The Nascent Hero

Clair

Clair gawked out the carriage window, on her knees, hands gripping the frame. They were traveling through the Viorite Forest, a giant forest full of purple trees with orange leaves and known for its bountiful veins of viorite.

  “How long are we staying in Relice, again?” she asked Fargus.

  “Only for the night,” he answered. It was already near twilight and the long distance portal that they were here for wouldn’t be open again until the next morning. Clair frowned, she heard the trees turn pink during the winter, and the leaves leaned towards blue before falling off. She didn’t plead to stay longer, though. She knew the most important thing was mastering her abilities and searching for a way home.

  Fargus wasn’t a Mage, however, as a Holy Knight, a magic class, his spell casting ability and mana manipulation were top notch. He was fully capable of teaching Clair the basics, and has been doing just that since their meeting, nearly a year ago. He didn’t even let her miss training on her tenth birthday. While she wasn’t very happy about all the work, Claire was getting fairly decent at manipulating her mana and could cast a few spells.

  She continued leering at the trees until they reached the Relice Fortress, the settlement level above city. She wasn’t very impressed by its giant circumference, its human sized walls that were still under construction, the amount of people, or the stone and glass infrastructure. She was already over the ascetic, and she lived in a major metropolitan city so she was used to being in crowds of people.

  They checked into an acceptable inn and made multiple trips to drop off their belongings. Fargus went out to familiarize himself with the fortress and offered Clair to come with, but she refused. By now, she had enough control of her powers not to kill anyone, so Fargus let her off on her own with the promise of not getting into trouble.

  Clair ran through the streets of the crowded fortress, blending right in with the other annoying kids playing and causing trouble for the stores. She reached the edge in no time at all, almost colliding with the wall in her rush. She looked around, making sure no one was paying any special attention and let her mana loose.

  Equilibrium was a tricky thing. Most people would never see it in the first place, and those who do are too overwhelmed by its aura to notice its color. It was understandable, the color of Equilibrium was more than just a color. It radiated its meaning alongside its color, causing anyone who sees it to mistake it as some unfathomable color not achievable in nature.

  After a couple hundred times of being in its presence and manipulating it, Clair managed a premature understanding of the apocryphon of The Law of Equilibrium. She understood how the law worked at a basic level, but she wasn’t mentally or physically strong enough to be a Demigod. It did come with the perk of not feeling like a deer in headlights whenever she looked at Equilibrium, and let her see its true color… It was a light grey, nothing special at all. While it was a let down, she hoped that it would be a unique color that didn’t exist on her earth, no one else saw it the way she did. She always reminded herself that, if she wanted to, she could show off her mana in front of practically anyone and they would fall to their knees in worship. That made her feel less disappointed.

  She manipulated her mana into two spider legs that boosted her over the wall and deposited her on top, making sure she recalled it when finished. Equilibrium doesn’t dissapate like regular mana does; There was also an incident where she forgot to do that and she walked around with Equilibrium tentacles all day.

  Clair sat on the wall for hours, just watching the trees and twirling a leaf between her fingers. It was a surreal scene she couldn’t get enough of. She desperately wanted to walk in, experience the forest at max capacity, but the flash of a repressed memory made sure she was like a statue on the wall.

  “Hey!” a voice broke Clair out of her trance. “You can’t sit on the wall, it’s against the rules.” She led her vision down until she laid eyes upon a well off looking kid, around her age. He didn’t wear the clothes of a noble, no kid would in this heat, instead his average looking clothes were spotless. The kid didn’t look like a noble either, short brown hair, topaz eyes, small amount of freckles. And, no trace of dirt, mud, or grime anywhere on his body. Compared to the other gremlins running around with stained and ripped clothing, or oily hair and messed up teeth, he stuck out like a sore thumb. Clair knew she shouldn’t be getting into trouble, she promised Fargus she wouldn’t, but she always had a problem with authority. The only one she could stand acting like they were above her was her brother, and now Fargus.

  “I’ve been sitting here forever. If it hasn't collapsed yet, then it never will,” she said.

  “I never said it would fall, I said it was against the rules,” he clarified while crossing his arms. Clair felt anger well up in her chest, the kid managed to look like he was looking down at her despite having to crane his neck back to actually see her.

