Tales of magic: grimoire of transmogrification

Chapter 30

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Arc 2 - "The hunter and the beast"

Chapter 14- "Conflagration + explosion"

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The fire started small. Only a little spark that grew to become a small tongue of flame. This flame took in just the right amount of air and became even larger. The bigger flame consumed everything it could and continued to grow even bigger. However, as it grew bigger , it became more unstable and began to spread even further. That was how the small flame devoured an entire forest and didn't stop until it consumed the citizens of the nearby town who refused to run away. What's the moral here? When you see something that powerful and that deadly, run first and reason later.~ The Philosopher on The Common- Sense Principle.

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The barrier of Jordan E. middlesworth,

Screaming woods.

Pridon.

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The Valkyrie took her stance, so did Lancaster.

"Let's end this stupid farce of a fight, okay? You don't even have a sword anymore."

A voice from behind responded. It was like no voice he had heard in his life. It was..so beautiful.

"Do I need one?" The voice asked.

Lancaster raised an eyebrow.

"So that must be your real body, I take it?"

"Yes." The voice replied from inside the fire. A vague figure of a person could be seen from that direction.

The Valkyrie/Ashley jumped forward towards Lancaster, prompting him to turn away from the shadowy shape and raise his hand to block her attack. He braced himself for it, but it didn't come. Instead Ashley slipped and fell on the ground, face-down. She slowly got up on one knee and blood dripped from her head as she did.

"You're still trying to kill me, huh?"

Ashley stood up completely and looked at Lancaster. Her face shriveled in terror.

"No...no.. please, Lady Valkyrie! Help me! We have to rescue the innocents! We don't..."

The voice didn't respond.

"Lady? You must be some kind of noblewoman, why don't you come out and join us?"

Jordan ran to Lancaster. The flames shifted around in turn.

"Lancaster. I can't leave. If I do, the flames will destroy you."

"You really care?"

"The... contract forbids me from letting you die, right?" Jordan smiled.

"You're stupid, you know? I can fly. I could also make it so the flames just pass through me."

"And you'll run out of Power eventually. You and I know you don't have that much. And you're giving away a portion of your Power to your 'friends' right?"

'And I'm feeding them even more now that I asked them for information concerning Hunter and these Woods.' The musician thought.

"Fine. But I'm ending this soon, anyways. Stay close to me so I don't have to teleport anymore."

Lancaster stretched out his hand towards her, and Ashley shivered using her hands to try to block it.

"Stop, she's defenceless!"

"She was trying to kill us. This is our chance."

"No."

"Wind scythe."

It was a straight clean cut around her left shoulder. Her arm fell on the ground with a thud. Blood spattered all over the floor. Ashley screamed in agony and tears went down from her eyes.

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"No!" Jordan shouted, holding on to Lancaster's hand, tugging at it. He was tossed aside the next moment landing on his butt.

"You made me miss. I was aiming for her neck."

'Why did I ever imagine that this monster would have a shred of compassion for once? Was it because he happened to look and act very much like my cousin Lancaster? Or is it because he clams to be him? Or is it because he's my partner in this damned occultic war between wizards?'

"That's enough of that." The angelic voice commented. She didn't sound the least bit disturbed that her comrade had lost an arm and was bleeding away just a few feet away from her.

The figure within the flames walked into the clearing. The flames parted to let her pass, the tongues of flame shook and meandered away from her as though they were afraid of her.

She was an extraordinarily tall person at between 7ft 3 inches and 7ft 5 inches. Lancaster guessed that her slender figure did not at all determine her strength. It was difficult for someone to look imposing if they were as thin as she was,but somehow she did. Her aura was intimidating and fierce, and her expression was almost emotionless. Only her eyes told of her condescending demeanor. It was peculiar to look at and also terrifying.

"Valkyrie, I don't understand... We don't have time to continue fighting these people, the innocents are in peril..why are you doing this? Is it the demon's curse? Is that it? But why? You must be strong enough to fight it.."

"Shut your mouth." Her voice descended like a thunderbolt. The graceful female withdrew a sword from it's scabbard at her waist. Her sword moved as fast as usual, cleanly cutting her head off.

Jordan watched in horror.

Ashley's head fell on the floor and rolled to a halt at Athena's feet. Without a hint of rage, or displeasure, she mercilessly stomped on the severed head producing a crunching sound as a result. As she lifted her boots away, Jordan saw what remained of the head. It was an unsightly mess of blood and brains that almost made him puke.

The rest of her body twitched for a moment and fell to the ground a moment later. The pool of blood around it expanded slowly.

