Ascension

Emri, The Unclean

Emri sharpened her swords for the third time today. The scrape, scrape, scrape of stone across the blade was pointless as they were composed of metal so rare that it had no name. They wouldn't get any sharper, and they would never dull. The strokes were ritual, a habit instilled in Emri from millennia ago before she was The Soulslayer, The Unmaker, and most recently: The Demonsbane. It was something to do while she and her sister were stuck in the mountains waiting out a storm that seemed to go on forever. 

A few weeks ago, Emri was relaxing in the Void Capital, Nihila, meditating, bathing, drinking, and training. Then some Timestream Seer started ranting about a vision she'd had. The Void Council looked into it and found evidence that a particularly powerful individual was mucking up reality. Now Emri was on top of a mountain, in the middle of a blizzard, looking for some mad god, who was taking his damn time to show up, and -Five Hells- she hated the cold.

The two were camped by a cave high up in the Banshee Mountains, a range of narrow black stone spires, with deep lightning shaped cracks in the sides. In the winter, when they filled with snow, the cracks looked like scraggly white hair. The harsh winds that blew through the range created a never-ending howl, which gave the mountains their name. Today, however, the cry of the mountains was joined by three other sounds: Thoom! Thud! Rumble!

Emri's sister, Zinta, the famous Spike Vixen of the south, drew her spikes from a pair of black gauntlets, that were both portals to the Void. Zinta would reach into the void with her fingertips, slide out daggers of hardened energy, and hurl them from the brink of the cliff.

Thoom! The glowing violet darts rocketed across the chasm. Thud! The spike split the stone of the distant spire. Rumble! The mountain shook, and a wave of snow crashed down. Four avalanches and counting, that was the game. Just something to pass the time.

"I hate these mountains," Emri said.  

The snow was now flying horizontally across the sky as the blizzard worsened. The wind screamed, a high-pitched and unending howl. Frost clung to the edges of Emri's helmet, and the frozen air began to sting. "Sister," Emri called out, "Get inside, we've got another night here before the storm clears."

Thoom! Thud! Rumble!

"Let's go," Emri shouted, leaving her sister to follow. Emri had chosen this cliff because it had a large cave where they could camp. The flames of the small fire she'd made inside the cave were dwindling. Emri crouched beside the fire and threw on another piece of semi-dried wood. A weak crackle and a few more flames sprung up. A cold wind blew through the cave, sending a chill down her back.

Zinta stepped into the cave and took a seat beside Emri. She wiggled her fingers close to the flames.

Emri held out her blades and rolled them over in her hands. Flickering light reflected off the rare metal. She took a pursed her lips considering the weapons.

"Something on your mind?"

"Yeah," Emri said. "Why do you think they call these "Emri's Sting?"

"Who knows why they do anything?"

"It just seems underwhelming," Emri said. "A sting suggests that they're an annoyance. The last demon I stung with one of them had his guts pulled out right in front of his weeping mother."

Zinta smiled and nodded, lost in the memory for a moment, then she shrugged, "I don't know. Why do you care?"

"Just thinking about all the names they'd given us over the years."

Zinta stood. "They like names," she drew three glowing spikes from her gauntlet, tossed them up one after another and began to juggle. "They're only human."