The odor hit their noses before they even walked through the door. As Riva and Iman approached the man’s home, they were met with a horrible stench that nearly left them keeling over. Looking over at the man, they were assured by his covered nose that he smelled it, too.
“Woah? What the hell is that?” Iman wasted no time asking.
“I’m sorry, I must have forgotten to mention,” the man answered, his hand still pinching his nose tight. “There has been a strange odor coming from my house ever since met wife got depressed. It has filled every room and, as you two are experiencing, is noticeable even from outside.”
“Why don’t you just give her a bath if she stinks so bad?” the young nør elf asked, not seeing anything wrong with her question.
“Iman!” shouted Riva in response.
The young woman, still not thinking anything she said had been rude, simply asked, “What?”
The middle-aged man put up a hand. It was quiet and meek, like he no longer had the energy to do anything more. Without reacting to the rudeness of the question, the man replied straightforwardly that he had already tried bathing her but she had not budged from her seat. She had not gotten up in the several days since her condition started, not even to eat. He admitted he was curious how she was even still alive, though he did not want to accidentally jinx anything. He had tried lighting some scented candles around the room, even using an Aroma spell, yet nothing seemed to work. The horrible odor never faded, overpowering the other scents to the point he could not smell the candles even when inches away from them. Most peculiarly, he added, the smell did not get stomper the closer he got to his wife. It was, instead, evenly distributed throughout every inch of his house.
Riva, in complete disbelief, reiterated that he had been staying in the house for the past several days, waiting for him to confirm. He assured her that he had only left 4 other times before now, all of which were simply errands to pick up things for his wife in an effort to cheer her up.
The more Riva listened, the more it dawned on her that the man was convinced his wife was just depressed. Despite everything, all of the weirdness, she was just sad. While it wasn’t worth ruling out completely, for she understood it could maybe be the reason why, it surprised her that the man had not considered for even a second any other possible reasons as to why everything was happening. Had he not considered that she had a spell cast on her? Some kind of curse? Or that she was sick? She had thought the man was unassuming before. Now, she worried he was just clueless.
Working up their nerve, the women finally followed the man into the house, only for the odor to smack into their nostrils even harder. With a hand over her nose, Iman remarked to her companion, “I’d take a day in the underslug’s stomach over this.”
Guiding them into the room to their left, the man introduced them to his wife who was sitting in a chair on the other side. She was hunched over, with a blank expression on her face and an unmoving pose with the exception of her breathing. “Honey,” the man started, nervously. “I, um… I brought some people over. I thought… thought they could cheer you up. One of them is a musician, actually. Isn’t that nice? I thought her maybe playing something for you might brighten you up a bit.”
The man's wife did not show any signs of reaction in the slightest, neither in her body language nor her gaze. The man grew even more nervous. He turned to Iman. “Why don’t— Why don’t you just try playing something?” he asked awkwardly.
The young woman brought her hands down to her waist to untie her lyre. It took every ounce of willpower she had not to gag from the smell hitting her unshielded nose. Raising it to her chest, she tucked it under one arm and looked back at the others, before finally starting.
She played softly, plucking each string with gentle care, caressing them as if to show respect to the animal whose hair was used to make them. Iman played like she had known the instrument her whole life, like she had been born with it in her hands. The soft lullaby that flowed outward from between the strings gently the room, like a wave of water slowly brushing over someone. Riva found herself immediately relaxed, so much so that the smell of the room did not even bother her. She removed her hands from her face and smiled, completely undisturbed. Her friend’s music was heavenly, even when surrounded by a place that made one feel so disgusted.
Still, there was no reaction from the man’s wife. It was as if she couldn’t hear it. The music filled the room just as much as the odor did, and yet the numbed woman was completely unbothered. After a few seconds, noticing the music on its own wasn’t working, the nør elf began to let the magic flow. A familiar, yellowish-orange streak started to swim forward from out of the instrument. It was only now that she was so close that Riva noticed the bending light had markings on it resembling sheet music, as if the notes and everything else and just flown right off some page and into the air.
The bending, warping light danced around the room, slowly making its way to the woman in the chair. As it reached her, it began to spiral around her, wrapping around the entire chair until finally starting to close in on her. As the instrumental reached its conclusion, the wrapped-up sheet music glowed bright where the woman sat before finally dissipating. The spell had reached its finale.
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The three watched the light fade from across the room, only to find the woman still sitting in her chair, completely unchanged and unbothered. Iman’s spell had been unsuccessful.
Panicked, the man rushed across the room to his wife, the smell starting to get to his eyes now that the bliss of the music had faded. While his resolve had gotten sued to the odor from being in the house for so long, his conscious self was able to block it out to prevent him from reacting, his body still could not control itself. His eyes were starting to water and his nose was starting to sting, but helpless, the man ignored it all.