  “What if I don’t wanna come down?” she asked provocatively.

  The kid appeared extremely annoyed and said, “Then I’ll make you.” Clair snorted, Who does this kid think he is?

  “I’d like to see you try,” she spat. The kid bristled with anger and jumped, easily making it to the top of the wall. Clair wasn’t shocked, instead she surmised that his abnormal physical abilities were probably why he fancied himself a hero. She leaned back and smirked at him before lifting her right hand and flipping him off. It didn’t mean anything on this earth, but boy did it feel good.

  “Will you get off now?” asked the kid.

  “You look like a frog when you jump, y’know?” she responded unphased, delivering her most scathing comeback yet. The kid did a double take, most people would be scared by now, especially considering he only wanted her to get off the wall.

  “You… aren’t scarred?” he asked hesitantly.

  “I’m quaking in my boots,” she said mordantly. He calmed down, his arms fell to his sides and he took a closer look at her.

  “You… don’t think that was amazing? Or even kinda cool?” he asked, completely calm now.

  “Yeah right,” laughed Clair, happy that she knocked him off his high horse. The boy looked at her with a complicated facial expression, staring for close to half a minute before he walked over and sat next to her.

  “I’m Timothy, but everyone calls me Tim,” he said .

  “I’m Clair. What do you do for fun in this place?”

  “I don’t live in Relice, I live in that mountain over there.” He pointed south, to their right. She looked over to see a ginormous mountain dwarfing the city and moved her head back in shock.

  “Was that always there?” she asked bewildered. Timothy laughed a little.

  “No one sees it until I tell them. My dad doesn’t like people bothering him, so he makes them ignore it,” he explained. It was Clair’s turn to laugh.

  “That sounds like something my brother would do,” she said.

  “Where do you live?”

  “I’m nomadic right now,” she answered.

  “Nomadic? Oh! I saw that word in a book and asked dad about it, buuut I forgot it,” he sighed. Clair smiled at him.

  “It means I don’t live in one place and travel around a lot.”

  “Then, do you want to see something really cool?” he offered.

  “You mean purple trees and orange leaves aren’t the coolest thing you’ve ever seen?” she asked.

  “No way! I’ve seen cooler things in dad’s horde. I mean something really cool,” Timothy scoffed.

  Clair looked at him in a new light for a few seconds before standing up and saying, “I’ll race you.” he shot to his feet.

  “You don’t even know what or where it is!” he argued.

  “You’re just saying that because you don’t wanna lose,” she said.

  “No-I’m faster than you.”

  “Then, prove it,” she goaded him before jumping off the wall.

  “Hey, you’re cheating!” he yelled as he jumped off after her. When they touched the ground, they both utilized everything at their disposal to go faster. With a boom, they sped towards the mountain faster than most Demigods, shaking the trees at the edges of the forest and startling the animals as they passed by.

Drugur

Drugur was in human form, reading. He had perpetually groomed brown hair, glittering umber eyes, a perfect jawline, pearly white teeth, and wore a noble get up. He was in his study, a small room filled to the brim with bookshelves, overflowing with books. The tip of the mountain utilized magic to make it see through and provide a hefty amount of light. He was reading the after of one of the very few fiction books he had in his collection. It was written by Ferra Evergreen, the afterward reads that she wrote the book for her daughter, Penelope Evergreen. Penelope was a spoiled child who often bullied her servants and refused to learn.

  The book in question was about a noble child in a far away land. She made friends with their slaves and servants, and spread goodwill throughout the land. When she was old enough to succeed her mother, she released the slaves, who later returned to her service for a small wage. Over the years the good will of the people benefited her greatly, specifically when they warned her of an assassin and saved her during an orc raid.

  Drugur enjoyed the story, it showed all the best qualities that humans have. He wondered what became of the child, Penelope, as he returned the book to its rightful slot in one of his shelves. Suddenly, he felt a warning from one of his permanent observation spells. A group of adventurers managed to find his mountain and have come to challenge him. He grinned; it was only a matter of time until those adventurers came to challenge him, and he gets awfully bored in his little corner of the universe.

