there are precious hours in a day, and fewer still are those afforded to considering the dead. she has long since learned that looking at her army as anything more than numbers can make her stutter. and any stumble could cost them everything. 

body counts on the rise, amnesty in a flux, cities they control scored from their maps. 

supply drops made, wounded among their ranks, wounded among their civilians, homes destroyed, homeless in overflowing shelters. numbers, numbers, numbers, hurting until it doesn't, until they all go numb, until she goes numb. 

she hasn't been herself since sootopolis. 

the league cannot afford recklessness, but neither can they afford to have rayquaza and their avatar sit on the sidelines while rocket encroaches on their territory. her home is secured, but she has not spent more than a scant few hours inside - duty has called her to the front and she has worked out of temporary encampments along hoenn's routes. 

rayquaza has remained, for the most part, in sootopolis, serving as a reminder to their people that they have been saved. 

but when the report comes from a grim assistant, the serpent's shadow races over sea and forest. emerald green scales ripple under freya's armor; their winds shake the tops of trees as they spiral over dense woodland. 

a giant looms towards them. the first of the ice plinks against her dragon's scales and old scars burn hotly in the back of her/their mind. life leeching out from them, winter's breath crawling through their veins, their home a tomb, crumbling around them.

the scales on her arms and her face spread surreptitiously, and as they do, the cold recedes. 

freya now possesses draconic resilience, which grants resistance to elemental damage (fire, lightning, cold), as well as immunity to effects that would normally impair movement or senses due to weather conditions.

fire curdles within rayquaza's throat and burns like a supernova towards the golem. 

howard slayte june sleigh
rayquaza uses fire blast

☉

many have spit eva's title at her, pointed it as a weapon against her heart in a brazen attempt to threaten her humanity. how can you fan these flames, peacemaker? and every time, she has bared her fangs and spat back that she is not that woman. she is not someone better. 

but her enemies are all the worse off because of it. 

steel ripples over the sky leviathan's scales; they lash outward, shattering the javelin with an iron tail, but shrapnels splinter, slicing shallow, frigid cuts in their body. 

more pain knifes through freya's head as memories roll through the legendary's organ, that which houses freya's lifetimes. her teeth grit. even if she wanted to comply to fox, there is no stopping the dragon now. 

moreover, she does not want to. she too had been forced to trek that barren, crystalline landscape. she too had been hunted by the dragon of that plane, with its frigid breath whistling like a winter wind through serrated teeth. she had known madness before, but nothing quite like the constant, quivering fear of becoming prey. 

heat radiates in her palms. the cold air begins to blister and a haze ripples out from her, warming the fire that lives in rayquaza's muscles. 

freya can summon and control storms of varying intensity, including thunderstorms, blizzards, hurricanes, heatwaves, or heavy fog to disrupt enemies and control the battlefield.

"don't start a fight you can't finish, fox," she yells back, and her voice echoes with the ancient tremor of her patron.

wind rakes through her hair. the hail around her liquefies and then steams. her palms twist and her teeth sink into her lip as she grasps at a power she's only just beginning to understand. waves of heat ride the snapping of another deluge of flame spurting from rayquaza's maw. 

howard slayte june sleigh
rayquaza uses iron tail
owchies
freya summons a heatwave
another fire blast

☉

there is grief here. it is in the steaming droplets that scald dew-frozen leaves, sucking the life from every stretch of green that surrounds them. it is in the heat radiating from her, a sun of her own making, drawing salt and water from his skin. creation gives way to death, but before the rebirth is the in between - the messy parts. 

that which is ruined before its resolution. 

her ancestors have spilled their blood upon the dais before. in another lifetime, she was forged to let the crimson stain her frock. she knows what it means to be her blood by the lens pilfered from other timelines; this one is new, and it is not yet her own, and it feels violating to have him speak of the ichor in her veins with such reverence. 

"i don't need you to tell me who i am."

the sheriff. 

her mouth twists in another snarl.

"the moral high ground won't save you here. i'm good at one thing, fox."

in galar, freya had been a blessed witness to rayquaza's use of dynergy. her own band is wrapped around one of her braids, pinned neatly against her scalp, but tamer nor dragon sink their teeth into its power. 

they scent their own on the air and freya hisses as the serpent darts forward. scales ripple again, but this time pink crystals shiver down their side. the veil wraps over freya's boots. pinned, her eyes sting as the faerie fire blooms around her. the wyrmwind roars; her ears pop, and she vaguely registers a slickness dribbling over her lips as she gasps in a choke.

rayquaza, impervious as they are, summons a springtide storm to dispel the dynergy-infused move. ribbons of light, a tapestry of powers, weave before her swimming vision. and somewhere in the back of her mind, behind the warnings and the red tape and the reminder of just how careless such an act is, she craves her evolution.

a dark shape blurs up the side of the hulking mass of ice.

reinforcements?

"yth re temepilt," she snarls and the dragon lengthens to circle the regice in a cyclone of their own making. 

howard slayte june sleigh
rayquaza tera fairy
rayquaza springtide storm

☉

vile worm. the sentinel houses a corruptive energy, a corrosive blight, and it is every instinct within the green serpent to expunge it from the earth. they, who have lived for millennia, who have seen the rise and fall of every iteration of humankind, know what it means to maintain balance. 

and sometimes destruction must come so that life can crack open under ash and burst through once more with newfound resilience. 

pride is their virtue, not their vice, and it takes them closer when the regice stumbles. their fangs are spattered with molten orange spittle and though they are driven by pain, and memories of pain, their divine rite is not driven by ego. 

they receive a full static shot directly to the face. 

it sparks over their fae-cloaked form, sparking around freya's hair. blackened eyes narrow when the electricity skitters harmlessly off her skin, warded off when it nears the scales pluming beneath her flesh.

rayquaza shakes their head and bloated pupils search for their target - they find an unmoving swath of shadow against the sky. freya sees the helmet, hears the muffled order, and grins with pointed teeth.

if they are not league, they are against her. 

fire snicks down rayquaza's sides - a hellish purple that drowns out all other sounds. the wind, the static, the rebukes that might come. 

"NAHILNOP COI!" she roars as rayquaza darts forward, bodying the rendered-dormant regice's chest with the full force of a dragon ascent. 

howard slayte june sleigh

pog thanks june
dragon ascent

☉

electricity sparks off of freya in waves. cracks spiderweb down the length of rayquaza's snout, arcing over their brow. her teeth chatter and their snap with a spark of embers. and those cracks fracture as their skull connects point blank with the machine. 

jagged tera crystals fall and freya whirls as the protective encasing over her boots fractures too. her hands are in front of her, clawed gauntlets facing outward towards the person that dare set foot upon her god. 

"nothing is done," she snarls. "not while they stand in our way. i let him go and he comes back another day to sow more destruction."

there is no diplomacy to be had anymore. she will not be forced to kneel and cower to another rocket. not ever again. she turns her head and golds trace the movement of a dying man's lips. tera crystals dissipate and dynergy unravels, and all that's left are the gods and their playthings.

her eyes narrow. she bares her teeth at their hitchhiker. 

"take aim where he falls," she says and light flares at the base of rayquaza's throat.

she will grant them only this one implausibility.

this small, unkind mercy.

but is this woman's dragon fast enough to finish what she started?

howard slayte june sleigh

☉