Raze blinked. “What? Fix my pa? You can do that!?”
Mill nodded. “Yeah. I’m a craft mage, and pretty good one at that! I can cast the Alteration spell at C Rank, and while usually that wouldn’t be enough to work on all but the weakest of living beings, thinking back to that encounter with your dad, I just kind of felt like I would be able to.”
Raze raised an eyebrow. “What, like a gut feeling? That doesn’t sound all that reliable.”
“Well, it wasn’t JUST a gut feeling,” Mill amended, “Let me explain it better. Working with magic gives you a sort of sense of intuition at what you can and can’t do with a specific spell.”
“That sounds weird. Well, I don’t know much of anything about magic, so I guess I’ll have to take your word for it! To be honest, I thought magic was all about exploding people with your mind.”
“There is a branch of combat magic that does that, but there’s definitely more to it than just explosions. Actually, I’m surprised you didn’t know that. Does that mean you weren’t the one to put the barrier spell on this cave?”
Raze looked towards the cave’s entrance. His frenzied father had since given up on getting in and returned to the forest. “You mean the invisible wall? I think one of my uncles put it up years ago when they were visiting so I could have my own private space to just hang out. I didn’t think it was a spell.”
“What do you mean you didn’t think it was a spell? What else would it be?”
He shrugged. “I dunno, some kind of invisible kind of rock that only lets through people who I allow in… and never shifts or moves… okay, in hindsight, that should have been obvious.” He shook his head. “Anyway, we’re off topic. If you can really fix my pa, I’d be really grateful! He’s been like this for a year, and I… I don’t want to see him in pain any longer.”
“Of course! You saved my life, so it’s only right that I help you out too. Anyway, the spell I’ll be using only really works at close range, so I’ll need your help to get close enough.”
Raze nodded. “I’ll help however I can! What do I need to do?”
“Well, here’s the plan…”
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Some time later, the two of them crouched behind a tall crystal, peering around its edge. Past them stood Raze’s father in all his shattered, reflective, six-legged glory. He wasn’t doing much of anything, just standing in place, fully still. If Mill hadn’t seen him in motion earlier, they probably would have assumed him to be some kind of statue.
Raze looked to Mill, waiting for the signal to begin. They were holding their staff against the tip of a coil of rope, their eyes closed. Faint wisps of magic emanated from their hands. After a few seconds, they turned to Raze and opened their eyes. They gave him a thumbs up, which was the cue to start the plan.
Raze jumped out into plain view. “Hey! Over here!” he called out. His father’s head swiveled towards him, the broken mirrors that covered his body reflecting the afternoon sunlight. He prowled towards him, body low to the ground, and Raze took a defensive stance, one arm forward and and the other back. The two circled one another warily until as if on a signal, they both sprung into action.
The reflective monster pounced forward, his front claws unsheathed, but Raze skillfully dodged it with a roll to the side. His father landed on empty ground, his glass claws striking against the crystal floor with a screeching noise. He spun back towards Raze, but he was already circling around behind him.
“This way!” Raze turned and ran, weaving through the crystal structures. He didn’t need to look back to know that his father was close behind, as the sound of glass clashing against crystal rang out with each bound. In the corner of his eye, he noticed a glimpse of lavender hair as Mill followed them from a distance. He smiled. So far, everything was going according to plan.
Eventually they burst out into a wide-open clearing. Raze spun around, and his father used the opportunity to attack. Some of the shrapnel within the whirlwind circling the monster’s head rose above him, glinting in the sun, and shot out at Raze like a machine gun. Raze ran to the side, but the stream of projectiles rotated to follow him.
“Tch!” Raze had been mostly successful at avoiding the shrapnel, but he couldn’t dodge them all. A shard of glass scored a glancing blow against his cheek, drawing a red line. A second shard struck across his leg, making him stumble for a moment, but he kept running. The ammunition couldn’t last forever, after all.
Eventually the attack died down. Raze took the opportunity to go in on the offensive, rushing towards his father. Although much of the whirlwind of shrapnel had been expended on the previous attack, there was still enough of it to make getting near his head a bad idea, so Raze dashed around behind his father. The monster swiveled towards him, but Raze was faster. He grabbed one of his father’s legs, twisting his body to throw him. His glass claws scrabbled for purchase, but they couldn’t find any hold on the smooth crystal ground. Soon, those very same glass claws lifted from the ground as Raze hefted his father’s glass body into the air.
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“Mill, now!” He tossed him into the center of the clearing.
“Right!” Mill popped their head out from the crystal they’d been hiding behind and threw a huge cloth fan Raze’s way. He caught it in one hand and Mill ducked back behind the crystal, using the edge of the crystal forest as cover as they maneuvered to the other side of the clearing.
