Sage has a complex look on her face and Jin instantly regrets saying anything. She rubs at her eyes more, now angry at herself for some reason. Her hands are already covered in black smudges from her makeup. Damn, probably one more thing she’ll never see again.
She sees Sage open her mouth to say something, and waver. Yeah, Jin wouldn’t know what to say either.
A distant, but loud siren-like noise fills the air and Sage’s face pales into a greenish color, “WE NEED TO RUN!”
Jin doesn’t have the opportunity to ask anything before Sage grabs one of her arms and pulls her into a standing position. The girl doesn’t let go as she starts running out of the room.
Jin stumbles in her first few steps of pursuit, “What, why? What’s that noise?”
A second siren like noise joins the first, and Jin realizes that the noise is howling. Sage is running down the hall dragging Jin behind, but lets the other girl go to descend the stairs. Jin follows behind, shocked at how quickly the other girl vanishes from sight. She makes it out of the building and Jin catches up to Sage who is stopped several feet from the door bouncing on the balls of her feet. She catches sight of Jin and starts running again after making a wide “follow me” motion.
“This way! Come on!”
Sage sprints off and Jin swears as she runs after. The other girl is so fast. She has to pump her legs as fast as she can and it still isn’t nearly fast enough to catch up. She makes it to a turn in the street where Sage is stopped again for her.
Jin tried to get information again, this time slightly out of breath, “What’s making that howling?”
Sage eyes the path behind Jin critically, then grabs Jin’s arm and starts running again. For a second time, Jin has to catch herself from the sudden shift in momentum.
Sage hisses her answer to Jin, but is looking everywhere but at the other girl, “That’s an arc-wolf howl, they only make that one when they’re hunting.”
Jin wanted to snap at Sage to let her go, but she was admittedly actually speeding her up, so she held her tongue. Sage releases her arm anyway to leap over rubble clogging the road. Jin has much less confidence in her physical ability and starts climbing over it, much to Sage’s apparent displeasure. The curly haired girl practically grabs and throws Jin over the hazard, one arm under her armpit to keep the dark haired girl from falling over after the partial toss.
No chance to recover, the two are off running again at Sage’s insistence.
Jin can already feel the telltale burn of exertion in her lungs when she gasps out the next question, “What can they do?” She catches her breath for two steps, “Why are they so-“ she gasps air in and out of her lungs. God damn she’s out of shape. “-dangerous?”
A third round of howls go up, and this time three canine voices fill it. One howl in particular is far closer than the others.
Sage’s head could be on a bobble with how much she’s twisting and turning it, trying to take in all their surroundings at once. She shoots a concerned look back at Jin and answers, “They’re uh, well they’re big wolves! With spikes and these armour plates on them and can shoot lightning out of their back-circle-things. Also they have these arms and will throw things sometimes. Lot’s of times. They prefer throwing to lightning actually.”
“Lightning?!” Jin stumbled and Sage caught her, but did not relent in their pace.
“Magical beasts went extinct-“ more huffing from Jin, “-hundreds of years ago.”
Sage frowns in her general direction, but doesn’t respond. A fourth round of howls goes up, and it’s definitely closer this time. Far too close for any degree of comfort.
“Wh-“ Jin coughs, her lungs rebelling at their use, “Why are they-,” panting, “-chasing us?”
“I don’t know! They aren’t even supposed to be here!”
Jin bites a lip while they run, trying to figure out what she could even cast in this situation to help. Without her mother’s amulet… Damn. If nothing else, panes of counter-directional force always work as good shields. She starts mentally preparing to cast.
They round another turn and Jin can feel Sage relax fractionally when she points, “There!”
A sewer inlet Jin recognizes lies on the other side of a ruined building. All that lies between the girls and the promise of safety is some raised foundation now. Not that Jin’s naive enough to think they’re safe yet. Sage pulls the two over and leaps up without releasing Jin’s hand, and she easily shifts the motion into a turn and lift to help Jin up.
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Jin hears a crash and a scrabbling sound behind her, and sees Sage’s face, which has only just regained its color, go pale again. “Oh Gods, grant us your favor in our hour of need-“ Is she seriously praying right now?
Jin turns and sees what they have been running from.
Sage’s description of them was indeed accurate.
When she sees it, Jin can’t help but recall an article she’s read recently. A rival academy on another continent managed to successfully clone an ancient direwolf from undisclosed DNA samples. She remembers it being a big deal, since no magical creature has ever been cloned successfully before. The zoology department of her own academy was pissed when they found out, since they had been working with their, practically perfectly preserved, phoenix egg for years without so much as a viable embryo. Not that the wolf had any of the magic all the tales talk about, like regeneration or a howl that could drive you insane. The article had images attached, and it was just a large, slightly armored wolf pup.
Jin’s initial dismissal of the feat feels all too hasty now, as a similar, massive beast stands not a hundred feet away from her. It’s as tall as Jin is, without taking into account the “circle thing”.
The “circle thing” Sage referred to earlier is a large bony protrusion sprouting from each side of the wolf’s back, right behind the, ah, arms. Each protrusion curves in a perfectly circular fashion to meet the other, where they seem to pancake together. The center of the circle hosts an ever present spark of electricity that shoots strands of lightning out to the bony circle around it. Rings of lightning skate across the protruding bone, and Jin swears she can hear the whole thing humming.
Rather than the clearly magical effect, her attention is drawn to the arms. Giant, rippling muscular arms situated above and behind the wolf’s front legs. Mostly because those arms are lifting a giant piece of building rubble that’s easily three times her weight.
