“Does everyone have everything they need?” Azura made his final round to make sure everyone was ready to go. Thankfully they had listened to him this time and were all running on a decent amount of sleep. The hotel inn they stayed at wasn’t great, but it was a place to sleep, and eat a hearty breakfast.
“Yup! I’m good to go hunt some monsters!” Roran’s eyes shone with his eagerness. Azura shook his head, he would never understand Roran’s enthusiasm for almost everything.
“I’m as ready as I’m going to be.” After their little talk yesterday Lily’s hesitancy made a lot more sense to him. He intended to keep an eye on her today, trauma could cause lots of reactions, and almost all of them would be very bad if they happened in the middle of a tense moment.
After everyone else gave their ascent, they set out past the gates. First light was a little less than an hour away, but it wasn’t so dark they couldn’t see even under the dense foliage of the forest. “How far out is the cove again?” Siara was obviously the most on edge, which he understood. Knowing that there were monsters all around you wasn’t the same as feeling them. In some ways her sensory abilities worked against her.
“Probably not more than 20-30 miles.” They were pretty lucky, it wasn’t far enough that they would really have to hurry, in fact they would probably take it pretty slow, just to make sure they didn’t get there before sunrise.
“So why didn’t we have time to do scouting yesterday?”
“It’s not that we couldn’t have done it safely, it was that we couldn’t ‘guarantee’ it would be safe. Frankly the 1 or 2 extra hours wasn’t worth the additional risk.” Roran’s blasé response surprised Him. It's not that he thought Roran wasn’t smart, but it was unusual for him to say something without his characteristic enthusiasm.
“He’s right, it might have been fine, but there was also an uncomfortably high chance that it wouldn’t have been. Frankly I don’t think the time crunch will be that bad for us. I mean the worst that can happen is we miss the bonus reward deadline, and while 2 gold is a decent sum it’s hardly worth risking your life over … well at least not for us.” Smooth, he wasn’t usually someone to slip like that, but even he could hear how spoiled that made him sound.
“So what’s the plan anyway? I imagine we aren’t going to just jump in guns blazing.” He internally thanked Katy for moving the conversation along, so he didn’t have to stew in his poor choice of words.
“Not anything super intricate really. When we get to the grove, the shadow panthers should try to surround us. We’ll close our eyes and release a blinding flash of light, and then take out as many of them as possible. After that we’ll each take out as many as we can using our own individual skills.” Pretty standard really. When against large groups disorienting them so they can’t work together is key. From there it was like shooting fish in a barrel.
“What about the ones that try to run away? Once they slip into the shadows, they’re gone, and we get paid per panther slain.” Katy’s question was a good one. He pondered it for a few minutes while they walked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know, we can try and manipulate the light in the area to make sure there are no shadows for them to use, but that would be some pretty advanced light magic. Plus over that large of an area, at least 2 of us would have to be dedicated solely to keeping that up.” That’s one of the reasons shadow pather’s were so dangerous. They weren’t as strong as most other monsters, but that shadow ability really made them hard to properly deal with.
“Can’t you use an antimagic field?” Could he? It was a good question, but unfortunately he didn’t think Luna’s suggestion was going to help much.
“I don’t know how their magic works. Remember there are 2 different types of antimagic fields, and I have no idea which one would be necessary. If their magic works like enhancement I would need to scramble their magic, but if it’s something like their bodies naturally using shadows as a portal I would need to stop the magic outside of their bodies from coalescing. As it is I’d just be taking a 50/50 guess, and given my luck I wouldn’t bet our plan around that.”
“Right, that makes sense, plus our magic would also be affected, so probably not a great plan overall.” Even without magic he didn’t think he would lose to a panther one on one, but it wouldn’t be one on one, they had no idea how many enemies there would be.
“So we just take them fast and hard! Make sure there aren’t any stragglers for us to try and round up!” Ideally it wouldn’t come to that, but worst case scenario it wasn’t like Rorans ‘plan’ if you could call it that wouldn’t be effective. A few might escape, but with the numbers that were bound to be taken out today he would be absolutely shocked if the stragglers stuck around to keep causing trouble.
“Hate to say it, but that may very well be what we’re looking at. I don’t really have anything special to keep them contained, so speed is going to be the name of the game.” Ideally he would come up with something better before they got there, but he didn’t have his hopes up.
***
Lily regretted all her life decisions. Azura’s plan had started out well enough, and not counting Cynthia, everyone else was taking out panthers fairly quickly. They hadn’t expected Cynthia to do much of the killing in the first place, her not pulling her weight however was not expected.
