"Lei-Lei, darling," his sister calls as she climbs over the ruin of the corridor, the dust obscuring her so she is nothing but a cold shadow. "None of your other friends were the Paragon, which means..."

Her boots hit the ground with a thud.

"It's gotta be one of you two," she finishes, and her hands spread out before her. She holds up a little metal device which hangs on a chain around her neck and a jolt runs through Allayria. She's seen this contraption, knows its cold touch, the unyielding metal and its faint whisper, spoken in a language more human than machine.

She knows it because Ben gave her Serfigue's in Solveigard City.

It beeps.

One of Isati's dark, ringed eyebrows raises and she shakes the thing by her ear as it beeps again.

"Siblings don't keep secrets, Lei," she goads and she stalks closer to them, moving with sinuous purpose. "Why don't you tell me which of you it is before you get really hurt?"

Allayria glances over at Lei, catching the mix of anger and fear that crosses his face, and she turns to him.

"Just out of curiosity: have you got any other crazy siblings I should know about?"

He starts, head jerking toward her, face flooded with disbelief, but the woman's face breaks into a slow smile.

"Is this the Paragon, Lei-Lei?" she says, head tilting to the side as she considers Allayria. "Mom's going to be so happy. Disappointed, of course, that you're not it, but she's used to you being a disappointment."

Feeling that at this point the gig is up, Allayria pulls up a spear of ice to match her sword.

"I really fucking hate your family," she tells Lei and his sister's smile goes manic as she meets Allayria's swing with her own.

"Yes, I like you a lot," Isati says, breath ragged as she slips between Allayria's parries, moving with grace and precision. "If it couldn't be the pretty boy, I'm glad it's you."

She cuts through a slash of Allayria's hand, knocking the strip of metal out of her grasp.

"We're going to have fun, the two of us," she continues and two pale fingers tap at the device hanging around her neck.

"We call them Spirit seekers," she adds, watching as Allayria's eyes fix on the device. "Just some fun, old gothi things I found. Mother thought they were useless—they activate when traces of Spirit are nearby. 'Old junk,' she said. I think I found a pretty good use for them though, don't you agree?"

Allayria would like to snap several things back, but a slice of metal just misses the tip of her nose and she stumbles back, ducking without seconds to spare as another swipe comes for her head. She gets the unpleasant impression that these swings could be faster if Lei's homicidal sister wanted, and she has the sudden sensation of being food that is played with.

She gets some reprieve in the form of Lei, who suddenly enters the fray with a lash of water. He's moving as quick as his sister, but Allayria quickly recognizes those motions—that stupid Swan form—and, unfortunately, so does Isati. She breaks it with a sudden undercut to his chin, her other hand moving in a blur of silver—

Allayria grabs the metal in that hand and pulls it back, twisting her arm with a crack as Isati is unceremoniously thrown off course. The woman skitters for a second on the tips of her heels before easing down into a more centered crouch.

Instead of a grimace of pain or frustration, she smiles and lunges straight at Allayria.

Nope, nope, nope, Allayria thinks, shamelessly retreating as Isati gives pursuit. She evades another blow by jumping off to the side, flinging bits of wall in front of herself as she scrambles farther back. Lei rushes past, arms twisting up again in a practiced arc, but Isati cracks the bend of his elbow, throwing the form completely off.

He jerks back and at first it's as if he's been knocked off balance, but then he suddenly moves and those ice shards he had formed before are on his fingertips and he flings them at her face.

One catches her across the brow, drawing a thin line of blood and she eases back.

"Was that an improvisation?" she pants, a toothy smile playing on her lips. "I didn't know you had that in you, little brother."

His only answer is to twist the vines off his belt into tendrils that shift around his hands.

"Still so loquacious though," she quips and the smile cracks as she springs forward.

"I always wondered what kind of fool would take you in," she grits out as the siblings clash, spring back, and clash again. "What they could possibly want with someone so feeble and—ha—predictable, but I suppose one doesn't care for the ingenuity of cannon fodder."

Bright red splotches cover Lei's cheeks, but his mouth only curdles into a hard line as his swings becoming sharper, more erratic.

"You know, the thing Mom is going to be most disappointed about isn't the fact that you're a spineless traitor," Isati taunts, her metal crashing against the shield of ice, "it's that you're still so weak."

Allayria takes this fine opportunity to shove a shoulder into the Smith-caller's stomach, earning a grunt of pain as the woman crashes back onto the floor. Allayria flings a hand out, hastily rolling the metal of the floor around Isati, hopefully pinning her arms to her sides inside of it, if not breaking one.

"Less family reunion, more escaping," Allayria wheezes at Lei, grabbing his collar as she dashes past. "No time for theatrics."

"I'm not—" he manages to hiss, the first words he's spoken in at least an hour, but they're choked off as Allayria's hands scrabble around his neckline, pulling the fabric back as his body nearly slides off the ledge of a hereto unseen gap in the corridor.

"Rope," Allayria gasps as she tugs him further down the hall. "Make rope."

She spares half a glance to confirm he's working on it as she turns her head toward the passing windows. They're at the southern edge of the building and, just tucked below the window ledges, she knows there should be a sharp drop off—a wall of thick, deep blue ice.

