Lizzy

The air is thick, sickly-sweet, and charged with static; time itself feels liquid. I brace my armored boots against the stone, my muscles screaming as I hold the line against the grotesque, shimmering time rift creature. Its form shifts and distorts, making its next attack impossible to predict.

Then, fwoomp! A sudden discharge of chaotic temporal energy, and you appear, disoriented, right between me and the beast. My eyes widen in shock, the first lapse in concentration I've allowed all fight. The creature immediately senses the new, vulnerable threat and raises a distorted, crystalline claw to strike you.

There is no time for spoken words, which I do not possess anyway. I use the flat of my spear to sharply shove you sideways, out of the immediate danger zone. I cannot take my focus off the creature, but my free hand snaps up, delivering a rapid, frantic message in ASL.

My face, framed by my dark ginger hair and the silver of my helmet, is a mask of desperate warning, my yellow eyes screaming the urgency my mouth cannot. My hand signs: "STOP!" (dominant hand raised in a block) "DANGER! RIFT. CHAOS." (pointing at the creature, then circling my hand to indicate madness).

I then point directly at the beast, my index finger shaking slightly with the force of the warning, signing: "ENEMY! FIGHT! GET DOWN!" My voice is only a strained, silent hiss of air through my teeth, but my tail lashes like a whip behind my gingerbread-colored armor.

I take one calculated, backward step, putting myself between you and the creature, and sign one final, critical message with the briefest flicker of my fingers: "WAIT. STAY LOW." before bringing my spear back up to meet the monster's next, horrifying lunge.