Azura had seen her hesitate pretty quickly and had left a copy to cover her as she panicked. She was strong now, so why couldn’t she move. Her limbs locked up, and even breathing was a struggle as the memories of that awful night ran through her head over and over.
She vaguely heard the others shouting at her, trying to get her attention, but it all sounded so far away. The only thing keeping her in touch with reality was when Azura’s copy grabbed her to pull her out of the way of one of the beasts looking to make her its next meal.
She heard a scream, and realized belatedly that it had come from her, and much worse was that her magic was going out of control. She fought desperately to keep it down, but violet flames started to flicker and come to life all around her. She couldn’t let it out, not like this. Her magic was exceptionally dangerous even when she had perfect control of it. If she let it out now, her friends would die for sure, they were far too close to ground zero.
Even though she knew all of this, she still couldn’t seem to make her body move. Her breathing got heavier and heavier, as the mass of shadow panthers flooded her vision. Her heartbeat rang in her ears, drowning out the yelling of her team. Perhaps her dad had been right, maybe she was a monster. Her vision went dark.
***
Azura was panicking. How could he not be, he had made his plans with the possibility that Lily might freeze in mind, that could be dealt with easily enough. The violet flames that burned his copy to ash in seconds on the other hand was a much bigger problem. “Lily! You need to calm down!” She didn’t react to his screams at all as the pillar of amethyst flames rose into the sky setting the leaves above her on fire. The fire was spreading far faster than he felt it should.
Worse still, water was apparently not enough to douse her flames. The flames clearly weren’t normal, even when Roran disintegrated everything flammable around a small portion of the blaze, they just burned merrily in the dirt. The only brightside was that the flames sent the panthers into a frenzy, and a ton of them killed themselves by attacking the fire. Downside, not a lot was left behind as evidence of the kill.
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“Everyone get out of here! I have something I can try, but I can’t have anyone else get caught in the crossfire!” He was relieved that even under this tense situation they all followed his order, retreating as quickly as possible. Once they were far enough away he pulled his grimoire out from his pack. He took a deep breath grateful the panthers were ignoring him in favor of attacking the deep purple flames.
He opened the book as magic swirled around him, his eyes began to glow with arcane symbols switching out too quickly for them to be fully registered. Symbols began to spread out over the book pages and then seeped out like a flood of water. The symbols quickly overtook a large chunk of forest even glowing over the flames like they were any other surface.
“Stop.” Everything froze, the world in the symbols perfectly still as if merely a picture of an event already past. “Extinguish.” Once again the world followed his commands, the amethyst flames immediately dispersed. The only proof they had been there was the cinders they left behind. He hurt, channeling this level of magic was not something he could do casually, and overwhelming Lily’s unique magic took far more energy than he thought, not to mention keeping all the remaining shadow panthers still.
He would only be able to manage one more spell, and whether he would be able to remain conscious or not was up in the air, and he didn’t have enough time to really think it through. “Sleep” He knew the second the command left him that he would be following it too, but he watched Lily and the beasts they had come to hunt all relax as the symbols retracted back into the grimoire. The second they had all returned the world burst back into motion and his vision went black.
***
“It looks like the flames stopped, we should probably head back.” Luna really hoped they were ok. She had seen it with her magic the second Lily’s control seemed to abandon her. She knew Azura was full of tricks, but just remembering those horrible flames gave her shivers. There was something unnatural about them, whatever it was she sure didn’t like them.
“I think you’re right. Knowing Azura he probably passed out trying to do everything himself.” Katy’s tone was chastising, but Luna could tell she was just worried. “Either way we better hurry, would really suck if they quenched the flames only to get eaten by monsters.”
The party didn’t need any further prompting. They all rushed back to the grove, now missing a lot of trees and filled with ash. She didn’t know what they were expecting to find, but the dozens of sleeping panthers, and their 2 passed out friends were definitely not it. She noticed a book held out in front of Azura with a curious glance. She noticed his body twitch when Katy touched the book, but he didn’t wake.
“Me, Roran, and Siara will cut up the panthers for parts. Do you think you 2 can get Azura, and Lily back into town?” They hadn’t really established a second in command, but she figured Katy was as good as anyone left conscious. She would have no trouble carrying Azura, but would Cynthia be able to carry Lily?
She noticed Cynthia signing at Katy, Azura had insisted she did that even when she was using her telepathy because it would help them learn faster, but she couldn’t help but feel like now wasn’t the time to be worrying about it. Katy just nodded at whatever Cynthia had said, she caught the sign for careful at least.
