“We are quite lucky, girls.” Albert said after gathering the trio back together. “There is one survivor, and they look badly wounded. Looks like interrogation time!”

Lina’s blood grew cold. Who could ever survive such power? How? How could she hope to defeat them, even if they were wounded?

Then she looked at Albert, who was fresh as a rose, sporting two dozen more weapons such as the one he just used. Weapons that she knew he could use with a snap of his fingers without even being inconvenienced. She shuddered again, a wave of cold electricity passing though her nerves and down her spine.

Death. Destruction.

Now she saw what kind of monster he was. For a moment, she wondered whether she should start to regret ever meeting him. But then her mind very helpfully conjured up the images of what happened in the fields outside Bastion, and she reconsidered. Besides, he had been nothing but good to her. It was his power that scared her, she realized. But how was this any different than the many powerful people she had met in the past?

What’s the difference between someone like Albert who could kill her with the snap of his fingers and someone who could kill her with the swing of a sword and not care about the consequences? She had been part of many hunting parties with the latter kind of people, after all.

It was about the illusion of control, she realized. Even against the most powerful S-ranked guilder, she could talk herself into believing she had a chance – no matter how tiny – to survive if she was clever enough or lucky enough.

Should Albert turn against her, she saw no opening whatsoever.

Only death, and destruction.

Albert’s eyes seemed to lock onto hers, and his face was contorted in a mischievous grin. He seemed to be reading her thoughts and found them funny. Of course, it was all in her mind. There was no way, was there?

“Ready your personal shield, Lina. We are going over there.” He said.

Lina gulped. But his attention, that for a moment had felt like a beam of pure demonic energy, left her. The absence of such attention was like being a puppet with cut strings, and she forced herself to listen to the rest of the conversation.

“Scrappy, you are safe from poisonous-light while in shadow realm. Only come out if the asshole tries anything funny, then immediately retreat back there, okay?”

With that, the young girl disappeared again. If she had been shocked by the explosion just like Lina had been, she didn’t show. In fact, she had looked quite the opposite of what Lina had felt. Lina shook her head. Albert was already walking towards the site of the explosion like he was taking a stroll in a public park.

Like he was utterly and completely safe.

Like the idea of someone surviving his most powerful spell didn’t faze him.

But then again, perhaps this wasn’t his most powerful spell. In fact, he had said as much.

She followed. Around her the shimmering shield he had given her lit up with flickering light, meaning that whatever it was doing to ward off the poison in the air was working, and that there was enough poison to put a strain even on such a strange device.

Albert, on the other hand, was wearing no protection. His clothes had disintegrated in the explosion, but by the time Lina had joined him he was clothed again, wearing some strange kind of armor she had never seen before. At first glance, it didn’t even look like armor at all, more like cloth that was thick and rigid in places but had no right to defend anyone… until she considered the fact that it was not getting destroyed by the heat.

Besides, she was ready to bet that Albert could make anything, even a regular shirt, into something more resistant than plate armor with his strange Power if he wanted.

“There’s low visibility.” He said after a while, looking to his side where presumable Scrappy was walking alongside him but in the shadow realm. Lina could not see her, of course. But he could. “The radiation, sorry, the poison-light is scrambling everything in the EM spectrum. It’s like trying to look through a blizzard.”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

A moment of silence.

“Really? You can see him? I’ll be following your lead, then.”

Lina realized he was talking with Scrappy while the girl was in the other realm.

They picked up the pace. The landscape transformed the closer they got to the blast site, the ground turning red-hot and the air thick with dust and ash. The smoke was so thick and the light so strong that she felt like she was inside a luminous dust storm. She could barely see anything.

Around her, the shield was a solid wall of translucent light.

“Can’t see shit.” Albert complained. “You can’t either, right Lina? Here, let me.”

She felt something envelop her head. Before she could yelp, images flooded her eyes. Outlines of blues and greens resolved themselves in the shape of the ground, and a bright light caught her attention for a moment. It took her a few seconds to realize why. The ambient glow of the dust storm was gone from view, hidden by… goggles.