  He made his way down to the cavern where he met visitors and morphed back into his dragon form, the form of a prismatic dragon. He was covered in bright rainbow light, enshrouding him in a sheen of protection and power, blinding everything trying to observe his form. Prismatic dragons naturally have a strong connection with The Law of Light, and with a thought, Drugur recalled that sheen of light. He wanted the adventurers to have a chance, after all. The light blinked out of existence and revealed an enormous glittering dragon with an inconceivable amount of rainbow scales so small that his skin looked as smooth as a snake’s. His eyes were dots of Equilibrium, his teeth and claws looked to be made of polychromatic glass, a maine of shimmering hair flowed over and around the area where his neck met his head, his horns slightly resembled sharp, erect rabbit ears covered in flames of the same star light rainbow, and a discolored scar from his fight with the original Four Seraphim of the Crucible Empire was permanently embedded in the leather of his left wing.

Clair

  “Oh my God!” Clair exclaimed as she took in Drugur’s figure, atop his incomprehensibly huge horde of treasure. She felt light headed and her knees failed her. They were in a small room, in the mountain Timothy calls a house. It was pretty much a hidden opera box with a one way transparent wall hiding them from view, while giving them a perfect vantage of the massive cave.

  Clair fell backwards onto her chair, her eyes shaking.

  “Pretty cool, right?” Timothy asked. She looked at him like he just insulted her mother.

  “Cool? Th-this goes beyond cool, it’s amazing! Breathtaking, wondrous-astounding!” she strained her brain to come up with a word that could describe the stupefying sight, but failed.

  “The real show starts when dad and the adventurers start fighting,” he hyped up. Clair took a deep breath to calm down, if she didn’t she might explode from astonishment. Then, she directed her attention to the bug-like adventurer party that just walked in.

  The party was seven strong, with a tank, duelist, cleric, bard, ranger, and two mages. The two mages were painfully obvious, they wore the same cookie cutter robes that every other mage did, one black and the other white. The tank was covered in heavy armor and carried a tower shield, both of which were made out of bone, also equipped with an oddly shaped, one handed axe made of pure ice. The bard looked rather plain compared to his teammates, dressed in red and brown leather clothing with giant bag pipes hefted on his shoulder. The ranger hid in a forest green cloak that obscured any physical features, but demanded attention as he was holding a large red and yellow bow pulsing with power. The duelist wielded a rapier fashioned from the same bone as the tank’s equipment, donning a small amount of white and gold armor on her shoulder and forearms. The cleric wore red and white robes of the Church of Life, carrying a large leather backpack and riding atop a tripetratops.

  A tripetratops was similar to a triceratops, but without a fan on their heads and with skin made of rock. They have instinctual ties with The Law of Earth and imbue their skin with it, making their defense unrivaled amongst the regularly tamable monsters. On top of that, they’re still fairly mobile on land and can manipulate surrounding earth.

  Since she met Fargus and rejoined society, Clair has made it her second priority to learn everything she could about this magical earth, but the amount she knew was like comparing a lake to an ocean. Luckily, Timothy was something of a chatter box and filled in the gaps for her. The adventurer party was sort of famous in these parts, always succeeding in slaying more and more dangerous monsters. Their last kill was a dracolich, which was where the tank and dueler got their equipment, everyone wondered what they would take on next. Needless to say, Clair’s heart raced with anticipation. I wish Faith could see this, he loves fantasy stuff, she thought in the back of her head.

  The adventurers stepped into the capacious cavern, laying eyes upon the posing dragon in awe, sharing whispers of excitement.

  “Welcome adventurers!” boomed Drugur in greeting, his voice shaking the entire mountain. The adventurers recovered from their shock quickly and jumped into action. They all sprouted magnificent pairs of mana wings, corresponding with their individual colors of mana. The mage in white robes stepped forward, addressing Drugur for the party. His mana was bright, peanut brown that formed constantly shifting wings, as if they couldn’t decide what form to take.

  “Greetings, oh great dragon! We’ve traveled here today to challenge you.” The mage used mana to amplify his voice, matching Drugur’s lordly volume.

