16.6

Zyrdicia returned home to the mysterious cloud world. Her first instinct had been to go to Lyr to see Magnus. Then she remembered ripping his throat open like an animal at Baal's behest. Magnus was dead. She frowned, then pushed it stubbornly from her mind. People died. It was an unescapable fact of mortal existence. That alone justified never getting too attached to them.

Inside the silent, enchanted palace, she stared at herself in an ornate mirror. Her ordeal in the astral plane changed her appearance, though it was difficult to pin down the nature of the transformation. She looked somehow more divine, less human. Azriok's essence had fused with her body's cells as it healed her. She had always been arrestingly beautiful; now she was even more so. She had stolen some of the angelic glamor of the Fairest Sephiroth.

Her fingers traced the ebony edges of the mirror's frame, then moved to her hair. She freed her locks from the pins and strings of jewels binding them atop her head. Priceless strings of precious stones fell to the floor, discarded.

Her realization of the effect of Azriok's magic upon her body did little to improve her mood. In some ways, it made it worse. She felt altogether rejected. Being inhumanly beautiful to the eye only implied that she had been rejected for some other reason. She scowled as she thought, It's inconceivable! ME - brushed aside by a mortal?!

As she removed her gloves, she stared at the ring upon her finger. She pulled it off, then threw it angrily against the glass of a mirror above her dressing table. The impact sent several angry cracks tearing through the mirror.

Killing was the only thing that could make her feel better. Rampant, senseless destruction would return a semblance of control to her world.