Author's Note
First of all, no, I didn't stop writing or die... In fact, for anyone who still hasn't noticed, I started working on "Questing" a while ago. I've written and posted ten chapters of that story so far, but it's closer to a spin-off than a side-story; it takes place within "Immortal Soul" and explains a lot of things that I just haven't been able to talk about in the 'main' story.
Anyway, after I finished writing chapter 10 of "Questing," I started working on chapter 6 of "Immortal Soul." If you're wondering why I'm jumping around so much, it's because I wanted to; when inspiration hits, it's better to just go with it, than shrug it off and grind out the rest of whatever you were working on. Besides that, sometimes when you start working on something a little different, it gives you ideas to use, once you get back to the other story.
For those of you who follow my blog, you probably read this chapter a while ago, cause I posted it there ahead of time. If you pay attention to my updates, then you would know that I've already finished writing chapter 7, 8, and 9 and am working on chapter 10; however, it usually takes me a while to go back and edit, because I usually liked to just keep writing ahead as much as possible. I'll most likely edit and post those four chapters, once I finish the one I'm currently writing.
Aside from all that nonsense, I need to thank Thoeberus for proofreading this chapter and many others :).
Chapter Six: Magic Show
There’s nothing quite like the scent of a battlefield… except maybe a sewer, filled with rotting corpses. Sure, between the thousands of volunteers, exotic scavenging animals, and weird carnivorous Yuri-Plants; the majority of garbage-er, bodies, had been burned, buried, or otherwise removed. Unfortunately, the bacteria, microorganisms, insects and worms were busy slowly claiming at least a couple hundred tons of decaying meat.
It wasn’t so bad after the first few days, but having an incredibly sensitive nose isn’t always so amazing. Well, I’ve experienced enough wars and uncomfortable situations, that I was able to cope pretty easily; plus, most of the war-beasts and farmers were used to the aroma of feces and death, so there weren’t that many traumatized people in Kara’s new village.
Though, I suppose it was more like a huge refugee camp, than anything else. To be completely honest, I was actually a little surprised that the armies were avoiding us; sure, it was the most logical course of action, but I expected Hithu and Lum to send a couple hundred-thousand more soldiers to die first.
Regardless of their reasons, I was still glad that they didn’t force me and Amber to waste our energy and mana, fighting non-stop. Even if the atmospheric mana-density was pretty significant on that first blitzkrieg, it dropped down to normal by the third day.
I assumed that they either ran out of treants and mages, or simply wanted to conserve their strength for later on in the war. Judging by how many people died in the very beginning though, I was able to estimate that their total population was at least, in the tens of millions; significantly higher than I had previously guessed, but not particularly surprising.
Wood-Elves could potentially live for over four-thousand years, and for the first several-hundred, their females could reproduce. Of course, that’s assuming that they weren’t killed before then: They usually were.
Even if they just made it a few decades, they were nearly as fertile as humans, so their population would grow relatively quickly. If they had plenty of food and land, which they did, a hundred-million throughout all of Salvation, wouldn’t have been a shocking figure; the problem was that I honestly didn’t know anything about the bottom half of that island, so it was impossible for me to know for certain.
Regardless, with a little bit of water-manipulation, I could easily wipe out legions of enemies… as long as they didn’t have auras, or something to protect their bodies. Even if they did, flash-frying them with lightning, or firing thousands of tiny pieces of metal into a crowd obviously worked pretty well.
Unfortunately, that was only if they were in-front of me, but they weren’t. There were battles happening all over the border between the two kingdoms, and I was too busy dealing with the war-beasts, demi-elves, and Yuri-Mice, to go around, playing with Hithu and Lum’s armies.
It was natural for the refugees to fear Amber and I, but many of them respected our power as well. However, since we displayed not only destructive magic, but also ‘miraculous’ healing capabilities… things always seemed to become rather irritating.
For many of the clans, they didn’t have any formal religions; sadly, that only made them even more susceptible to the allure of the Fox-Tribe’s nonsense. Deifying people, just because they’re a bit overpowered, is completely unreasonable; yet, I still couldn’t dissuade those fanatics.
Hell, even the panther-girl Tasha, who wasn’t completely recovered, started her own “Church of Michael.” It was mostly filled with female war-beasts, who were expecting me to mate with them; I declined their offers, and ended up designing some… toys, so they could entertain themselves.