  “I enjoy a pleasant conversation, but why bother beating around the bush when your intentions to fight are clear?” The mage laughed as if Drugur was oblivious to an inside joke.

  “I apologize for my team’s eagerness, we’ve been preparing for this day for years. I simply wanted to test chance, that is all,” he explained.

  “Oh?” asked Drugur, intrigued.

  “Fore, you see, I am a DragonLord. Now, I know my will pales in comparison to yours, however, there is the chance that we are kin,” further explained the mage.

  A DragonLord is technically a unique constitution as a result of a unique soul. DragonLords have the ability to tame dragons through a battle of wills. If the DragonLord wins, no matter the difference in strength, the dragon is forced to follow their commands. Amidst the DragonLord lore, there is a legend that says each DragonLord has a dragon kin, meaning they share souls. In that case, the DragonLord is able to control their kin through their shared souls, without winning a battle of wills.

  Drugur snorted a bit of prismatic energy and responded, “Then, let our wills tangle in the spiritual realm.”

  The mage smirked and started a chant, “Ego Provocatione Draco Ad Certamen De Voluntas!”

  Clair recognized his words as latin, basically just the mage challenging Drugur to a battle of wills. Then, did a double take when she realized that she never touched latin back on her Earth. Faith, the amazing brother that he is, had her follow a unique curriculum outside of any school that had her learning three languages, but none of them were latin, and she had no idea why she understood what was said.

  Her attention was plundered when the mage started violently convulsing, he looked like three bats were having a dog fight inside of him. It ended almost as quickly as it came, and after the mage threw up large quantities of blood. The rest of the party chose then to act, forcing Clair to gather Equilibrium in her eyes in order to keep up. Everything turned impossibly crisp and slowed down in her vision.

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  The Cleric, with bright green mana and wings that looked to be made of leaves instead of feathers, grabbed the white robed mage, casting a prepared healing spell that completely healed him. The bard, with neutral orange mana and meticulously straight feathered wings that resembled notes on a scale, filled the room with the same deafening wall of sound that all bagpipes made. The sound waves were laced with his mana, buffing the entire group. The duelist and tanker, with piercing candy red mana and solid icy blue mana respectively, ran side by side as they approached the goliath that was Drugur. When they reached him, the tank raised his axe in his right hand momentously and powerfully brought it down, splitting the stone and shooting a trail of frost across the ground that lifted into the air, resembling a miniature roller coaster. The duelist jumped on the frost and slid the rest of the way, slashing and thrusting at Drugur’s belly with skillful flourishes of her sword. Drugur roared, accepting the challenge, and raised his claws, intent on swatting her out of the air. The tank wouldn’t have it, though. He planted his feet and leapt, somehow having enough momentum to block the giant claws cleaving through the air. The duelist took the opportunity to leave one last divot on Drugur’s stomach scales before jumping on the top of his claws. She slashed wildly as she ran up his arm, actually upheaving and scattering some of his coruscating scales.

  A giant light bloomed in the dark cave, catching Clair’s eye. With smaller but sharply outlined scarlet wings and mana, the ranger stood stationary high in the air, pulling back on his bow and gleaming with a blinding scarlet light. The light flashed across the room as he loosed his arrow, accurately flying through the air as if destiny itself dictated its target, and plunged into Drugur’s right eye, forcing his entire upper body back a few meters. Drugur roared in indignation, lifting himself on his haunches like a horse throwing its rider and forcefully flapped his wings. The ranger wooshed through the cavern with the same velocity as a freshly fired cannon ball, the duelist futility clawed at his scales for purchase before succumbing to the same fate as the ranger, and the tank hid behind his massive shield, but he was still sent skidding back across the smooth stone floor.

  It was only when the adventurers were all grouped up in the same general area that Clair realized the mages were up to something. The mage in black robes had his hood up when he entered but with that powerful gust of wind it was thrown back along with the tousling of his robe, revealing an expression of deadly focus on the pale brown haired mage’s face. He was surrounded by an oddly futuristic hud comprised of his dark grey mana. Directly in front of him, just below chest level, was a large keyboard with more than double the rows of a traditional computer keyboard. At his sides were expansive screens filled with lines of runes and eye crossing diagrams. Covering his ears were two squares of the same mana, connected via a wire thin line of mana to a third square just below his mouth. The mage’s fingers danced across the keyboard with mastery that demanded adulation, and he seemed to be coordinating his team at the same time.

