These things happen in threes

Their guns raise like a bristling phalanx with spears raised high- the dark gunmetal stark against the snow white surroundings.
 
Her mind races to react. Her body is already moving, as a thousand words and phrases race through her brain, though all she can hear is the metallic scrape of her blade shifting from her sheath and into her hands. They couldn't take Claire- it wasn't fair. She'd already failed a mere hour ago, allowed herself to get sloppy, to trust- trust in Gerath, to trust in Mateus, to trust that her brother's work would not seduce them-
 
The price was already paid and now the brothers were gone, her fault, like waving a piece of meat in front of a starving wolf.
 
There could not be any more weight on her conscious, not now, not today, but the odds are not in her favor. The universe in all its mercy frowns down on Elina Brightworth.
 
She draws her sword. A single stroke, a single flick of the wrist spells her doom,
 
Bullets fly through the air and hit her with all the force of a mace at full speed. All she can feel after is similar to the wrath of a thousand fire ants. Armor fails, flesh tears, and the tiefling bleeds.
 
Her mind picks up where her body leaves off and she coughs out a surrender as her sword drops to the ground.
 
The Solisians are gone seconds later.
 
'Failed again, Eli', she thinks to herself, 'there goes another one.'
 
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She's stumbling through the snow gathered on the roof now, her footing uneven and jagged.
 
Her eyes are only trained on Rowan, the figure of the Cleric making her way to a secluded alleyway.
 
They just need to regroup and they'll figure something out. A little voice in her head begs her to keep trying.
 
But as she reaches the edge of the roof that leads to the alleyway all she wishes for then and there is to die.
 
Her foot catches on a chunk of ice and she falls.
 
Almost everything in her screams all at once but a small part of her is at peace, she does not deserve to be caught.
 
Rowan is there anyway, as she has been.
 
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It feels as though she's breathing with an anvil placed on her chest. Her eyes focus on a thousand different things at once, the sky, the clouds, the snow, every individual brick on the wall, the blood that seeps into her eyes from a head wound.
 
The sound of Rowan's voice is a distant drone, but in the ocean of over stimulation she grips it in her mind's eye like a life raft. She evens her breathing to the silence that follows before Rowan is ranting again, something about Lydia- something about Mateus. Slowly the stiffness in her limbs start to dissolve as her brain becomes viscerally aware of their further surroundings.
 
Footsteps clatter down the cobbles to them in their alley, heavy and imposing, not belonging to anyone she knows.
 
Every muscle in her body yelled out in pain as she forced herself up, to stand, to keep fighting.
 
Tragedies tended to come in threes, and yet only two of the four of them were gone now.
 
Fate would have to tear another from her hands. Fate would have to grind her into dust kicking and screaming.
 
She stood.
 
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