There were plenty of broken vibrating golden-mithril swords that were looted from the battlefield. It really only took a bit of reforging, to turn a metal hilt, into a more comfortable shape; thus I managed to supply a cult of religious nymphomaniacs, a way to curb their desires: without sacrificing my superficial virginity, or ‘cheating’ on Amber.
Of course, helping with the construction of New Karaville, was what took up most of my time; then there was treating the sick and severely wounded, killing any war-beast stupid enough to murder or rape in my presence, quelling the serious conflicts that arose, and basically doing a little bit of everything. Surprisingly, there were plenty of the ‘Yuri-Plants’ that thrived and flourished, after feasting on so much mana; because of that, we didn’t need to worry about food.
Although, some of the birds and insects had actually become quite dangerous, and a decent amount of people died from the seemingly random attacks. Some of the most severe casualties from that first day, were the tiny Mouse-Tribe, whom had lost their city… until I removed that giant boulder, and helped them reconstruct their homes, using a bit of earth-manipulation.
My biggest discovery while helping the little critters, was learning that their firearms didn’t actually use gunpowder. Strangely enough, they managed to create an even more explosive compound, by combining powdered golden-mithril, with charcoal-dust and the nectar from a Uriel-related purple flower.
Gathering the ingredients was incredibly difficult for the mice, but luckily I had plenty of volunteers. Pixies could collect the nectar, bulls and bears to gather wood from the burned down buildings, while I had my own stockpile of trashed weapons and armor to donate; fortunately, many of the cannon-smiths and alchemists had survived the giant boulder bombardment.
I taught them how to create bullets and rifling to craft artillery that was a bit more advanced, but there simply wasn’t enough time or materials for me to make ‘normal-sized’ guns. Besides that, I had higher priorities to take care of; as the atmospheric mana-density dropped, so did the ambient temperature.
With such a ridiculously high elevation, Salvation was practically on the peak of a mountain. While it did have the benefit of being almost exactly on the equator, it was still going to be be extremely cold in the winter; also, I had heard from the farmers, that sudden blizzards were fairly common.
Even the war-beasts whom had the thickest fur, still required a cave for shelter during such harsh weather. The Alligator-Tribe and other similarly aquatic races, weren’t usually affected too dramatically, because that shallow lake stayed warm all year long.
Although I contemplated returning to the beach… the situation had changed. With less than a hundred people, Old Karaville was already pretty overpopulated; there just wasn’t enough acreage to fit roughly three-thousand war-beasts and five-hundred demi-elves.
Well, the pixies and two-hundred thousand tiny Mouse-Tribe, could have relocated pretty easily. However, I didn’t want to split-up the group; without Amber and I there to protect them, no-one was even remotely safe.
To prevent a repeat of last time, I made sure that earthquake resistance was taken into account when building the mostly-wooden structures. I also had to reprimand the idiotic Puriel worshipers, and made sure that they stopped performing weird fire-related rituals.
Those little foxes were always branding each-other with tiger-stripes, and drinking sacramental flaming shots of grain-alcohol. As long as they didn’t start sacrificing virgins, or burning heretics, they were just a bunch of stupid kids, idolizing an extremely overpowered being: who happened to save or free them, one way or the other.
Over the first five days, Angelica and Hanael ended up giving out my mark to pretty much everyone. It was convenient, since it kept the different clans and races from killing or raping each-other, but it made the situation a little awkward as well; there became a rather substantial divide between the ones who accepted the seal, and those who refused it.
Blood-magic, was basically just a mixture of nature, illusion and runic spells; which meant that it was a bit more permanent than most people would prefer. In fact, it usually affected the DNA to such an extent, that those afflicted with a curse or blessing of that nature, would pass it down to their children.
My seal was a lot more intricate and complicated than it appeared. At first, only Beatrix would have been able to directly mark others with it, but everything was dependent on mana-capacity.
As the first few hundred soldiers that she brought into her army, gained more personal power and reached a certain point, they would gradually develop the capability to give out a copy of the runic-tattoo. After a few generations, everyone in Alfirin would have the number seven-hundred and seventy-seven inscribed onto their left hand and into their genes.
Well, they weren’t perfect; eventually, the seals would weaken and lose a lot of their control. I figured that by then, the culture that I would have created, would have ingrained the aversion to rape and slavery, so deeply, that I wouldn’t have to go around wasting my time and energy, trying to fix the world.