Jin slots the last amplifier into place in her spell structure, and feels herself being tugged sideways and down. The wolf moves almost carelessly, and sends the building rubble shooting towards the two at an absolutely insane speed. What the hell?
Jin hits the ground hard, hip first. The shock of it makes her almost miss the sight of the rubble smashing into the pane of force she erected just three feet in front of them. The previously transparent barrier goes white with the impact and shatters. But fortunately, not before halting the momentum of the rubble. It harmlessly falls to the ground and rolls backwards a short distance. Jin hears Sage gasp behind her and scramble to her feet. Already she’s pulling Jin back up and towards the sewer again. Jin does her best to assist, but her limbs feel heavy and her hip aches from where she fell.
That one spell took way too much prep to make that strong. Stupid, she should have angled the shield. Work with the forces of nature, not against them and all that. Stupid. Sage is practically dragging her backwards while the wolf picks up two more pieces of rubble, one for each hand. The beast looks at the two escaping and narrows its eyes. The electricity at its back grows, and arcs of lightning begin connecting to the walls and ground around it. It stalks forwards.
“Grant your cleric the strength to push through the trials placed before us-“
She’s still praying? And what does she mean by cleric? Jin has to forcibly ignore the other girl to focus on slotting the proper spell structures into place. If even slightly miscast, a spell could have disastrous unintended consequences. There’s no room for extraneous questions.
If she just had her amulet none of this would be an issue. A memory of acting as a training dummy and tanking an entire building’s worth of force flits across her mind, but she has to forcefully shove it away. Focus focus focus.
In just a single leap the wolf does more than half the distance between them, and its back legs scramble for footing at the edge of the foundation. It doesn’t have supernatural grace, at least.
The electricity grows more and more; the wolf hardly even seems interested in advancing anymore. It throws the rocks in its hands one after the other. With only the smallest of adjustments, Jin moves the small panes of force she erected into place. Each rock glances off separate angled surfaces that go white. One rock smashes into the ground beside the two and explodes into small shards of rock. Jin idly notes the pain and warm wet feeling of blood begin to grow on her legs from stray rock shards.
Huh, her left leg is starting to feel weak.
The hourglass she’s been floating out of Sage’s bag now shoots towards the wolf, who eyes it skeptically. The item stops just two feet in front of the creature, and it seems to pause to consider the item. It looks back at the two girls, and one of its arms starts to reach out to grab-
Lightning explodes from the wolf’s back and Jin can feel her spell take effect. With a slump she finally releases the focus she’s been maintaining. The energy that undoubtedly would have traveled in a straight line towards them, instead arcs towards the hourglass. The enchanted item whines loudly in response, and sparks of electricity dance across the surface of the glass and out into the air around it. Quickly, with the last of her mental energy Jin turns and opens her mouth to warn Sage and-
Too late.
The hourglass explodes.
Both girls are blown aggressively down by the force and heat of the explosion. It takes several moments of disorientation to even start hearing the ringing in her ears.
It doesn’t take long after that for the pain in her arms and hands to start, and a part of Jin regrets her poor attempt at catching herself with them.
Belatedly Jin notices that she’s being picked up yet again.
Spots swim in her vision and her eyelids feel heavy, but she forces them open anyway to assess danger. Not that she knows what she would do in her state, but she was never one to shut her eyes in the face of danger.
The arc-wolf’s fur around its face is blackened or burnt off entirely in the few places where armour plating doesn’t protect it. The two massive arms each gingerly cradle the wolf’s nose, and the creature shakes its head intensely, as if it could dislodge burn damage. Jin feels the dragging pause when Sage jumps down to the other side of the foundation.
All that and they only moved around fifteen feet. Or more accurately, Sage moved them fifteen feet and Jin helped. Kind of.
The wolf locks eyes with Jin and gives her a baleful look, then it rears its head back and howls.
It’s an almost pitiful sound this time, and Jin hears the return calls nearby despite the ringing in her ears. The wolf gives the girls one last glare and it retreats back down the road it came from.
One of Jin’s arms is draped over Sage’s shoulder as the other girl helps her down off the foundation and towards the sewer opening.
Jin's legs are shaking, and she’s sure if Sage wasn’t holding her up she wouldn’t be able to stand.
“Damn…” The route wasn’t even that far, she’s walked it easily a few times before. Never ran it under threat of death and while rapidly gaining injuries, though. She looks down at her legs and grimaces. Her knees are already darkening with bruises, and the skin on shins and thighs are covered in cuts and scrapes.
There’s a grate over the opening, but a service gate hangs wide open. Funny, Jin can remember keeping watch right here while her friend picked the lock. She’s too tired to feel, but too tired to stop the memories either, so she lets them flow by. Sage is taking care of her mobility anyway.
She remembers navigating the sewers and sneaking by the poor souls who called the place home. She remembers them using the bubble rings to create a space of clean air around their heads. She remembers the two reaching the opening to the beach, and floating the boat out of the sewer water together. She remembers them taking turns blasting the boat with salt water to clean it. She remembers their amature, yet successful attempts at sailing the boat for over an hour with only a bit of telekinesis between them. She remembers them snuffing the lights and lying beside each other to look at the stars. It was the first time Jin ever saw the stars like that. Until then she’d never been able to see the hazy colors of the galaxy around them. And the stars, she would have never imagined there could be so many.
She remembers their promise…
Alize… What happened to you..?