Carthas had dodged the spray by flying upward into the air and perching on a nearby branch right behind Heloise.
The Caladrius, meanwhile, had finally escaped from between the rock and a hard place. It was slowly hovering above the ground in front of the witch, casting howling echoes from its beak that vibrated with the air around them.
“He said he's going to fill your insides with so much illness that it's going to match the ugliness on your outsides,” translated Carthas. “Hey, he said the same thing I said. Isn't that funny?”
“I wouldn't stop him.” The witch sneered. “The magic from the little cold he gave me earlier is powering me up.” She gave a little sniffle. “Okay, maybe it wouldn't be worth it considering I'm still sick… But at least the aches are gone!”
The Caladrius breathed out a puff of green smoke that was quickly wafting toward Heloise.
“Carthas!”
At her call, the witch's familiar flew down and hovered in front of her, flapping its powerful wings in front of him and creating a miniature vortex of air that blew away the airborne illness that had been headed toward them. The blast of wind continued and blew away the trees behind the Caladrius. The enemy bird stood his ground, virtually unaffected by the gust attack.
Heloise jabbed her staff into the ground. Chanting a certain spell, she made a motion with her finger. A large root covered in thorns rose from beneath the snow, striking at the Caladrius with break- neck speed. But to the witch's annoyance, the wooden tentacle melted right through it, as if swimming through an inky mass of oil. The witch spread out all her fingers and flicked her wrist, causing several more thorny vines to rise up and whip at the bird—an action that proved to be futile.
The Caladrius screeched and fired several balls of phlegm at Heloise, all of which she jumped out of the way of.
“I thought the point was to get hit by magic now so you can absorb it,” said Carthas.
“I know that, but—” She dodged another mucusy shot, screaming and whining as she did so. “Eeeek! It's just so disgusting! Gross, gross, gross! I'm not putting that anywhere near my mouth. I don't need it! I've got enough magic to end this already.”
“That's pretty sad, witch.”
The Caladrius started up another torrent of its tainted blood cannon. A torrent Heloise had managed not to block. But what seemed to be a direct shot at the witch turned into a horribly different outcome from the last time that the bird of bile was not expecting. The sorceress stood in place, blocking the blood flow with a simple outstretched hand.
“That totally won't work anymore.” The witch smiled sadistically, wagging a finger on her free hand before flicking it upward in a sudden motion.
The Caladrius, who had refused to let up in its attack, was suddenly shot high above the treetops after the ground below rose up to launch the bird skyward. The earthen wall the sorceress usually used as defense had been raised right under the Caladrius and impacted its body with a powerful force.
“How about this time I fill you with the sickness?” Heloise raised an outstretched hand upward.
Flosculus Fungorum
The words slithered from her mouth like poison.
Dazed and unaware after being launched several feet, the bird suddenly felt deep emanations from within. An alien tremor distinctly different from anything it was normally familiar with. Foreign growths sprouted all over its body. Stalks of pervasive fungi were growing out from within its murky core. It seemed that what the witch had unleashed was a massive cloud of spores that quickly infected the Caladrius as it hung in the air. If it weren't for the gelatinous state of its insides, all of its organs would have immediately succumbed to the fungal invaders.
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“Thanks for being such a nice little new home for my precious sweeties,” cooed the witch. ”I—Huh?”
The Caladrius, who was now covered in a miniature forest of uniquely-shaped mushrooms, remained unphased as it continued flapping its large fungus-encrusted wings high in the air. It let out a powerful screech that would paralyze any foe, yet the witch remained undaunted.
Heloise watched and waited, gazing upward and staring down her avian adversary. Her own winged familiar was hovering closely by her side, not saying a word but simply observing the heated tension that was slowly rising to a boiling point.
In the blink of an eye, the Caladrius swooped down and stopped directly in front of Heloise’s face which contorted into a grimace of shock. Its sickly green eyes blazed with anger as it unleashed a powerful cry at point blank range. An act the witch was not expecting.
Heloise was thrown off balance as the scene around her began to twist and turn. A powerful bout of vertigo had struck her and her powerup did nothing to alleviate it. She swayed unsteadily, quickly grasping at her staff that remained firmly erect from when she planted it into the ground.
Carthas had countered by swinging a powerful wing into the Caladrius and sending it tumbling back, leaving black bile traces as it bounced roughly several times against the snow.
“Ma Dieu ! Everything’s spinning! Carthas, don’t take your eyes off that fucker!”
“I’ve got this, witch. Just don’t lose your cool again, I can hear that forehead vein ready to burst from here.”
Heloise growled in response. The vertigo was subsiding, but not quickly enough. She had to be ready, so as to not get caught off guard again. It seemed to have gotten wise to its other attacks no longer working. She had to try something new if she wanted to finish this once and for all. If the fight continued to drag out, it was almost guaranteed she’d be the one suffering a loss.
Both birds struck at each other with the full caliber of a firearm, locking talons and sending thundering shockwaves through the trees around them. Shards of frozen bark tore through the air as their onslaught intensified. The two winged warriors ascended high into the air, one constantly weaving around the other, narrowly clashing wings at intensely high velocities. Carthas flew up several hundred feet into the air, before diving back down beak-first into the Caladrius at a dangerously lethal speed. The impact caused its inky body to explode black rain and fungal spores down onto the sky, but neither witch nor familiar counted this a victory just yet.
The murky drops of bile combined and coalesced into larger tenebrous glops before quickly reconstituting back into the bird’s broad form. It was floating just above the ground, its beating wings forming a round snowy crater below it.
The sorceress finally stood up and brushed herself off. She slid off her thick, pink snow gloves and tossed them to the ground, baring her pale, slender hands to the elements. Both arms shot forward, palms turned downward on top of each other with fingers bent. Stylish pink nails withered and cracked before stretching outward from her hands and sinking downward lower and lower, digging past the icy snow and breaking the ground. The hauntingly dark voids of her eyes seemed to look past her target, caught in an esoteric trance of magic.
Eruptio Mortiferum.
The ground around them began to shake violently. Cracks formed in the planet before yawning open pockets of dark abyss all around. Geysers of lava shot up violently, rising up through the crust and exploding around them.
“Have you lost your mind?! Where did you even learn that kind of spell?!” Carthas shouted from above, watching the devastation happening just below him. There was a side to the witch he always thought her capable of if she had the power for it. The power that came from a dark and corrupted force, influencing her mind. Steering it toward the dark. Amplifying her hatred. And now that he’s witnessing it, it’s filled him with an ominous feeling. Was she truly still a human being? “Maybe it wasn’t such a good trade-off after all…”
The Caladrius turned to face the malignant Heloise, finally reacting to her presence. There was a sudden downward motion of her hands right before a burst of lava shot up from beneath the nebulous bird giving it no time to escape. The molten rock of Sarracas was now burning through its body, consuming it bit by bit at an alarming rate.
She had been the true threat all along.