*Two days later.*
"Tell me you are joking, Lady Siri." Sofia turned toward the pale mage.
"I am."
Just as the ice-cold monster finished speaking the wall behind began to be hit with spells causing a kaleidoscope of glimmering colours to choke the air around them.
"You said you were joking about them seeing us!"
"You told me to say that?"
The humans had a strange habit of asking questions which weren't ones. Yesterday a human asked her 'how are you' but when she stopped and began to explain her day away the humans around her looked at her funny.
"Take cover!" The human called Sofia grabbed the ancient's arm and pulled her behind a thick tree. Shortly after flames engulfed the tree sparing a thin area behind it where they were.
The ancient alongside every other human were given a wand and a necklace with what Sofia said was a 'mid-tier' protective spell. Kia casted her a dubious look as the spell inside wasn't that strong, at a level at which she had rarely used given that other more powerful spells worked better and the spells below it were more efficient. Her subject of observation flinched as a spell tore a chunk of wood off as it hit the tree causing her to run further into the forest. Kia wondered why panic was slowly being stacked on Sofia. The spells which the wands stored were an odd mixture of weak spells coated with much more powerful illusionary spells which mimicked more powerful spells. The wand she was given was storing hundred and fifty charges of Glitter Bolt divided into groups. She was very confused since the groups the humans divided the spell into corresponded to various ice spells.
"Were you hurt?" Sofia asked, patting the undead face interrupting her pondering about why she resembled Iris even more in this situation. "Does it hurt anywhere?"
"No, I disabled my ability to feel pain." The ancient answered, making a face she couldn't see.
"Lady Siri this is no time to make jokes." The human for some reason dismissed her answer grabbing her long polearm, which she was told was called naginata.
Kia would call to question the reason for putting a long blade on a longer stick but maybe it had to do with Sofia's class. Once more the ancient was reminded how strange the world around her was. The people around her were all of different levels influencing their decisions but to her senses, they all appeared the same.
A roaring fireball arced over the trees before crashing down behind Sofia. Grey-white bolts resembling the spikes on a mace exploded outwards as the fire consumed the green grass. Two struck the human's back causing her to grab her back and the stone on her neck to glow.
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"Ohhh, that's what this was for." The ancient opened her mouth as Sofia winced in pain. The mystery spell she had sensed in the protection necklace activated storing charges of Pain within itself.
"Lady Siri." Her subject gritted through her teeth taking erratic breaths as she was fighting the magical pain.
The ancient cocked her head to the side as she watched the strange way the humans trained each other and its outcome. The reason why Sofia appeared so frustrated for being spotted was because she and Kia were meant to flank the opposite team who had blue bandages on their arm. It eluded Kia how all of the humans managed to hurt themselves in the same area.
"What do I do?" Kia asked, she was told to not attack anyone until Sofia gave her a sign and she didn't want to be a bad girl but she struggled to understand if Sofia thrashing in the ground was the signal.
"It hurts like hell," The blonde woman said after reigning the control back from the artificial pain. "Siri, go around this rock and hide. I don't know where they are but I'm going to make some noise and distract them."
"[Spacial Auger]," The girl closed her eyes before activating a spell. "There are four humans in front of us."
"... Aspects, I pray I never have to face you in battle," Kia found it odd that a single tick of terror appeared above Sofia's head. For a split panicked moment, the girl feared she began to transform causing her hand to almost slap her cheek which was still there. "Can you eliminate them? With your wand remember."
"Bad." Kia frowned at the evil human who had scared her before she stood up and went around the rock.
The ancient wondered if she could fool the humans and discard the wand. Holding this limiter felt odd and every fibre of her disagreed with her yet her mana flowed through the simple trinket activating the spell inside and causing an icycle to zip through the forest. The man who had spotted the pettie undead didn't manage to turn his fiery wand at her before he screamed in pain.
"Overkill, stop!" Kia heard someone scream as two more spells flew toward the man. The Glitter Bolt shattered upon a greenish shimmer as the protective charm activated another function.
It would appear that different spells dealt different levels of damage as the man collapsed after only being hit once.
“Is this their way of balancing area of effect spells?” The ancient raised an eyebrow, if anything the humans should have made it so everything dealt an equal amount of damage. The Living are so fragile that inhaling a little bit of fire from a Fireball causes the same amount of damage as the hardened core of a Firebolt going through their chest, the only difference being how much of them remained afterward.
Two more icicles flew through the greenery, passing through leaves like phantoms before hitting another human who had frozen in place watching her companion get eliminated. The undead began to wonder why the third human was staring at her as she moved the wand toward him. Maybe his automotive circuitry was malfunctioning as he attempted to doge with a jittering motion.
“Overkill, stop!” A ghostly voice said as four spells shattered against the magical barrier.
The ancient turned her head toward the empty forest. She could sense the last human was somewhere in front of her, quickly gaining distance between away from her. A buzz reverberated throughout the woods as the girl swiped her wand, casting spells one after the other creating a fan of ice which chased after the last fleeing human. Losing the last human from her senses, the undead swivelled on her heel and began to walk toward Sofia. A bugle sounded through the wood making the humans rise from the dead as their necklaces resonated with the trumpet's song.
"Lady Siri, are you hurt?" An ugly pink settled on Sofia's face as she lifted herself off the ground and leaned against a rock. "Where are the others? I would like to thank them for helping us here."
"Others?" The undead who had also sat down on the ground asked not knowing if she should check her experiment's head.
"I don't think it's necessary to put on an image in front of me. I might have been stuck laying on the ground feeling as if two horses were pulling my body apart but I still could hear the battle around. There must have been at least five or six people helping you, am I not wrong?"
Kia's golden blue eyes narrowed as she tallied yet another grief caused to her by the small-souled race. The human sounded oddly confident in her assertion and without explaining what was the reason for her confidence or why she was glancing at the wand in both of their hands.
Iris had told her many times that her head hurts when she does the impossible or insane. The necromancer wouldn't say that the things she does or says are that mindblowing but her throne disagreed with her obviously correct assessment. A fancy came over the undead as she wanted to test if her favourite was correct, by expanding the sample pool. Telling Sofia that no one had helped eliminate the enemy felt like a prerequisite to replicating the theorised headache.
"Never mind, Lady Siri let us not make the senechal wait for us."
Sadly, it was better not to risk the already less annoying human reverting to her more annoying roots.
"Okay." The undead said her feet dragging behind her like a sulking child.