[Socratic Sarcasm]

Michael Mikulak and Mira*
They really don't give a care
Their facility, somewhere in the US
ARPers: None

Mira discovered that, even if you have fae heritage, there are no real graceful ways to fall out of a hole in the fabric of reality.

It sounds overly dramatic, she supposed, when phrased that way, but the frosted pines of the evergreen forest were the perfect place for the Queen of Winter to throw her assassin into (Mira briefly wished that this was a figure of speech). According to the Queen Medb, the place had a reputation for being deadly.

And then when I ask her why she just smiles enigmatically and says nothing.

Mira decided that the best option would be to complete this God awful assignment and be done with it. The Sun's height in the sky suggested that it was sometime around noon, and since there were more likely to be people to ask questions farther south, Mira walked with the sun in her face. But only so much: the tall pines of the boreal forest did a good job of blocking the star's blinding light.

After a good while-Mira had long lost track of time, having spent a good amount of it in Faerie-she happened on a clearing with nothing more than a bony child in the middle. He was staring opposite the direction Mira came, and was drawing absently in the dirt with a stick. He was positively bony, and his slightly tan skin (despite the cold, the child was wearing only a pair of ill fitting jeans and baggy T shirt) was out of place in the cold.

The predatory, Unseelie part of Mira screamed at her to take such easy prey: to rip open his guts and feast on his intestines. It howled at the weakness of the potential quarry, noting how it looked like he was not long for the world anyway. It urged Mira to attack the boy, and not let up until he was ripped to slivers in her bare hands.

Mira almost rolled her eyes at this; it was so routine for her to quash this side of her, to discipline herself, that she could just turn her attention to it for a second and return to th-

And then Mira was fighting for her very self. Mental assault was something she trained against extensively, since the Queen did not want her favorite assassin to be turned against Winter, but she had never faced something like this. The attacker (and she wasn't even able to identify who it was) bombarded her with images of despair, of hopelessness, of the quiet, wearing terror that came from not knowing the fresh horrors you would be facing this time around. Mira found that she had to draw from the viscous power of the Unseelie Court in her merely to not succumb immediately to the onslaught, especially since it took her by such surprise. She tried to build a defense, but the mind attacking hers was like an ocean, crashing on hers in powerful waves of will. Mira realized that whoever this was, he or she was fighting to end the person Mira was and replace her mind with its own will.

Mira was, in some distant part of her mind, terrified. But she was too focused on not dying to be scared. She fought to lay every brick in the mental wall that would protect her (hopefully).

Wait, when did hopefully enter the equation?

Mira fought tooth and nail while searching for the person or thing attacking her. But the only thing in the area was the boy in the clearing.

The instant Mira thought that, the psychic attack on her intensified. Mira is many things, but stupid was never one of them, and she realized that it had to be the boy attacking her. The boy who she just dismissed as a threat.

Mira felt very stupid. But she had no time to lament, as the boy's mind was starting to worm its way into hers to subvert her will from the inside. Mira realized that the only real way she stood a chance of winning was if she was able to move the attack to a physical one.

So, she drew on the power of her Court as deeply as possible, and unleashed it.