"Why..."

Athena turned her head to Lancaster.

"Let's begin, shall we?"

"Quit ignoring me!" Jordan screamed at the top of his voice. He panted heavily after that, looking at the Mage and the Valkyrie apprehensively.

'Both of them are monsters..they have no regard for human life...'

Journal, I know I should've expected this. I know. I know that I agreed to this battle; but I had no choice, dammit! But, I don't know if I could ever be as heartless as these things...

"Why did you kill her? She was on your side." Jordan questioned, his voice quiet.

"I couldn't fight the urge to do so. I had to get rid of the annoyance somehow. Is that okay for you, little boy?"

Jordan was momentarily startled due to her quick response. He wasn't expecting het to give a proper explanation.

Athena- facing Lancaster -got into a fighting stance.

"I'm not ready yet. Just a moment, okay? Quill, please get the hell out of here. I won't say it again." Lancaster sounded serious, but still had a smile on his face. Apparently, something amused him.

'What's so amusing about the fact that a defenceless person got f*cking beheaded?'

Valkyrie pointed her blade at Lancaster and started to run towards him. Her explosive speed gave her the chance to dodge more than a few wind scythes that flew her way. As she evaded his attacks, she moved closer to him. In a total of three seconds, she closed the gap between the two and launched an attack on Lancaster.

Lancaster teleported behind her, but almost instantly she did the exact same thing and attempted to strike him in the back. Noticing the attack before it arrived, the young Mage teleported yet again, jumping far to the edge of the fire barrier. The moment he landed on his feet he started running, keeping close to the circumference.

"What are you trying to do, Mage?" The Valkyrie simply sprouted white wings from her back and flew towards her opponent. On air she was several times faster than she was on foot. The white light also enveloped her, granting het it's abilities.

In a instant, her blade found Lancaster.

'I'm running out of Power. Thankfully, Wind scythe isn't my only spell.'

"Curse. Athena. Lancaster." He whispered as fast as he could. The blade pierced his chest drawing blood from his body in seconds. He was incapable of using Free Movement to pass through it since it was coated in white energy.

"What are you doing now?" Valkyrie disabled her white aura and used brute force to kick her blade deeper into Lancaster's chest, prompting a grunt and blood spurting out of his nose, mouth and chest.

"You shouldn't be dead yet. I only stabbed your right lung."

'Only?'Lancaster thought, smiling.

"You're a strange one."

"Everyone says that." Lancaster spat out a mouthful of blood.

"You made my attack land. You could have teleported. Why?"

Lancaster raised an index finger and waved it from side to side.

"No no no. That one's a secret."

She shoved the blade out the other side. Lancaster screamed.

"It seems you meat bags are all the same. Always screaming and crying when your insides get taken out."

"You should...feel your chest getting warmer miss. I mean, inside of it. Oh and you're a meat bag, too. Just a f*cking overpowered one."

"Warmer?"

"Jordan, do it."

"You're the most annoying partner I've ever known, Lancaster!"

Athena tried to remove her blade, but she wasn't. She tried to focus on Jordan, but she was unable to.

'I know exactly what he wanted from me. Explosion, right? But it'll hurt him too.... unless...'

Journal, I think I'm about to do something awesome. Spirits have been trying to avoid me thanks to my name being 'cursed'. But my spells are still at least 40 percent effective as before. I can make it even stronger, if I combine the abilities of more than one spell. Thankfully, I have a huge source of fire spirits all over. I just have to create a channel and direct all of them to the explosion rune. It won't require a chant if I do it right.

'With this sacred power of the mighty fireball and explosion, I rename thee - Great explosion!'

Yeah, I know. I'll get a better name, Journal.

"Hurry up. I'm bleeding to death here. I can't hold her much longer."

"I see. So your holding me here so that your unassuming partner can finish me off with a spell. I wonder what kind of curse you placed on yourself and I? Do tell, because some how, I'm unable to remove my sword from your body. I also cannot keep the thought of anything other than killing you out of my head for long. But I'm assuming it would end if I kill you, right?"

"Ahhhhhhh!!!" Jordan, raising his quill as his wand, directed a portion of fire from the forest fire and gathered it into a floating ball of fire. The ball then disappeared into the symbols for explosion drawn all over Valkyrie's body.

"Super explosion!"

The sounding blast resonated across more than half of the forest. The mushroom cloud explosion was bigger and taller than he could have imagined. Without warning, it engulfed him too, whisking it's own caster away and bombarding him with heat and pressure.

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