Not to mention, that by then, the technology, biology, and magical capabilities of the general population would have been advancing at an incredibly fast pace. Telepathy could be achieved with so many different methods, that I wasn’t particularly worried about the mark losing that insignificant function.
A week passed by pretty quickly, and the temperature dropped below freezing. Fortunately, we had been able to construct a small town, with plenty of warm and relatively insulated log-cabins, long-houses, and quite a few underground burrows.
On a beautiful moonlit night, after Amber and I had a gentle sparring match, the exhausted tigress asked me “Michael, why do you care? What’s the point in saving these weaklings?” in a deep, raspy growl. We had to travel at least a mile away from the farmlands, so that our brawl didn’t accidentally kill anyone.
My response was “Karma is cruel and kind, depending on how much of an asshole you are. Basically, the more ‘innocent’ people you help, the better your life will be. How or why doesn’t really matter; that’s just the way it all works out, so being nice has plenty of benefits. Besides, I know for a fact, that you actually like the way those little fox-brats worship you.”
She was laying on top of me, curled up onto my body, as she purred “As long as saving them makes you happy, I’ll keep doing it.” and immediately fell into a deep slumber.
I snickered and ran my fingers through the thick fur on her back, while whispering “Goodnight.” Then I finally turned my attention towards the astral-projecting voyeur, hovering air a few meters away from my head.
It had only been a few years since we had last seen each-other, but given that she was a Blood-Elf, Raelin obviously didn’t age. Although, she did seem to have gotten a lot of piercings; more importantly, she was definitely pregnant… or something along those lines.
When she sat down on the grass, near my face, she started sobbing obnoxiously, which made me feel a bit awkward. While she was being overcome with various emotions, I decided to unlock my first seal.
There was so much information that I nearly blacked out a few times, and it felt like my mind was overloaded. I mumbled “Holy shit…” as my understanding of magic swiftly returned; it was almost too much for my brain to handle, even after I had become so much more powerful.
What I had taught Raelin throughout our relatively short time together, was practically nothing, compared to the cacophony of random nonsense that I had stored into her seal. At least thirty-percent of it was completely pointless miscellaneous spells; a tenth of it, was literally considered “Apocalyptic Magic” and totally impractical.
The most critical information was regarding gravity, space-time, atomic-elements, electromagnetic-waves, and various other concepts that I had only vaguely understood before then. There were so many incredibly useful techniques; such as mana-control methods, and plenty of extremely complex genetic-alteration procedures.
Also, I seemed to have boosted my sex-drive significantly as a side-effect; Iris always had that effect on me. Of course, it was more mental than physical, because I had already been going through my own peculiar version of puberty for quite a while before then.
Anyway, once my ‘mother’ stopped crying, I smiled at her and telepathically whispered “It’s been awhile, Rae.” Fortunately, Amber wasn’t connected with her, and couldn’t hear her weeping before that: Our reunion would have been a lot shorter if The Fiery-Tigress had woken up.
After inquiring “Michael… is that really you?” with what sounded like a stuffy-nose, we had a pleasant conversation regarding the overpowered perverts we encountered over the years.
There hadn’t been any activity close to New Karaville since that first battle; yet, when I was finally able to speak to Rae after all that time, Hithu and Lum had to have a huge battle only a few miles to the north of the town. Angelica and her pixies had managed to wake-up Amber, and she said some things that irritated me, but regardless of their arrival, my mother was starting to reach the end of her astral-projection.
Then she nervously explained how Ethir and herself, had ended up together; given the way that they had acted around each-other when I was in Black Mithril, I was kinda surprised that it took them that long. Well, I guess it all worked out in the end; though she seemed fairly upset about the prospect of laying eggs.
Generally Blood-Elves reproduced by transmitting a virus, but knowing Yuri, she definitely would have given them plenty of ways to make babies. That woman always did have a thing for oviparity, hell, her version of unicorns were genetically closer to ducks, than horses.
I tried to explain to Raelin, that it didn’t matter whether her children were demonic-beasts or hideous-monsters, she would still love them regardless of their physical forms. Once I finished speaking, she vanished; and Amber asked me “Who was that?” as she rested her chin on the top of my head.
Angelica grumbled “It looked like a Wood-Elf… but slightly different.” as she fluttered up onto my left horn, and sat down.
