Azade's stance shifted as she pivoted from one direction to another, her back against Anisha, who shifted her stance as well to be sure that she had the best throw wherever the drake appeared. Elaina took her sword in both hands defensively and slowly made her way toward the other two, though it was slow going with the hill's mud. Before she reached them, she heard a brief flap, her eyes snapping to its point of origin, but the creature didn't come crashing down.

Elaina slipped about halfway up the hill, going down to one knee and letting out a frustrated grunt. Another flap, this one much closer, but there was another sound with it. It sounded to Elaina like the drake was trying to clear something caught in its throat. The realization of what that was hit her, and she turned to look up the hill at Anisha, "SHIELD!" she yelled as loudly as she could.

Without question, the alchemist raised her arm with the bracelet on it and the light shimmering magical shield of force came into being a split second before a large glob of viscous fluid was lobbed down from the sky. It collided with the protective barrier in a big messy burst, causing smaller clumps of the liquid to spray in every direction of the magic dome protecting the two women. Azade came in closer to Anisha, her eyes frantically trying to see through the now obscured sightline of the fluid slowly oozing down the surface of the shield. Holes began to form in the tent where some of the smaller globules had splattered, and Anisha and Azade both stared in horror as they realized that the drake had just spit a nearly melon-sized ball of highly corrosive acid at them.

Before they could take stock of what else was damaged from the acid, the drake came hurling down from the rainy night, its tail lashing out at the shield with all of the force that it could muster. The resounding impact cut through the rain as it flung the shield-bearer back over the hill, where she slid right into Elaina, taking her legs out from under her and sending them both back down to the bottom of the hill in a heap. Azade, now unprotected, was left to face the drake alone.

At the hill's base, Elaina and Anisha struggled to get untangled from one another in the mud. Elaina scrambled away as best as she was able, slipping and sliding as she did. The drake's weight from earlier had packed the section of grass and mud down so that it was even slicker than it had been before. As she got to her feet, she heard Anisha cry out and turned to see her cradling her arm with the shield bracelet. Elaina's eyes shot to the top of the hill, where she saw Azade ducking and weaving from bites from the drake as she peppered it with arrows here and there when she could.

"I think it's broken," Anisha groaned as Elaina took a knee beside her to examine the arm. Elaina nodded in confirmation, doing her best not to cause her additional pain by handling it too much.

"You don't have kinetic negation built into that shield?" Elaina asked as she ripped a strip from Anisha's skirt and began to fashion a crude sling with it as quickly as she could. The break was about halfway up the half-elf's forearm.

Anisha's eyes burned from behind her glasses, "I could do without the criticism right now."

Elaina's eyes went up to meet hers, and there was a moment of tense silence, the sound of the drake snapping and growling at the top of the hill only barely managing to cut through it, "Sorry," Elaina apologized before she tied off the sling along Anisha's shoulder.

The sound of a loud impact echoed through the rain, and a moment later, Elaina watched as Azade's body came flying off the hill to land heavily in the mud a few yards from her, sliding a yard or so more before coming to a stop amid the muddy earth. Anisha began to struggle to her feet, but Elaina set her hand on her shoulder to keep her still. The drake wasn't up on the hill, and it had retaken flight. Without knowing where it was, she didn't want Anisha to be caught alone by it with a broken arm.

"Don't move," Elaina whispered as her eyes continued to search the sky, she could hear the flapping of the beast as it circled overhead, choosing its target, but she couldn't see it.

"We can't just leave her," Anisha hissed, looking over at Azade, lying in a heap just a short distance from them.

"We're not leaving her," Elaina assured her, "But the drake's smart. Not as smart as a dragon but still pretty cunning." She pointed briefly at Azade. "That's bait."

"Bait?" Anisha asked skeptically, "For us?"

"For you," Elaina corrected, "So far, I've cut it, and she's poked it, but you hit it with fire and produced a barrier to protect her when she was threatened. It's marked you as the largest threat, so it needs us to separate and catch you out on your own. Do you still have that blue vial from Rashuk's shop?"

Anisha looked down at herself for a moment, forgetting which of the pouches she'd slipped the vial into. With a wince of pain, she found it in one of the smaller ones that ran down the front of her skirt, "Here," she said, holding it up, "What if we don't move. What will it do?"

Elaina reached out to take the vial, "I don't know. But I think I know what it will do when one of us tries to run away."

"Runs away?" Anisha asked as Elaina stood and then suddenly broke into a run away from her, "What? Elaina!"

