Energy rolls off the Acrimonious Paint Brush in waves as Drakara raises it before her. She smiles at it, admiring her handiwork, and then turns her burning gaze onto Fyora once more. The precious thing—she’s wounded and outmatched, but there’s still determination in her eyes, fierceness in the set of her jaw. That jaw has begun to waver slightly now, though. A crack in her shell that Drakara’s keen eye homes in on as though she were wielding a chisel, not a brush. 

“You know, Fifi,” she croons, advancing slowly. “I never quite understood what you said when you took the throne—what you meant by ‘becoming more like yourself.’ Do you remember telling me that? Hm?”

Pink-violet eyes narrow, and Fyora grits her teeth. “Of course I remember. I remember everything.”

“As do I.” Drakara’s smile falls, but she quickly replaces it. “But memory is all we share now, isn’t it?”

Fyora shifts, bracing herself against the wall. She can hardly hold herself upright, it seems. Good. But Drakara does not allow that small victory to distract her, satisfying though it may be to see her once-good friend in pain. “When you stole my power and stripped me of my wings, I felt lost. Alone. As though I would never experience joy, happiness, or companionship ever again—but the hollowness within me ran far deeper than that. I thought I would never feel anything again. Not rage. Not sadness. Not even longing.”

She turns the Acrimonious Paint Brush in her hand. “I wandered for years, trying to find myself. Trying to figure out what I did wrong. And then, one day… I heard it. A voice I had long ignored, calling out to me again… Just as you once had. ‘How far you have fallen,’ it said. ‘O, sad Grey Faerie, you have suffered much in the darkness, while those who sought your downfall still yet bask in the warmth of the light. You, with no name, no purpose—come to me, and I shall give you all that your heart desires.’”

“And so I followed the voice. I obeyed it. And soon, once I had proven myself worthy of Her grace… She gave me what you took from me. 

“Wings. Power. A name.” 

Drakara’s lips curl upward, no humour at all in the cruel sneer that pulls at her expression. “She named me, and I was reborn. No longer a Grey Faerie, or even a Fire Faerie—a Dark Faerie. Who I was meant to be all along.” 

“You’re wrong,” Fyora spits, stumbling as she tries to straighten her posture. “You aren’t a Dark Faerie, Drakara. You never were—not a real one. Just look at your wings!”

“Silence!” Drakara’s arm whips out, the wisps of grey energy surrounding the Acrimonious Paint Brush following the sharp, sudden motion in a blur. “You don’t get to tell me who I am! You don’t get to tell me how to feel when you’re the one who made me this way!”

The Acrimonious Paint Brush slices through the air, sending a wave of grey at the cowering Queen of the Faeries. Fyora ducks out of the way, conjuring up a wall of light to protect herself with, but the power of the Paint Brush batters against it, once again shattering the wall just as quickly as it had come up. 

Drakara smirks—Fyora is weak without her staff. Perhaps she always had been.

And yet—

“I know you, Drakara,” Fyora insists, flying higher above the grey deluge. “You may act like a fully fledged dark faerie, but those feathered wings betray you—as does the use of your old name. There's still some of the Drakara I knew in there."

“But there’s none of the Fyora I knew left in you.”

The words are like acid, spat from Drakara’s lips. Fyora recoils as if she had been struck—but she still fights on, creating another barrier of light to shield herself from the next wave of grey energy rocketing toward her. 

“I wanted to help you,” Fyora says. “All I ever wanted was—but I hurt you—and others, as well, all in the name of trying to make things right. I know that, Drakara. So please, stop this and we can—”

But Drakara barrels on, sending another barrage of grey at her opponent. “When I was given my new name,” she spits, “it was as if I gained back a piece of myself that I had lost. The piece that you took from me!” 

Fyora’s eyes dart about. Drakara sees it—sees them land on her staff, a short distance away. The Faerie Queen lunges for it, but Drakara is one step quicker: she brings the Acrimonious Paint Brush down, as if trying to cleave the very air, and this time, her aim proves true: a barrage of grey slams into Fyora, sending her through the window of her chambers to land on the balcony outside in a heap, rolling and tumbling over herself—nowhere near the picture of elegance she was when the two of them were younger, back when they were nothing but an Air Faerie and a Fire Faerie. Two friends with nary a care in the world.

In the chaos and the overwhelming torrent of grey, Fyora’s staff gets swept up. Drakara directs the deluge toward the balcony’s edge and off it, sending her creation—her gift to Fyora, something she had been so proud of, so long ago—plummeting down to the gardens.

Fyora reaches for it anyway as it falls, but Drakara moves fast: she stomps on Fyora’s outstretched arm, pinning her wrist to the floor with a cruel grind of her heel. She grins, wild, and laughs, applying more and more pressure.

“It wasn’t just a part of me you took, Fifi. You took everything, and I have spent a lifetime trying to reconstruct it all! Now that what I seek is finally within my grasp, I will do the same to you as you have done to me!”

Fyora groans in pain. The sound is like music, played on the most finely-carved and tightly-tuned viola. Beautiful. But not as beautiful as the sight of Fyora is, with grey seeping into the violet-pink of her dress and slowly crawling across the surface of her skin. Even the tips of her wings are starting to lose their colour and vibrancy. It is as if, at long last, the very essence is being leeched from Fyora—slower than Drakara would like, and a part of her is mildly annoyed, but she has waited this long already. She can wait a little longer. After all, while the Faerie Queen did not achieve her position alone, until now, she had still been powerful enough to hold on to it by herself.

Fyora takes hold of Drakara’s ankle with her other hand, gritting her teeth as her fingers curl weakly around it. She yanks, but to no avail; Drakara simply grinds her boot down harder and sneers.

“Pathetic.” All traces of a smile have been wiped from the Dark Faerie’s face. Now there is only disgust and disdain. “You are nothing without the staff I crafted for you, Fifi. You are nothing without me.” 

“Drakara…”

“That’s it. Beg, just like I did. It won’t do you any good, either.” 

She steps off of Fyora’s wrist and reaches down, grabbing her old friend by the hair to pull her to her feet. And then, with one final smile as the Faerie Queen tries in vain to struggle from her grasp, Drakara lets her go. She shoves Fyora away, and watches as she falls off the castle tower, grey spreading halfway across her nearly useless wings.