After snickering for a few seconds, I explained “Ah, that’s my mother; I suppose our relationship is a bit more complicated than that though. She found me as an infant, and attempted to take care of me, but I always ended up doing most of the work. Hmmm, we should probably get going now, I really want to test out a few things…”
Amber growled “Good, I’m starving!” and then the two of us followed the small swarm of pixies, lead by a tiny seraph, towards the nearest battlefield. We stopped by New Karaville, and let the pregnant grizzly-girl know the situation, before taking a few dozen wolf-men, black-bears, minotaurs, and even some surprisingly blood-thirsty little foxes.
Compared the the thousands of war-beasts living in that town, Angelica’s army of two-hundred, wasn’t really that significant. However, they were still some of the most powerful warriors, archers, and assassins that she had; not to mention the fact that they were all equipped with extravagant magical weapons, and golden-mithril plate or chain-mail armor that I taught some of the pale-goblin blacksmiths how to forge.
Our entourage was actually just the clean-up crew, and before Amber and I were finished playing around, they wouldn’t be foolish enough to step onto that little slice of hell. The battle was already underway when the two of us arrived; the others were still waiting at the northern border of the farmland, so we couldn’t accidentally kill them with literal friendly-fire.
That place had been a lush, green, grassy plain, with plenty of colorful flowers and a few small fruit-trees scattered around; of course, all that was left, were miscellaneous frozen corpses, charcoal, and plenty of broken armor and weapons. Yet, upon that desolate field, were two huge armies of mostly Wood-Elves, but Hithu’s side had a decent amount of meat-shields: black, brown, and white-furred Ursus-Clans, plus lots of Cow-Tribe men.
Thousands of arrows were decimating the heavily armored infantry on both sides, while water-mages used the nearby river, to create a protective barrier against Lum’s fireballs and ballista-bolts. There were also a few catapults, flinging huge boulders, which barely made it to the eastern side of the battlefield.
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Plenty of screaming, yelling, bellowing, clanging, and other appropriate noises were resounding throughout the area. I took a deep breath and sighed dramatically, as I noticed the blood-thirsty purple-furred tiger-girl to my left, waiting for me to let her enjoy herself: If she had received a head-start, then her ‘victory’ would be meaningless.
Amber growled “Which side do you want? The bears and cows taste the best, but those wooden toys are fun to burn…” as a swirling vortex of violent violet aura, erupted into physical flames. She was so wasteful, but luckily, our supply of my rudimentary ‘mana-potions’ was fairly high; before leaving New Karaville, we both had to guzzle a few of those.
Opening my third eye, I told her “No, this is a good opportunity to finally give you a proper magic-lesson. First of all, stop wasting your mana, and suck in that fiery-whirlwind; in fact, enter into ‘Obsidian-Mode’ and conserve your strength for now.”
Her response was “Ugh, that’s so boring though… and I refuse to sing. What’s wrong with the way I’ve been doing things so far? As long as I burn them to death, they’ll definitely die, right?” but she still obediently did as I asked, and stopped spewing out purple flames.
The tigress’ fur became pitch-black, and I could only sense her aura coming from her mouth, nostrils, ears, and eyes. Then I smirked, and scratched the side of her neck, with my left hand; while she was purring happily, I explained “Don’t worry, chanting and all that other shit is kinda pointless for you anyway; your natural talent is a lot higher than Hanael’s, and you already know how to use some pretty advanced creation and manipulation magic.”
The two of us were standing at least a kilometer away from the massive battle, but they were a bit preoccupied, so no one seemed to even notice us there. Amber asked “Then what the hell am I supposed to do? I usually just get really angry, and the flames happen on their own; to make things colder, I need to relax. Well, flying does take a bit of concentration; turning my hair this color is really exhausting too. Why can’t we just go eat now?”
I couldn’t help but sigh, as I shook my head and replied “So you’re fine with never being able to win against me again?” She frowned, while glaring at me, but didn’t say anything, so I continued “I’ll skip all the complicated theories and science, because you probably wouldn’t care, even if you did understand it. Basically, for people like yourself, magic is mostly unconscious: You don’t even think about casting a spell, and it just happens in relation to your mood. That’s fine when you’re fighting against weaklings and idiots, but there are plenty of really overpowered assholes in the world, and I might not always be there to protect you.”
She immediately chomped down on my wrist, and growled angrily, so I kicked out her left leg, and slammed her back against the dead grass. While smirking, I shoved my middle and ring-finger from my armored hand, into her weakest-point, while instructing “Focus on that sensation, but don’t stop holding in your aura.”