  Clair didn’t know if it would work, but she decided to try something. She gathered a small ball of Equilibrium and compelled it to take shape. An invisibly thin line of her mana defied logic as it passed through the wall unhindered and stretched down to the mage’s pseudo-headphones, allowing her to hear whatever the mage heard or said. She was dumbfounded as she listened in on the detailed instructions the mage constantly muttered to his teammates, never missing a beat. That display of skill was so insane that she considered the idea of getting some form of the mage’s autograph, if he manages to survive the fight.

  “Anti-Draconic defense buff finished,” the mage announced in a low voice as he pressed a key slightly larger than the others and located at the far right of the keyboard. The same moment he pressed the enter key, Clair saw a thick cover of dark grey mana engulf him and the rest of the adventurers like a smoky aura.

  Meanwhile, the other mage, in white robes, floated in the air. His legs were criss-cross and his hands rested intertwined in his lap as he muttered a chant with his eyes shut in concentration.

  The ranger, tank, and duelist were showered in a flood of small spells by the cleric before retaking their positions in between Drugur and the mages. Right around the same time, Drugur made Clair question her understanding of physics as he lowered his upper body near the ground and jumped. With the deafening tidal wave of his hoard being pushed back, he soared through the air and arrived above the party of adventurers within the same second, the deadly gleam of his one good eye bone chilling. The commanding mage desperately shouted a few commands, his focus on spell casting, if it could still be called spell casting, never breaking.

  Many things happened in the next second. The tank bellowed a battle cry as he retaliated and raised his shield arm like someone that was shielding their eyes from the sun would, positioning his axe near the ground. Clair thought she could see the man’s armor bulging as he flexed his muscles intensely and slashed upward with his axe. Giant, dragon sized, jagged ice monoliths rose from the ground, smashing into Drugur one after the other. At the same time, the cleric whispered soothing tones into his pet tripetratops’ ear as he fed it some mana. The tripetratops’ roar was indistinguishable from a trumpet as it raised its front two feet off the ground then stomped down with a deafening crash. The stone around the adventurers suddenly covered them in the shape of a pyramid, visibly strengthening with The Law of Earth as it shifted into place.

  Drugur wasn’t phased by the first glaciers, they uselessly shattered against his seemingly unstoppable force. But the last one packed a punch, slamming into his face, neck, and upper chest. It managed to completely stop his ferocious descent. He collapsed on the stone pyramid, and it managed to hold his weight as he regained his senses.

  “Anti-Draconic attack buff finished,” said the black robed mage with a sneer, his voice confident. “Time to go on the offensive.” The adventurers roared an invigorating battle cry as they transitioned. Drugur was already drawing back a claw to break through the pyramid when a colossal wooden hand shattered through the pyramid and grabbed him by the neck. Looking through the gaping hole in the pyramid, Clair could see the arm connected to the white robed mage’s arm, growing narrower as it got closer to him. But he wasn’t done there, He uncrossed his legs and completed the transformation. With his body at the center, a giant wooden titan sprouted into shape, reducing the pyramid to rubble like an afterthought as it grew to its full height, a ginormous head taller than Drugur.

  The mage crushed Drugur’s throat as he lifted him into the air and threw him like a pitcher would throw a baseball. Their giant forms were no doubt deafening in the cavern and shook the entire mountain, luckily the room Clair and Timothy watched from was noise canceling. Drugur soared through the air and crashed into his hoard, kilometers from the adventurers. Troves of treasure cascaded off of his glimmering visage as he lifted himself to his feet. He raised his head and roared.

  “Hahaha! It’s been millennia since I’ve faced such worthy opponents. You have my blood boiling!” he cheered the adventurers on. The elder treant smashed its right fist into its left palm, ready to take on the world. Drugur bounded towards the treant with uncontained glee. The elder treant ran forward to meet him, the tank, duelist, bard, and even the cleric flying along with him.