Fingers fumbling with adrenaline and cold, she rips a chunk of stone out of the passing wall and fashions a thick spike. She grabs an end of the rope and knots it around the base of it.

Lei's eyes hold a gleam of understanding and he also knots part of the rope, but this time on his belt, and he holds the other end in hand as they skid to a halt at a wide opening to the outdoors—made wider by a quick flick of her hand.

She knots the rope end around her belt before sinking the spike into the ice on the outside ledge.

"Hurry up," Lei tells her in a low voice and she knows he has his eyes trained on the corridor.

She tugs the rope hard and, satisfied that the spike doesn't move, she steps over to the ledge.

"Get over here," she demands, beckoning quickly as she spares a short glance at the long plummet below and the distant, icy wall hovering under the ledge, more than an arms-width away.

She shoves the rope in his hands, circling around his back and throwing her arms around his neck, jumping up and anchoring onto the sides of his hips with her knees in a makeshift, piggyback fashion.

He has exactly one second to look aghast at this when the far end of the hall explodes. Allayria's metal roll had not broken Isati's arm.

The cords across his knuckles blanch and tense as he jumps off the ledge, holding on tight to the rope so they fall only a short distance instead of the whole length.

"Duck," Allayria orders as he begins to slide them slowly down and, his head tucked down, she holds a hand up and shoots fire at the face that appears over the ledge.

Shouts ring out above them. Shit.

"Let go," Allayria orders, wedging the crook of her arm around the crook of his neck, her legs locking around him. His head turns, almost as if to glance back at her.

"Now!" she shouts and they plummet.

The wind is like ice against her face and she holds her free hand out behind them. Just before they catch on the end of the rope she Skills a burst of fire behind them, propelling them toward the wall.

They lurch to a halt, too far away from the wall to latch on, and they drift out once more, like a pair of kids on a swing. As they emerge from beneath the ledge Allayria glances up to see Isati staring down at them, a small smile playing across her blood-stained face as she sets the rope on fire.

Allayria shouts and she feels Lei reach back with a hand and grab onto her as they swing back to the wall. But suddenly his hand breaks away, swinging out and throwing her canteen against the flat ice.

It shatters upon impact and, hands jerking back, Lei freezes the tip of the freed water onto the wall, pulling back and freezing the long strand out to them as they begin to fall in earnest.

They catch on it, but the beam of ice isn't thick enough to hold them and Allayria uses the seconds of opportunity to jump off of him toward the sheet of ice.

She hits it with a smack, her bare fingers scrambling along its slick, burningly cold surface as the beam shatters in Lei's hands above her. For one sick moment, they both fall and then she punches her hands into the ice, Skilling in grips for her hands, and she halts even as he continues to drop behind her.

A short breath later, the rope around her midsection jerks painfully as his weight and the force of his acceleration yank on her. She grunts, kicking her foot into the mountainside so she can stand.

The frayed, flaming end of the top part of the rope drops past her, a brief flash of light and whiff of smoke,  but she can't move either of her arms to catch it or put it out. She's hoping, between the brutal wind and the drifts of snow and sleet, nature will, for once, work in their favor and blow it out before the flames burn up to Lei.

She hears a crunch of ice and glances down to see him driving his bare hands into the wall. Once he's secured he glances up at her, his breath a frosty mist around the tip of his beet red nose. He's got that spaced, adrenaline-laced look in his eye as if he can't quite believe they've made it, as if he's waiting for something else to go wrong.

Feeling the tips of her fingers begin to go numb, she wedges her feet in deeper and then rummages with one hand around her belt. She pulls the remaining two metallic balls out of her pocket and fashions two hand-held spikes.

Allayria drops, shoving them into the mountainside just as she's level with him, shoving her feet in too as a precaution as she tosses one of the spikes over to him.

"We need to move," he yells through the cloud of snow that billows past them. "I don't know how long it will take her to get to the bottom of the mountain."

"Not long enough," Allayria shouts. "Let's take turns dropping."

She goes first, releasing her grip on the mountain and falling down below him, driving her spike in as she reaches the end of the rope. When she gives the go-ahead he does the same and they alternate, falling down and holding the other up.

It's painful, brutal work; by the time Allayria's boots touch the merciful ground her hands are bloodied and shaking and her waist is bruised and sore. Lei stumbles a bit when he drops down next to her. Their fingers are both blue and Allayria conjures flames at the tips of hers, pooling it down into her palms so that Lei can place his hands over the fire.

Gazing around at the whitened, blurry forest, she spares one last glance up at the long, looming wall.

"I've really got to get a new escape plan," she mutters.

A/N: She's always dropping off ledges, that one.

We've just wrapped up the little mystery from the "Disguises" and "The Little Black Book" chapters of Paragon: what was Serfigue's little device and how it led them straight to Allayria. As Caj would say: Not good. This was also teased in the header picture for the last two chapters of Part 1 symbolically (an eye peering out of a box, searching for something/someone) because just slapping a box up seemed a little boring. I may be overthinking things just a little bit.

Next chapter is a new POV! Any guesses? :)