Elaina sprinted away from both women, doing her best to look as though she was trying to flee. As cunning as the drake was, it still had a vicious animal instinct. Many predators couldn't help but give chase when something they regarded as prey began to flee, especially if they thought they could catch it. Drakes were no different. A dragon would have had the intelligence to reason, still itself, focus on a threat, or use a spell or some other form of range to handle split prey like this. Drakes were mere shadows of real dragons, poor imitations of everything but their savagery.

As she ran, Elaina could hear the drake wheel about in midair, flapping frantically to give chase and catch up to her. When she felt the wind beginning to rise behind her, and the sound of the wings grew almost deafening, she quickly hit the ground. She felt the barb of the tail snag a bit of her hair as she dropped but otherwise pass over her harmlessly. With another beat of its wings, the drake pulled into a climb and she knew what would be coming next. Bringing her knees under her, Elaina waited in a mostly prone position, ready to leap to one side when the drake attempted to crush her again.

There was a long, tense moment of just the rain around her, huddled in the mud in a circle of red light still being cast from her sword. When the shift of air pressure came down from above, she pushed off the ground with all her strength, speaking a brief word of magic to give herself an extra boost so that she could clear the area. Where she'd been, she left the small vial of blue behind. When the drake's body collided with the earth to crush her, it instead smashed the vial, which immediately discharged the magical contents bottled within.

The night lit up bright blue as Elaina landed just over twenty feet away, barely keeping her footing and narrowly escaping the thrum of magical cold energy that erupted around the drake. Had Elaina been facing the light when the magic had detonated, it would have blinded her temporarily, she was sure. Even having faced away from it, the light had thrown off her night vision slightly. Where the explosive cold had been, the mud froze. Much of the rain had fallen in little slivers of ice and snow. The drake itself had been at the center of the blast, leaving it wholly covered by a thick layer of ice and crusty frost. Where the drake's body and the ground met, there was a dense binding mass of ice that had frozen between them, given extra thickness by the pouring rain around them. The beast was caught frozen in place, unable to do anything except thrash its head around.

It shrieked and hissed, and Elaina grinned wolfishly as she sprinted in the drake's direction, racing over the frozen mud before it could become too slick from the rain again, "Now I got you, you slimy bastard!"

She brought her sword down at the base of the drake's neck, cleaving deep into its flesh. The light of the sword vanished for a moment as it was buried halfway into the drake's neck before she slid it out in an extended vicious cut. Steam rose from the hot blood spilling from the wound, and she brought her sword back before plunging it into the drake again in a powerful stab, burying the blade nearly to the hilt. The creature thrashed against the ice as it shrieked in agony, the ice snapping and popping as the drake's muscular mass began to break through it.

Elaina couldn't see much when the blade was sunk into the drake, and she ripped it free quickly, blood-spattered the whole front side of her as she did. But the brief period she'd spent without the light had been enough for the drake to take advantage. Not a moment had the light been free that she saw its jaws come snapping down at her.

Elaina lept back, still able to escape its reach with how awkwardly positioned it was, but she didn't realize until she felt the barb sink into her back that the bite had just been to corral her closer to its tail with its limited range of movement. She let out a cry of pain as the barb sank into her flesh just below where the cuirass ended along her back, fire-filled her body in the area surrounding it before she felt the tail jerk free of her causing her to stumble to the ground.

The earth came up at her fast, her face bounced off of the frozen mud and filled her head with swirling pain. Heat ran down the front of her face, and the salty taste of her own blood crossed her lips. Elaina pushed with her legs as hard and fast as she could, scrambling away from the drake as it continued to thrash and jerk its way free from the ice that had bound it to the ground. As it beat its wings furiously, it sent chunks of ice and frost flying from them, she could hear the cracking and snapping of the ice as it began to pull itself free. Within moments it would be airborne again, and Elaina didn't have any more clever plans on how to get the drop on it. With the venom from the barb coursing through her veins, setting her body on fire, Elaina knew she had perhaps minutes to live so the drake's attention would move to Anisha and Azade.

There was no time for elegance or creative plans. All she had left was brute force, and to hope that it was enough. Despite the pain screaming through her whole body, Elaina forced as much of her magic down into her blade as she could muster through the curtain of agony. The sword's red light began to grow brighter as she did, eventually shifting from red toward white. The energy inside hummed with raw overwhelming power. The light around the blade blazed so brightly as to form a whole secondary blade an inch or so from the sword's metal edge. Elaina struggled to stand as the rain hissed against the radiance of the magic on her weapon.

