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Each jarring step felt like a rod to Anora's jaw. The overwhelming brightness of the world turned her eyes watery, and all she saw seemed to be a view from a bottom of a pond. As soon as her mind churned to life, she recalled one all encompassing thing: she was washed in a cold fury.
Her limbs were slow and some limp as if slept on at strange angles. Until they came fully to life she would bide her time, appraising what walls and sights were passing. The woman squinted and dared not open her eyes too wide, betraying her rising consciousness. Another dose of the drug would severely impede her ability to gather information for an escape.
Back in the streets, the Dark Elves were experiencing a more potent form of Anora's blindness, despite their veils. They stumbled and rose like drunken undead. The stronger among them made it to their hands and knees, and the very strongest managed to stand, using his spear as a staff.
Moans and various snatches of garbled phrases began to fog the air with the foul vyssie language. A snatch of common snuck in with phrases that involved "Dimitri", "Feth" and "painful death".
In the strongest Elf's clouded vision he spotted Hanzi gesturing towards them, a broken man under his boot.
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"I saw a white flower standing straight and proud, shapely as a lily, and yet knew that it was hard, as if wrought by elf-wrights out of steel. Or was it, maybe, a frost that had turned its sap to ice, and so it stood, bitter-sweet, still fair to see, but stricken."
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