“Maggie! Maggie, please!” pleaded the man, wanting to scream but so deflated that he couldn’t muster up the voice. “Maggie, you need to come back to me! I know you’re in there. I know you’re in there, Maggie. I’m trying. I’m trying so hard, but you have to help me. You have to let me know if something is working, anything! I don’t know what to do, Maggie. I mean, I think all that’s left would be to take you to a doctor, but you won’t move. And you feel so heavy, I don’t even think I could carry you. And magic isn’t working, I just, I mean what if you're… what if you… no, no! No… Maggie, no…”
Riva paused for a moment. She thought about the words the hopeless man had just uttered. “What if— What if she isn’t ‘somewhere in there’?” the woman asked. “What if something else is somewhere in there? What if she has something inside her making her this way? Like a virus or a parasite of some kind. Would that be possible?”
“I don’t— I don’t know,” stammered the babbling man. “Is that possible?”
“That’s what she’s asking you!” Iman shot back.
“Well, I d-don’t know, I mean… I can’t think of anything that could have infected her, or, when she could have been, but… is that what you think is going on?”
Riva was taking complete charge of the situation at this point. “Well, if it was some kind of spell, we would’ve seen something different happen to Iman’s spell; it either would’ve fixed the spell cast on her before or shown some sign of not being strong enough if it wasn’t before disappearing. So I’m trying to think, what are the options if it’s not natural causes and not because of any direct magic? All I can think of is maybe some kind of creature is latched onto her, infecting her or something.”
Just then, Riva turned to Azim and instructed her, “Use that magic hand thing you have and hold her up, please.”
“Wait, what?!” the man asked, interrupting them.
“Aw, gee, don’t worry, guy, it ain’t gonna’ hurt her. Promise,” assured the nør elf as she put away her lyre and retrieved her mandolin. “Elastihand: Lift!”
With one clean strum of her instrument, Iman sent forth a yellow-orange hand of light straight toward there man’s wife, which was just large enough to put two fingers over each shoulder and pick her up above her chair. As she rose, her limp body flung below, her arms and legs waving pathetically. “Maggie!” the man screamed softly, looking up at her while still on his knees.
“It’s alright, sir, it’s just to get her off the chair,” assured Riva. “From here, we do the rest ourselves.”
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Another omnipresent gong sound rang throughout the arena and beyond, signaling the start of the final fight before the finals. Several people turned into fading yellow right off the bat, before even 4 seconds had elapsed in the match. Most combatants were either rushing to the center, like the one to Azim’s left, or were staying back to try and play it safe.While Azim wasn’t necessarily trying for any sort of strategy, the fighter to his right took him to be someone of the latter group and went straight for him.
“Holo Spike!” the challenger cried, shooting out a thin spike of pink light from his palm.
The spike shot forward at incredible speed, too fast for Azim to dodge. With such a short distance between them, it was all the robot could do to put his right arm in front of the incoming attack. Just as the metal man managed to squeeze his arm in between his abdomen and the incoming spike, the stranger’s spell crashed into him with immense force. Punctured in the arm, Azim slid along the floor of the arena, getting pushed back until the spike finally dematerialized. As he removed his arm from his side, the android revealed a small dent that had punctured his abdomen.
Azim was starting to get a sense of how powerful the people he was coming across were getting. He was no longer in small towns and in-betweens, with travelers who could barely do anything. He was slowly starting to enter the world of seriously strong adventurers. His highly durable armor had held out when his opponents had magic that was madly impressive at best. But now, with the stakes starting to rise, and the amphiome in front of him, the metal man was realizing he was really going to need to start upgrading himself as well. Not just out of interest, but out of necessity.
“Whoa, you didn’t disappear!” the mage uttered, a bit shocked. “I was sure that would be a fatal blow.”
Turning to face his adversary properly, Azim stared at him without saying a word. His glowing, amber eyes stared into the depths of his opponent. An odd feeling struck the nerve of the mage. Who was this guy?
Doing his best not to get rattled, the mage shouted his incantation once more and thrust forward both hands. In response, two more pink spikes erupted forward at different angles. Azim threw up his arms as the energy spikes rushed forward, letting them crash into his limbs with the same intense power. Despite the several spots the robot was now impaled, his stance held firm, unwavering and unencumbered. When the spikes finally dissolved the same way the first one had, he dropped his arms and maintained his unintentionally intimating stare. The wounds were serious, but they did not matter. There was nothing the robot could do about them now. In the moment, Azim simply had to rely on his inability to feel pain to carry him through. Once this was all over, he could deal with any missing limbs.
The amphibious mage was getting increasingly more worried. His opponent had just tanked 3 full-contact spikes without saying a word and was still up and running. Now, he was staring the amphiome down like he was the one in danger. Just who was this guy?
“So,” he continued, “how much is it going to take to make you disappear?”