  Surprisingly, they all looked different than before, each of them with a new feature. The tank was physically bigger than before, a full four meters high and two wide, not even comparable to the hundreds of meters monsters he was fighting with, but noticeable. The duelist was covered in a sheen of candy red mana and her wings were sharply erect, facing downwards as if she wanted to be as aerodynamic as possible. Her every move sliced through the air and her entire body channeled the same sharpness of a sword. The bard didn’t have any physical changes, but his demeanor seemed to flow like the notes of a song, and his bagpipes were nowhere to be seen, replaced by a giant lance he hefted with ease. He sang instead of using any sort of instrument, his voice somehow audible above the discord. The cleric bent his upper body and whispered something into his pet’s ears. The tripetratops gave its trumpet roar then ran up the wood titan’s legs, up to his arms. It opened its mouth to roar once more as it turned itself into ornate stone gauntlets with giant topazes embedded in the back of the hand. The cleric himself had mint green mana chains baring his wings of the same color, but still allowed him flight. He wielded a golden staff with twin birds twirling around and crossing at its tip. The black robed mage was the most jaring change. Before, he simply had dark grey, regular looking wings. Now, he had dark grey, leather, and physical dragon wings sprouting from his robe, along with a scaled dragon tail of the same color. At first, Clair thought it was her imagination, but after time passed the change was too big not to notice. The color of the mage’s tail and wings was getting brighter and more variegated, as if his appendages were slowly morphing into a miniature copy of Drugur’s.

  Before they collided, Drugur jumped into the air and gathered ethereal rainbow energy in his chest. A beautiful, glistering beam of intertwining rainbow colors shot from his mouth, engulfing the adventurers. The wood titan was covered in a violet gleam of light; he stomped to a halt and looked around as if blinded. Then, with a resounding thunder clap, it disappeared. The tank was outlined in an indigo gleam before he stopped in his tracks, his legs refusing to move, and flopped to the ground, quickly turning to stone. The duelist glowed bright red and was lit ablaze with a rainbow fire. The cleric took on a mix gleam of blue and red before blazing with rainbow fire and freezing in ice at the same time.

  The adventurers would have been done for there and then if a scarlet beam radiating with power didn’t suddenly slam into Drugur from his left, shoving him to the ground. The beam came from the ranger, who was half invisible and outlined in scarlet energy. In his hands was a red and yellow thirteenth century cannon with handles instead of wheels.

  “Prismatic spray nullification finished,” said the black robed mage as he pressed enter. Instantly, the adventures suffering from bizzare elemental effects were cured, with the exception of the wooden titan, it was still nowhere to be seen.

  Drugur roared in annoyance, but the ranger fired another beam, punching him back down. The next moment, the tanker appeared above his head; his axe curved through the air with time slowing weight. A boom and shock wave resounded throughout the cavern as Drugur’s head was jerked downward, quickly tumbling to his right when another beam slammed into him. The duelist followed up next. She streaked across the top of Drugur’s lowered head, down to his lower back in a flash of candy red light. A moment after she attacked, dark red blood spurted from the gash she left in her wake. That didn’t mean Drugur was helpless, though. He retaliated with powerful slashes of his claws, snapping his jaws at anyone near, fluttering his wings territorially, and whipping his tail around.

  Meanwhile, the cleric and dark robed mage joined hands in casting. The dark robed mage produced a small granite colored bead and tossed it up. The cleric blasted it with a small beam from the tip of his staff, making the bead fracture and shatter space itself. The cleric formed hundreds of runes in front of him while the dark robed mage chanted along, never missing a key on his keyboard or failing to order the next attack. A small crack split the space where the bead fractured, quickly growing to a humongus length. A wooden, guantlented, arm abruptly punched through the glass like crack and shattered more space as it stepped through. When the mage successfully returned to the mortal plane, the cleric and dark robed mage finished their spell. Time seemed to rewind, but only seemed to, as the fracture in space fixed itself and sealed back up.