After that Cynthia put her hands under Lily’s knees and neck and then lifted her without issue. Taking that as her cue she lifted Azura the same way. After that they made their way quickly back towards town, her magic helping them avoid any trouble on the way back.
“Do you think they’ll be ok?” She started a bit, Cynthia had really only used telepathy with her during signing lessons up till now.
She wasn’t confident sharing thoughts back, so speaking aloud would have to do. “I don’t really know what caused Lily to go out of control like that, but they’re both still breathing so I hope it was nothing too severe.” She could still see the violent purple flames dancing in front of her eyes, as if she was back in the moment. Her spell had been obscured as if they ate everything away, even the light. She shuddered at the memory of the flames, even just the thought of them left her almost sick.
“Yeah…. I definitely understand why she hasn’t been using her unique magic. Those flames were… I don’t know what they were, but they were frightening.” She caught Cynthia shivering. It would seem she wasn’t the only one that had gotten that feeling from the fire.
“Somehow frightening sounds like an understatement, they kind of felt like- …” Her eyes widened in horror as she realized why the flames had felt familiar to her. She took a deep breath to steady herself as Cynthia sent her a questioning gaze. Her next words were soft, barely more than a whisper. “They felt like the air did when I was cursed.”
Cynthia’s eyes shot open as she glanced at the girl in her arms. “What! She didn’t make your curse act up did she?” She felt a little gratified at how much Cynthia seemed to care, even though they hadn’t talked much.
“It wasn’t her, just the flames. Unique magic is based just as much off of the circumstances of its awakening as it is personality, and I don’t think Lily is evil. I think it must have awakened when she was angry and desperate.” She had studied up on unique magic after she found out about Azura’s. His had been so convenient she was jealous, but she was thankful she didn’t have the risk of getting magic like Lily’s.
“I know it’s not her fault.. Or at least logically I know that, but we could have all been seriously hurt… or probably even killed, and the only reason that didn’t happen is because Azura had some super secret power or something that somehow stopped the fire that even Roran couldn’t stop.” Wasn’t that the truth. She glanced down at him. His eyes were scrunched, and he was breathing quickly, probably some kind of nightmare, but even with that he wasn’t moving around at all.
“I get the feeling he has a lot of secrets, probably more than even Katy realizes.” She had realized pretty early on that Azura was ‘really’ good at steering a conversation. Sometimes he would say a lot, and it would take her a long time to realize that he had provided almost no actual information. She didn’t think it was malicious though, if he wanted something done to them, he hardly needed to use subterfuge. For her he could literally just do nothing and her curse would take care of it.
“His thoughts are exceptionally guarded, admittedly I was curious enough to try digging deeper than his surface thoughts. I saw things, but they were all so random, more like dreams than real memories. In the end I accomplished nothing, but becoming more confused. His defenses aren’t a solid wall, but more like decoys, and tricks, and traps.”
“I think this is the most I’ve ever hear you ta- errr, I’m not really sure how to refer to this.” Cynthia giggled at her, she flushed a little more embarrassed than she probably should be.
“You can just call it talking, it’s close enough.” Cynthia seemed to be in a surprisingly good mood despite the circumstances. Or maybe Cynthia was always like this, and she just didn’t notice because they rarely spoke.
“Will do. You know you really shouldn’t be digging through people's thoughts. What if Azura’s mental shields hadn’t held? You might have gotten some very private information.” To her surprise Cynthia merely laughed.
“Frankly it feels like that would have been more fair.” She felt an odd sense of bitterness wash over her. “Azura isn’t the only one with secrets, but he does seem to be the best at keeping them. It feels like he knew all of Roran’s and mine before we even realized he had any.”
She could sympathize with that at least. Azura was scary observant, some of the questions he asked made her feel like her whole life's story was a book he read using only passing glances and observations. “I don’t think he does it on purpose if it’s any consolation. It’s how he was raised, any unknown variable could be a threat to him or his family.”
Cynthia sent her a questioning look and she realized she had said too much. She frantically searched for an excuse, anything other than the truth. Did it really matter though? Azura had figured it out already, and didn’t really seem to care. The others probably wouldn’t either. She gathered her courage and just decided to lay it out. “I can sympathize with him a little, and I assume you can too right. If there is one thing all noble families have in common it’s that. Right?”
Cynthia looked surprised for a second and then smiled. “Yeah. You know in hindsight I really should have seen it. I at least realized you weren't from a mage family though, so I’m not completely hopeless.”
They laughed together, and she felt a lot better, the flames finally fading completely from her thoughts. It was one thing to have a friend figure it out on their own, but it was kind of nice to tell someone about it herself.
“So why are you hiding the fact you come from a noble family?”