The confused tigress, bit my forearm so hard that her teeth actually broke my incredibly tough skin, and then she purred “It feels like my whole body is tingling; is this the magic you wanted to teach me?”
After snickering, I whispered in her left ear “I’m just channeling my mana into your nervous system. Now concentrate on the prickly feeling surging up your spine and down to the tip of your tail. Visualize that aura into a tangible form; I’m going to stimulate you a bit, but keep thinking about that sensation you’re experiencing, okay?” as I continued to press my thumb against her relatively small, but extraordinarily sensitive bead: which was typically protected by incredibly durable flesh, and obviously lots of fur.
When I began rubbing inside and outside at the same time, her violet-eyes began to glow brightly, and she roared “Arg! It hurts… but it doesn’t?! Gah, what is this!? Stop! Wait, go faster! Ah, I don’t think I can hold it in anymore!”
Even though she was in ‘Obsidian-Mode’ she was definitely reaching her limits very quickly, but the aura that she was releasing, was far more condensed and focused than her typical, blazing purple firestorm. I smiled and told her “Good girl, now let it all out.” as the air around her pitch-black fur crackled with electricity, and a blazing hot stream of liquid drenched my right leg and arm.
Then immensely powerful arcs of violet lightning began swirling around her body, but it wasn’t quite enough to hurt me. As her deafening roar erupted right next to my face, a massive pillar of ionized plasma, fired out of her mouth, reaching all the way up to the thick, white clouds.
For a few seconds, the entire night sky was lit-up by not only the grey moon, but also the purple flashes of static-electricity. She continued to discharge the sweet-smelling liquid, along with a massive amount of alluring pheromones, and if there weren’t several hundred frenzied Wood-Elves charging towards us, I probably would have finally taken that next step in our relationship.
Well, Amber was way too exhausted to keep going anyway. Her obsidian fur had turned almost completely transparent, revealing her white skin and the light-orange tiger-stripes on her head, back, tail, legs and arms; it was her neutral mode, which she entered when her aura was extremely weak.
The panting tigress grinned, and quietly purred “That felt… amazing, but now I think I’m going to starve to death. Ugh, I can’t move; can you bring me some food?” while I used water-manipulation to remove the super-heated purple-slime from my arm and leg.
I sighed, as I began regenerating the seared flesh on my thigh and shin, then stood-up, turning towards the battalion of Hithu knights and paladins: It was easy to tell them apart, since the slightly stronger ones wore golden-mithril, rather than the silver kind. As I glanced over the battlefield behind the relatively-short soldiers, I noticed that both sides had lost at least half of their forces; they were still fighting pretty fiercely though, and the mana-density in the air was similar to the second-ring of Lorthon, so their mages were pretty well-off.
When the eight-hundred heavily-armored troops arrived before me, they quickly tried to surround the two of us, being extremely cautious. Compared to the three-meter tall bulls and bears, we weren’t really that large, but they obviously weren’t taking any chances; at least, that’s probably what they had been thinking.
A man wielding a relatively long, golden trident, stepped forward, pointing it towards me; he was wearing a suit of blue chainmail, on-top of a similarly colored mage’s robe, with the symbol of his goddess on his chest. His eyes and hair were silver, and his complexion was fairly pale.
He yelled at me “Foul demons, you shall not be allowed to interrupt our holy crusade! You may indeed be powerful, but Holy Mother Hithu is almighty!” It was clear to me that their little group had been sent to stall us, for at least a few minutes, so that what was left of their army could escape; even Lum’s side seemed to be making preparations to disengage from combat.
I snickered at the futility of it all, then asked him “How old are you, brat? I can actually see a few wrinkles, so you have to be at least a few thousand… You’ve lived in this world for such a long time, and managed to retain your ignorance. I’m curious though, how many of your descendants have died in these foolish crusades over the millennia?”
The man retained his composure, but a relatively young Wood-Elven girl, wearing golden-chainmail, and wielding a beautiful, wooden, azure bow, stepped out of the formation and screamed “Blasphemous bastard! Who are you to question our faith?! Do you claim to be some evil-god, or perhaps a fallen angel?!” She was aiming a blue, crystalline arrow towards my face, from less than forty-meters away; then the woman yelled “My Goddess has bestowed upon me this divine weapon, and commanded me to end your existence with it! My name is-”
However, her speech was prematurely cut short by an incredibly loud and violent vulcanic lightning-bolt, which completely destroyed her ‘divine weapon’ and seared her previously pale skin, to what looked like charcoal. Amber stood-up and growled “Ah, you were right; this is a lot faster than my normal flamethrower spells… It takes a lot less energy too, but so much more concentration.” She was in her ‘Obsidian-Mode’ so she seemed closer to a panther-girl, than a tigress.
