Arsynia,
Lioness of Prideless
Played by dusk

She remembered those last moments in fleeting reveries. Pain radiated everywhere, but she felt keenly aware of each and every wound; the bite marks that lined her ears, neck, shoulders, and the distinct throbbing of torn ligaments and a broken bone—somewhere near her wrist, for each time she tried to wiggle her toes, she cried out in pain. A weight settled on her hinds, rendering them numb but not entirely without feeling. Her tail thumped against the dusty earth, distressed, and through the repetitive thump, thump as it thrashed wildly, the still silence in the stale air was accompanied by her soft whimpers. Rubble and debris covered the backside of her flank and along her hind legs, while her front legs were sprawled out, one particularly mangled compared to the other. Her cheek pressed against the bitterly cold stone floor of the catacombs, disheveled and dusty and half-alive. Eventually, Arsynia began to stir, and the soft sunlight that streamed from the remnants of the crack that had opened from beneath her seemed unreachable, impossible now.

Arsynia could barely recall those moments leading up. The fight had been grueling, and she had not done her best, and had allowed a woman nearly twice her size to run through her so angrily and thoroughly. Her claws unsheathed almost instinctively, but the flexing of her toes in her broken right leg caused her to cry out in pain. What would they think of her now, succumb and sent to the bowels of the earth? Was it not destiny's will to see a crown atop her head, or had her ambitions far overreached? Did Smaug not take and take and take and take as he saw fit? As Arsynia's thoughts drew from her distant dreams, and she began to wake, a harrowing disappointment began to settle in her chest where once there'd been untempered pride. She lifted her head, but as she stared outward she saw nothing but a ceaseless blackness. With resignation, she lowered her muzzle onto the ground again, and let her eyes flutter shut.

Art by kite