  The mage couldn't have returned any later: Drugur had nearly won the battle by the time the mages finished. The duelist was the first one to be injured. She was slapped down to the ground with a flap of Drugur’s wing, slamming and rebounding off the stone ground before Drugur’s tail whipped her halfway across the cavern. The tank was battered by nearly every attack Drugur threw at him, and by the time the elder treant rejoined the battle his armor was deformed and decorated with deep fissures in claw patterns. The poor bard was almost torn asunder when Drugur impaled him with his claws.

  The cleric stayed behind, healing the critically injured bard. The black robed mage, on the other hand, abandoned his post presiding over the battle and joined the fray. By now, his wings and tail were glowing a bright rainbow.

  The wooden giant’s movements looked unstable. Every step it took shook the very space around it, and its form weakly pulsed with the same violet gleam. Paying no heed to his instability, the elder treant engaged in close combat with Drugur. They tangled in a titanic wrestling match. Drugur bite, chomped, slashed, and breathed rainbow starlight. The wooden giant did little more than pummel Drugur with its fists. It was only to buy time, though.

  When the black robed mage signaled, the mage suplexed Drugur, rolled backwards over him, and lifted him up like a shield, all in one smooth motion and without warning. A beam of pure anti-prismatic dragon energy burst from the ranger’s cannon, powered by the dark robed mage. It was effervescent and colored midnight blue encased in rainbow starlight. Drugur was unphased by their meanuver, he tilted his head back and charged up his own beam. Pure Draconic energy shot from his mouth. The energy was midnight blue encased in a dark amber red.

  Clair watched in slow motion as the whirring beams whized towards each other. When they collided, the beams splashed outward with star shaped spikes, and surged against each other in a brutal struggle. Inevitably, the pure draconic energy won the struggle, consuming and overtaking the adventurers' attack. In the seconds before they were hit, the black robed mage flew in front of the ranger and manipulated his anti-draconic mana like a shield before it engulfed them. Then, Drugur turned his attention to the pesky elder treant holding him. He twisted his neck back and chomped down on the elder treant’s shoulder. With a flair of effort, he flipped the elder treant in front of him and stomped on it. The wood gave way, riving and splintering under Drugur’s massive force. The adventurers had lost.

  Obviously, Drugur didn’t kill them. At least, it was obvious to Timothy that he was benevolent, Clair was afraid he would grind their bones to dust. Instead, he ended up transporting them to the fortress with a spell. At this point, Clair was cannoned with so much amazement that she grew numb. She sat back in her chair, going over the fight in her photographic memory, trying to figure out a way that the adventurers could have won. Unfortunately, she just didn’t have enough information or experience to so much as comment on a battle of such epic proportions.

  “Wow, dad had to try ing the end! Those adventurers must’ve been strong,” fan boyed Timothy. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to him,” he yanked Clair out of her musings.

  “Wha-Who says I want to meet him?” she argued.

  “Don’t be scared. Trust me, he won’t hurt you,” he accurately guessed why she was hesitant. She followed him irresolutely, wondering what Fargus would say about the situation. She knew for a fact that Faith would meet Drugur without a second thought, he was that kind of nerd.

  Timothy led Clair through winding corridors that were surprisingly not made of stone. If she didn’t know she was in a sky scraping mountain, she would have guessed she was in some underground bunker built with modern infrastructure. They entered the cavern through a hidden door on the same Y-axis as the hidden opera box. She could feel the damage their fight had on the surroundings, space itself was weak in the cavern. It felt as if even she could part space.

  “What did you think of the battle, Timothy?” Drugur asked as they entered, in his human form. Timothy ran forward and hugged him.

  “It was awesome!” he said.

  Suddenly, Drugur thrust him to arms length and said, “Timothy, what have I told you about telling the locals?” Clair awkwardly smiled, looking innocent as Timothy argued on her behalf.

  “We-I uh-She’s different. She isn’t a local, she’s nomadic!” Timothy finally settled on the nomadic argument. He looked happy with himself, as if the fact that Clair didn’t live at Relice Fortress pardoned him.

  “Timothy Warmix, go to your room,” Drugur growled angrily.

  “But-”

  “No buts,” he cut him off.

