Selenia continued as if she did not know she was being followed while trying to communicate with the spirits, She had not used her connection to the spirits since she was a little girl so she was very clumsy with her communications and was having difficulty getting them to do anything advanced for her.
After several hours the light trot of Salinas horse was now a slow gallop, she had slowly increased the speed of her mount over a long period of time to hopefully fool the people following her into thinking she was oblivious to their presence.
The sounds of the horse's steps started to change into the clacking of horseshoes against stone more often and she could faintly tell she was on an incline. This meant that she was close to her objective. However, the sun was setting and the others would likey attack very soon.
She had an advantage of constantly giving her mount energy from the spirits so her mount is still fresh and ready to run while the others following her would have mounts that were ready to stop and rest, but Selenia knew that this would be enough to get away unscathed from these people.
A spirit came back and sent over several emotion filled packets of mana telling Selenia a vague message. Her eyes widened after a brief moment to consider what the message was, the people following her had started to close the distance, She could not hear them yet but it was only a matter of time before they were right on top of her.
It was now or never and never seemed like a bad idea, she kicked the horse into a full gallop in an attempt to catch the people in front unawares when they were spread the thinnest.
The horse gives a happy neigh to be able to run at full speed again and starts to send the new power it had recently received to its legs causing it to nearly double in speed, Selenia almost slips out of the saddle at the unexpected speed but after reseating herself she strokes the horses main in appreciation and sends it more energy.
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Meanwhile, amongst the group tasked with staying ahead of Salenia, one of the men suddenly lifted his hand to motion for silence and tilted his head from habit. After several moments he announced "The boss just called it in, start closing the circle", The men slowed their mounts down and started to prepare for battle. They loaded their crossbows in preparation for the fight and started making bets with each other to psych themselves up.
The man who made the previous announcement earlier smiled wryly at his men's usual prefight antics. He could faintly hear the sound of a galloping horse and thought the other group leaders were closing the net too fast which was likely to create holes, but he shrugged it off because the person they were following showed no signs that they knew his group were hunting them other than the fact they sped up a little and the fact that even if they got outside the net, the group could still track them with the mage in the main party.
The noise of the hoves made when they started to hit stone resounded louder than previously over the noise of his men. Something felt off to the man, the sound was coming from directly behind them not from the side where the other group leaders should be coming from.
Just as he was about to order his men to halt and turn around he received another message from the main group's mage, "the target has started to flee, everyone who is on the front of the net prepare for combat remember the person we are tracking his extremely dangerous".
The blood drained out of his face as he bellowed "SHUT UP AND PREPARE FOR A FIGHT" while point behind them. Their mounts dug their hoves into the ground to slow down, several of the horses were running on stone at the time and slid quite a while further than the rest.
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Crossbows were raised and aiming towards the incoming sound, and only a second after stopping a rider burst out of the brushes into full view of the group.
The rider drew closer by the second on a deceptively fast paint horse while the group waited for the rider to get closer before firing. They would only get to fire their crossbows once before they were in close combat so every shot counts.
The leader was about to order his men to fire when he noticed that the mana around the area was strange, he was the only person in the group who could feel mana to at any level of proficiency which is why he was made the leader of this group, he could receive the messages of the mage significantly easier than the others even if they were better suited to serve in a leadership role.
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Selenia's mount bust through the bushes and she spotted the group ahead. She had been slowly giving the spirits mana and desperately trying to convince them to not use the mana yet, which was like trying to tell a child to go to sleep before Christmas (utterly pointless), they lost focus and began to grow plants and she would have to step in to remind them to wait a little longer, that proved more difficult the more mana she gave them. She was almost thankful that the enemy decided to attack because she was not sure if she could continue to convince the spirits to hold on.
With a sigh of relief, she sent a final message to the spirits, "go nuts". The overeager spirits immediately jumped at the chance and began releasing all the mana in whatever magical means they could.
Roots burst from the ground, shooting up through the men's mounts impaling them and their riders together. Seeds that had been in the ground for decades suddenly sprung to life and grew at a visible rate. The surviving members of the group frantically tried to dodge the surge of growth, stones were bound and crushed by newly growing trees as they reached for the heavens. Plants of all shapes and sizes sprung up from the ground without any competition for food or nutrients with the spirits providing both, this created a thick blanket of solid plant matter so dense no one would be able to tell you the color of the ground at the moment.
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Meanwhile at the main group. The leader was bellowing out orders while his giant lizard mount climbed the newly growing trees in an attempt to get away from the dangers below. Here there were few roots targeting people directly, however, the thick undergrowth had trapped several men to their mounts while the plants continued growing, several moments after they were overgrown harsh cracks were heard shortly before the short-lived screams of the men and their mounts before becoming eerily quiet.
The leader had never encountered any magic like this, he wanted to ask the mage about this but just before nature started running wiled the mage started screaming something incoherent about the spirits while bleeding from his 7 orifices. He had heard legends of such magics hundreds of years ago when the human kingdom was whole and they tried to attack the elven kingdoms, the history books or at least what counted as history books said that nature itself fought for the elves which was why the ''heroic'' humans were unable to subjugate them.
His mount hissed and licked the air as he witnessed several fireballs climb into the sky until they lost too much speed then arced back to earth and fizzled out before hitting the ground. These were his men's flares which they would use in case of emergency if communications were down. He growled in frustration, most of his men were probably being attacked by the same thing and he could tell the growth was thicker ahead of him where his men were starting to converge.
He put his fingers to his lips and whistled, several seconds later several more whistles sounded. Moments later 6 of his men emerged from the undergrowth mounted on the same giant lizard that the leader rode. These land dragons had definitely paid for themselves several times over by now. Satisfied with the performance of the mount he made a mental note to get more for his other men that survived then ordered his closest subordinates to follow him.
The small group riding land dragons promptly disappeared amongst the new forest in the direction of the flares.
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Selenia sat on her mount as it dumbly stood there munching on some leaves in front of it. 'This was probably the reason those old coots were so adamant about having me so restricted' she thought.
The path was blocked, however, one quick message to the spirts later and nature curve out creating a path for her to go. Once there was a path to move on the horse seemingly forgot about the leaves and started to gallop along the convenient path.