Pleasure, victory, fluid and blazing, wells within her for a glorious instant to see her enemy fold beneath her fist, as is rightful.

To Illyria's indignation, this triumph is soon crumpled by the abrupt presence of a tree, launched at her shell with momentum enough to smash her into a secondary vertical target - another tree, she soon knows with outrage - and hold her in psychical vice. The disgrace of the act repulses her. She would not be pinned by something so mundane and mortal, she will not be crushed by mere dead bark, she will not allow herself to be driven like some bug into dust when it is she, chaos and conquest incarnate, that has always been the heel that performs the crushing.

The intangible kinetic force squeezes at her, but she forms a mental spearhead of her own, hardens it like her shell, drives it at the substance pinioning her, and with a high, tearing scream of her wrath made aural, she

shatters it, fragments of bark and dead things pinwheeling away, dropping her to land in bipedal configuration, square to her opponent.

"Do not threaten me with sticks, creature," she growls.