After the metaphorical ‘first-blood’ was spilled, the battalion of soldiers wanted to fire their arrows or charge towards us with spears and swords, but the trident-wielding man stopped them with a “Hold your ground!” and they all obeyed.
Then I turned to Amber and asked her “Have you ever seen a laser before?” There were a few reasons why I had never used a lot of my spells when I was younger: my mana-pool was relatively low, my biology was a bit immature, I didn’t really have the opportunity, and most importantly, there were way too many inefficient or pointless ways to use magic.
When I could make all eight-hundred Wood-Elves have an aneurysm at the same time, why would I bother firing off some flashy and overly-destructive attacks? The answer would be… entertainment value; it wasn’t a secret that The Fiery-Tigress was only interested in techniques that seemed fun.
There are a lot of ways to weaponize the various forms of electromagnetic radiation, but they’re all quite devastating under the right circumstances. The interesting thing about mana, is that it could be transformed directly into matter or energy; that way, there was no need to worry about how The Universe worked.
For the most part, people just imagined what they wanted to achieve, and ‘willed’ it to happen, without even realizing what they were doing. However, if the mage actually understood the science, their possibilities and potential would be far greater; those who could use magic, would still be amazed by the level of power that was possible.
In regards to heat, infrared light is usually the main ingredient: at least where lasers are concerned. Gazing at the trident-wielding elf with my third-eye open, I told her “Pay attention, cause this will be over pretty quickly.” as I stared at the center of his forehead.
She growled “What the hell happened?” a second later, because the moment the red dot appeared, it immediately burned a hole through his skull: A few people behind him were killed or seriously injured as well. His limp body fell to the ground, and it incited the battalion to finally attack us.
I snickered for a few seconds, and explained “Well, since you can only see within the ‘visible’ spectrum, and it happened at nearly the speed of light, it’s not really that surprising that you missed it.” Dozens of fancy mithril-arrows were fired towards us, but I just caught them all with a bit of earth-manipulation, and sent them back to their owners.
It was almost as if there was a force-field, preventing the knights and paladins from approaching us; though I was simply repulsing their armor and weapons away from us. Amber growled “It’s kinda boring… I like the lightning better.” as she launched a huge bolt of purple, static-electricity from the shiny silver claws on her left hand.
Even if she just nonchalantly discharged it, dozens of elves were killed. I sighed, then told her “Fine… I’ll do something a little more visually stimulating.” Raising my left palm towards the furious elves in front of us, I began releasing widespread, bright-white, pulses of light.
The effect wasn’t instantaneous, but after a few seconds of sporadic flashes, the knights, paladins, water-mages and surviving archers who were bathed in that ‘beautiful’ illumination, began screaming in pain. From the very first moment, they were already permanently blinded, but then their exposed skin began cracking in some areas, and bubbling in others.
Some of their armors were extremely reflective, but Amber and I couldn’t have been affected by such relatively-low levels of ultraviolet, infrared, microwave, x-ray, and gamma radiation. I mean, I was using my own skin to produce the light in the first place, so I obviously wouldn’t produce too much for my body to handle.
Their blood boiled, flesh melted or became charred, bones cracked and exploded; three rows of elves were completely annihilated by a ‘few’ pulses of electromagnetic-waves. It wasn’t an attack that would work on a powerful demon, or anyone wearing the proper protective gear, but was still enough for the tigress to growl in approval.
However, she also complained “Now we can’t eat them though…” but it wasn’t as if the two of us could devour hundreds of Wood-Elves in the first place. Aside from those fanatical foxes who worshipped Puriel, most war-beasts wouldn’t eat ‘people’ unless they didn’t have anything else.
I sighed, then used earth-manipulation to yank over a random bow-wielding man, and a woman wearing golden-platemail, whose face had a huge scar from the top of her forehead, down to her left-side jaw. They both seemed terrified, which was completely understandable, and after a few seconds I tossed Amber the slightly more muscular, female; gender usually didn’t make a huge difference, so it was merely her occupation, that allowed her to gain a bit more meat.