Across from Raze, his father was slowly getting to his feet. He grinned and held up the fan. “You ready, Mill?” On the opposite side of the clearing, a thumbs up poked out from behind a crystal. “Then let’s roll!” He raised the fan and with a mighty swing, he blew a gust of wind at his father. The cloud of shrapnel was destabilized from their orbit around the glass monster’s head and blew away, falling to the ground behind his father inert.
“GRROOOAAAR!” Raze’s father let out a mighty roar. The ground shook and the inert shrapnel began vibrating, but before they could rise back up and return to their whirlwind of danger, Mill threw out one end of a rope from behind their hiding spot. They swished it from side to side across the ground, and every single shard that it touched stuck to it, preventing them from rising into the air.
The monster noticed the disturbance and began to turn around, but he was interrupted. Raze had sprinted forward and kicked one of his front legs out from under him. “You’ve got no time to be looking away! I’m your opponent!”
The next few seconds were a flurry of action as Raze and his frenzied father tussled. Despite his opponent being ten feet tall and made of broken glass, Raze managed to put up a good fight. Meanwhile, as he distracted the monster, Mill finished collecting all the stray debris and coiled the rope back up.
“I’m done on my side!” they called out. “Feel free to go wild now!”
Raze grinned. In his past fights against his father, he’d never been able to get this far. The cloud of debris was the biggest obstacle, as Raze had no method of attacking through it, but with Mill’s help, he’d been able to neutralize it! Hope bloomed in his chest, and with it, so too did the thrill of a good fight. It could go either way now, but it was up to him to win. He threw the fan to the side and dropped into a combat stance.
His father roared again, slashing a claw at him, but Raze rolled forwards, dodging it and ending up underneath him. His father’s stomach reflected Raze’s face back at him in a hundred broken shards, and he struck it with a palm strike.
“GRROOOOOAAAARRRR!” The monster yowled in pain as he was hit, falling over sideways. Raze dodged out from underneath and grabbed him by the torso between his front and middle legs, holding him down. He struggled, but was unable to break free.
“I’ve got him! Do it now!”
“Right!” Mill jumped out from the edge of the clearing and began running towards them. They held their staff in one hand and were already charging up magic in preparation for the spell. When they reached Raze’s father, they held the staff’s purple gem against his head and closed their eyes in focus.
“Crafting: Alteration.” The light around their staff intensified, glowing beige— the color of crafting magic. As they channeled the spell, the state of the monster’s being became more clear to them. The energy of destruction ran rampant within his body, causing great pain. In order to fix him, Mill would have to purge those energies from his body.
Their brow crinkled and beads of sweat began to form on their forehead. How am I supposed to do that!? Alteration only affects physical objects! But… I feel like I can do it. I’ll trust in my intuition! I can’t fail here!
They concentrated further, dipping deep into their magic, and they found something. A silvery-violet energy, which wasn’t a color of magic that they recognized, but they knew that they had found their answer.
“Hah!” With a shout, they channeled that mysterious magic into Raze’s father. They were fully focused on their spellcasting and their eyes were scrunched closed, but had they been open, they would have seen the fractures of broken glass on the monster’s surface repairing themselves, the previously broken sections clicking back into place. Almost there… I’ve almost repaired him!
“GRROOOAAAAAAAAARR!” With a shout that left their ears ringing, Raze’s father lurched up off the ground, tossing away both Mill and Raze. He roared again, and began rushing towards their prone forms. Or, more specifically, towards Mill.
“Watch out!” Raze called out, having gotten up almost immediately. His father lunged for Mill, but he balled up his fist and punched him in the face, knocking the ten-foot tall monster off course.
Raze’s father roared again, and crystal structures the size of grown men sprung up from the ground. With a stomp, those structures were pulverized, and the shards began vibrating.
“What!? I didn’t know he could do that!” Raze looked around and cursed. He had thrown the fan down halfway across the clearing, and if he were to go over and pick it up he would be leaving a clear line of attack from his father to Mill. “Hey, Mill? I think we should retreat. He’s gonna put his whirlwind back up, and I don’t think I can restrain him if he does that. We can always try again another time… uh, Mill?”
Mill was staring at Raze’s father with a glassy look in their eyes. “I almost had it…” they muttered. The shards of crystals on the ground vibrated with increased intensity.
“Hey, snap out of it! We have to go! We can always try again, but if you die, then I’ll never be able to save him!”
Without warning, Mill lunged forward at Raze’s father, who pounced towards the two of them as well. Mill abandoned their staff, stretching out a hand towards the monster’s mirrored face. Raze’s father opened his mouth, revealing fangs a foot long. Mill touched the tip of his snout, and silvery-violet light exploded from their hand.