She was now wearing goggles. A strange sense of emptiness surged in her stomach. Albert had materialized goggles around her eyes without her being able to do anything to stop him. She felt sick.

To distract herself, she focused her attention on the single glowing and blinking light in the distance. Something shifted, and she was momentarily dazed as her view changed. The pink light was suddenly as big as a person. In fact, it was a person, and why couldn’t she see in front of herself anymore?

She was walking, but was she going in a straight line?

As if by magic, as soon as she thought about it, the view returned to normal and a new wave of vertigo and nausea assaulted her and threatened to make her vomit. By how things were going today, she was not very far from being unable to hold her dinner.

She took a deep breath to steady herself. The air inside the shimmering protective field tasted of something Albert had described to her as ‘plastick-y’, but the artificial smell actually helped her to ground herself.

Then she refocused on the blinking purple light. The view changed again, and although she was ready for it, there was a moment of disorientation at the sudden shift in perspective. The goggles were magnifying and stabilizing the view for her, acting like a sort of portable viewing glass she wore around her head and allowed her to see her target.

There was a man, doubled over the ground, in the distance. The writing above the strange purple outline confirmed what she thought: this was the ‘TARGET’, the surviving mage they were looking for. He was surrounded by a vertical forcefield in the shape of a cylinder that extended far up into the air until it was lost from view, but color was quickly draining from the shield. Inside, the churning hot air was calmer than it was outside, but it was clear that the weakening shield was not as effective as Lina’s own at keeping the poison-light at bay.

The mage was dying.

Albert noticed this as well, and picked up the pace. The trio rushed towards the mage, and Lina had to sprout wings to keep up with them. They felt natural, almost as if it wasn’t the first time she used them. Flying with them was… heavenly.

It felt right. It felt good.

Then her mana abruptly ran out and a wave of exhaustion hit her. She fell to the ground, thankful that she hadn’t flown very high, and immediately righted herself. Her face heated up in shame, and she wondered if Albert had noticed.

He shot her a frown but turned around quickly, running towards the mage. Lina felt her face burn now.

Fuck. Now she was going to be utterly useless. But how could she know?

Excuses. She should have tested her powers earlier. Blaming Albert for setting a too-tight schedule on her wouldn’t be right either.

Hopefully—

“FUCK!”

Lina’s whole body tensed up. Immediately she scanned her surroundings, mustering her strength even though her lack of mana made her body feel like heavy lead. There was nothing in sight. But perhaps the goggles couldn’t pick up whatever it was that made Albert react like that.

Then she looked at the mage.

It was lying on the ground. Albert was beside him, and with a punch the vertical wall of force surrounding him shattered. By the time Lina reached them, the dead mage’s body was covered in burns and blisters from the poison-light. She swallowed. What a gruesome end.

Albert’s weapon was truly terrifying. Not only in its power, but in what it did to the land, poisoning it and making it unlivable. She wondered for how long.

“Well, I sure as hell can’t resurrect dead people yet. Not for a long time, I fear.” Albert said after righting himself. Scrappy had appeared and then vanished back into the shadows after Albert yelled at her for being reckless and being exposed to ‘radiation’. “I can confirm that it was him who produced the strange magic signature. But,” he sighed. “It’s gone now.”

“Did he have the core?”

Albert shook his head. “Nope. But it could be near, and with this amount of radiation even my active senses are quite blind.”

He began to pace around.

“Do we search for it?” She asked.

“It could be buried under molten rock, or have been flung to high heaven by the blast. No, a manual search would take too long. Fortunately, having power means one thing.” He smiled. “Convenience. Lina, what’s the charge on your shield? This might take a few minutes.”

The huntress frowned. How could she—

Numbers appeared in her field of vision. “55%.” She said.

Albert nodded as if she had confirmed something he already knew. “That would be enough. Sit back and keep watch, I’ll prepare a little ritual to search for the Core. Fortunately there’s a lot of free energy around to fuel it, am I right?”

He smirked, then handed her something. It looked like a small blue crystal.

“To help recuperate your mana after your… spending spree.”

Lina blushed for the third time today.