about this, too," she let loose a stream of words that had been firmly wedged in her mind for some time now.
When she finished, her knees were buckling and her vision was blurring, and she just wanted to collapse right then and there, but sheer force of will kept her watching Mhaiera.
When the spell hit, the lights around Mhaiera vanished and her arm fell limply by her side. Her eyes widened and went blank just before she fell to the ground, eyes open but unseeing, though otherwise she might have been considered unconscious.
Luna fell after she saw this.