Elaina could feel each breath taking more effort to draw in now, but she steeled herself and broke into a sprint toward the drake as it began shaking the last of the ice from its wings and poised itself for taking off. She leaped, the the last of the magic of the jumping spell she had used fading just as she did, giving her one final boost before it vanished. The swordmage sailed through the air screaming with her blade of light drawn back over her head with both hands. The drake's wings beat down, and it began to rise into the air, only to have one of the wings cleaved clean off near the base by the shining blade as Elaina brought it down in a vicious stroke. The wing offered no resistance against the edge, and the tip of it cut a long searing line down the side of the creature to join one of the previous blows from earlier.

She landed heavily on the frozen mud as the creature let out a deafening shriek of pure agony. Its tail whipped through the air and dove for Elaina once again. Instead of leaping to avoid it, Elaina simply brought her sword in an upward stroke to sever the end of the tail from the body of the beast, eliciting another shriek of agony from the creature. Elaina's body sagged, feeling her legs and arms growing heavier by the moment. The drake snapped at her in a desperate attempt, but she was able to stumble backward, her sword arm milling aimlessly in the direction of the creature's face, mud hissing under her as she did. She caught the drake with a glancing blow along the side of its face and saw as a piece of the beast's thickly armored skull was cut cleanly free.

Its head recoiled in pain and froze for a brief second in shock, a moment that Elaina didn't waste as she threw her weight forward. It wasn't elegant or graceful, it wouldn't be sung about in any songs, but Elaina brought the sword up in a vast, almost drunken, swing and took the head of the creature right off the end of its long whippy neck. The head thumped heavily to the ground only a few feet from her, and she let out a long wordless yell as if to intimidate the creature further despite it being dead. The body thrashed around, falling to one side grotesquely in the bright light of her sword, which now began to flicker and fade.

Elaina turned, trying to find the direction from which she'd come so that she could find her way back to Anisha and Azade. Despite the bright light at her side, it was getting harder for Elaina to see anything other than vague shapes. One of those shapes was coming toward her quickly, moving a little awkwardly with an arm in a sling.

"Anisha," Elaina mumbled, falling to one knee as her sword slipped from her hand, the light extinguishing as it hit the ground beside her, "I'm sorry."

"It's alright," Anisha assured her tenderly, offering her body as a support for the woman briefly before laying her down on the ground, "It'll be ok. You're ok now."

Elaina smiled faintly, feeling the ethereal fire of the venom giving way to an almost distant warmth, "It's venom... from its tail."

Her chest rose and fell, and the armor felt suddenly tighter somehow, heavier too. Anisha's eyes looked over at the drake quickly, searching for where the tail of the creature might be, "Alright, wait here."

"Sure thing. I'll... I'll be right here," Elaina said with a single laugh, laying in the mud as the rain fell down around her. She couldn't see what was happening, nor did she have the strength to turn her head and try. She didn't think this was how it was going to end for her, which was saying something considering how many times she'd envisioned her own death. But none of the scenarios had ever been from the sting of a drake, soaked in the rain and caked in mud. It was cold, and she found herself missing even the meager bed she'd once had back in Dark Alkotas. Perhaps it was better this way, though, to die in defense of others than old and feeble in a bed somewhere or at the terrible whims of her deranged sister.

Footsteps approached slowly through the wet, and overhead, Elaina saw Azade's face come into view, her long black hair soaked in a curtain down one side of her head. The woman tilted her head to the side as she examined the state of the redhead laying on her back in the mud, "You don't look so good."

"Are we dead?" Elaina murmured as Azade knelt down beside her.

The corner of Azade's mouth twitched as she fought the urge to smirk at her, "No. We're not dead."

"I saw you, though," Elaina said, her brows furrowed. She had been sure that she'd broken several bones not just from the hit but the distance she had flown to the ground, "How are you walking?"

Azade adjusted her position to pull Elaina's head up into her lap, offering her some small comfort in the driving rain. The woman winced as she did, but it seemed like only minor discomfort to her, much less than Elaina would have expected, "Anisha has healing potions she carries."

Anisha came racing back over to them, the sound of her heavy footsteps in the rain announcing her approach long before her arrival. Elaina's eyes shifted weakly from one woman's face to the other hopefully, "Can....can I have one?"

The alchemist looked over at her, concern in her eyes, "It wouldn't do any good. They're for knitting flesh. You've been poisoned."

"Shit," Elaina said weakly, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. Well, it had been worth a shot.

"I'm going to try and slap together a quick antivenom with the stinger." the half-elf said, waving the long curved spike of the drake's stinger around briefly before she brought out a vial filled partway with yellow fluid, "Just give me a moment, and I'll see what I can do."

"Sure," Elaina said groggily, feeling her head getting lighter and her body heavier as it became harder to breathe, blackness from somewhere beneath her rushing up to meet her. "No rush."