The black-furred tigress grabbed the ‘snack’ and quickly deep-fried her prey, with a bit of vulcanic lightning. I preferred my Elf raw, a bit of spices would have been nice though, but my stash of dried seasonings was a few miles to the south, and I was starving. It might have been a bit wasteful, but I only took the liver and heart, throwing the rest of him into the pile of roasted corpses in front of me.
By the time we finished eating, Hithu and Lum’s main forces had already retreated a few miles to the east and west of the battlefield. Thousands of wounded soldiers were simply left to die. The knights and paladins that were attempting to attack us, eventually tried to flee after watching us casually massacre so many of their comrades; however, I maintained my hold on their armor, and forced all of them against the freezing-cold dirt.
Then I turned to Amber and told her “Your aura might have a natural state, but it can take any shape; instead of creating a generic ball of fire, you can do all kinds of crazy inefficient shit. It takes a lot more concentration and mana, plus it’s usually not as effective, but…” as golden flames began swirling around my right arm. With my palm upturned, a tiny, serpentine dragon started to appear: It was made entirely out of super-heated plasma.
The tigress stared at it, and tried to copy me; her black fur turned purple, as a violet inferno erupted around her body. I sighed and explained “You need to calm down; otherwise, your aura will just keep going out of control.” Once she managed to turn her fur nearly transparent, with only a hint of mauve, she extended her left hand and created a small blaze; it was swirling in the shape of a tiny tornado.
She smiled at me, with a bit of elven-blood dripping down her chin, and growled “How do I change the shape? I want it to look like me, except a lot bigger!” Listening to her request, I immediately transformed my dragon, into a miniature version of Amber.
As I made its plasmic body larger, I had to expand my aura until it encompassed at least a few dozen meters in every direction but downward. The gigantic, thirty-foot tall, golden, flaming tigress, was actually lacking a lot of details; though, it definitely resembled the happy little girl to my left.
Then I released my hold over the hundreds of Elves, and yelled “You can fight or run, it won’t make much of a difference either way!” Most of them attempted to flee, a few tried to attack the colossal fire-monster, while a few dozen simply stayed on the ground and prayed to their goddess for salvation; all of them died.
To be completely honest, those golden flames weren’t actually that hot; however, when the almost incorporeal giantess passed by, each breath they took, seared their lungs and throats. The creature didn’t even have to touch the ground either, it was all theatrics.
Fortunately, the ridiculous display was enough to make Amber interested in learning how to use ‘real’ magical spells. Her usual techniques were what I would consider level-one creation and manipulation; the reason that they were so unreasonably powerful, was because of her massive mana-supply and output.
Patience is a virtue that my little tigress didn’t possess or believe in. The moment I dispersed my golden flames, I felt the temperature rise by at least a hundred degrees; her tiny whirlwind was growing at a rapid pace.
Her aura suddenly exploded, along with her fur changing to its unrestrained violet color, a gigantic tornado of purple fire began swirling up into the sky. The two of us were in the center, so we weren’t affected, but that twister started getting pulled northward, and quickly sucked both of us into the raging inferno.
Amber’s mana-pool was completely tapped-out, so her nearly unconscious body was easily swept away. Fortunately, I still had plenty of power left, and was able to use wind-manipulation, while latching onto her tail, and kept us from getting thrown around too much.
After sweeping over the former battlefield, there were thousands of melting golden and silver mithril weapons and armors, flying past us at over a hundred miles-per-hour. At that kind of speed, a molten spear managed to pierce straight through my left bicep, and get stuck; several knives and swords stabbed into the tired-tigress’ fur, but didn’t have enough inertia to do anything but leave bruises and small cuts.
Her first weather magic spell, easily reached the catastrophic scale, and the colossal fiery tornado split off into several directions, while creating plenty of regular twisters because of the ridiculously powerful winds, churning against each-other. Once nine minutes had passed, the one that we were stuck inside of, finally dissipated; I probably could have dispersed it myself, but Amber was actually enjoying the ride, and growled in dissatisfaction when it ended.
When we finally made our way back to camp, early in the morning, Angelica was furious. While we were playing around, all of the equipment and items laying around the battlefield were either melted to the ground, or blown far away.
I told the angry seraph “Angelica, life is long and filled with many hardships, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun. Besides, we already have piles of gear laying around; we just have to customize them a bit.”
Hearing those words made Amber look at me with violet eyes, brimming with expectation. After all, we had been running around completely naked and unarmed for nearly a year; it was about time we finally put some damn clothes on, and started using tools again.