  “Uh-if I may?” Clair interrupted. Drugur and Timothy turned to look at her. “I think he means I’m different because I can do this.” She manipulated her mana, forming wings made of godly Equilibrium and lifted herself a meter off the ground, just for some extra effect. Luckily, it worked. Timothy ogled at the Equilibrium like it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Even Drugur was affected, his eyes widened and his jaw dropped. He quickly snapped out of it, though. Clair lowered herself down and took the Equilibrium back in, feeling a little awkward with all the attention on her.

  “I see,” Drugur muttered as he stroked his chin. He kneeled down and hugged Timothy before apologizing, “I’m sorry for yelling. You were right to make friends with her. She might be the only being on Earth that can understand you.” Timothy looked at his father with a helpless expression on his face, clearly communicating that he didn’t understand what Drugur was saying.

  “Well then, what’s your name, young one?” he asked Clair.

  “I’m Clair Fohster, without an ‘E’,” she specified.

  “Thank you for putting up with my son, he isn’t very nice with other kids and doesn’t understand his own power.” She smiled awkwardly in the face of his thanks. She was put into this situation a lot, where she was being thanked or rewarded for doing something she was going to do anyways. She didn’t understand why people thanked her, it wasn’t that she was being a good person, she did things because she wanted to.

  “It’s nothing, Tim is fun to play with,” she ended up saying.

  “Can we go now, dad?” Timothy interrupted.

  “Of course,” Drugur smiled and left.

  In the morning, Clair was woken at first light, six hours too early in her book. Fargus led to a large square crawling with people despite it being so early. He had them join the just forming line, carrying all of their belongings. They didn’t have much, but they would still need a carriage to transport it all if Fargus didn’t buy two bags of holding at the Relice Fortress Mage’s Guild.

  Clair grimaced at the bright morning sun, grumbling about everything good naturedly. She averted her gaze when her eyes couldn’t take anymore, blinking the dots away. When they were gone, she looked behind her, at the crowd of people. I don’t want to leave, she thought gloomily. She still wanted her old life back, to see her brother again. But she’s lived on this Earth for close to three years now, and everyday her longing for her old life dies just a little bit more. After all, she has it pretty good. There’s Fargus, no one’s trying to kill or capture her anymore, and she just made a good friend. She heaved a sigh before turning back to look at the gathering of mages in the center of the square.

  They all wore the same cookie cutter robe, decorated differently based on the Mage’s Guild and magical abilities. Each Mage’s Guild has its own different design for each particular school of magic, and the registered mages wear the robes as their uniforms. This particular Mage’s Guild was spartan compared to other guilds in their designs. The Portal Mage robe was blue and purple in a blotch pattern.

  Clair also learned that a Portal Mage was its own specialization. According to Fargus, there is no general spatial mage specialization because the domain of space was too great to understand or master unless it was broken up into facets. Fargus told her all of that to hype up her expectations because the mage they were tracking down to teach her allegedly has the ability to make portals with a thought and is a master of space. She wasn’t very convinced.

  Clair watched the mages with some interest as they joined hands in a circle and engaged in a group-casting, over a large gathering of mana crystals, the only way to bypass the personal quality of mana. Portals were unstable and hard to create without permanently shattering space. Fargus didn’t know much about the specifics of making a portal, so Clair was similarly clueless, and could only blankly watch as the mages did their thing. Soon enough, the mana crystals fell apart, turning to dust and blowing away. In the mound’s place, a large, unstable blue portal slowly swirled open. It was the first time Fargus had them travel through public portal transportation, meaning it was the first time Clair had seen what a portal looked like. She was left speechless as she stared down the glaring safety hazard. Fargus was really underplaying the unstableness.

  The portal looked like it would collapse in on itself with the slightest disruption. The edges of the gate crackled with electricity, occasionally strong enough to scorch the stone ground, and trembled erratically. The portal portion itself flickered precariously, connecting Relice Fortress and Everveil.

  No one else seemed concerned by the undependable looking portal, but Clair couldn’t shake a bad feeling. Somehow, she knew that portal was bad news.

  “Fargus, we can’t go through that portal,” she warned him as she tugged on his sleeve.

  Fargus glanced at her and asked, “What is it?” Clair sucked in a breath of air, trying to think of a way to explain herself.

  “I don’t know,” she sighed. “I just have a bad feeling about it.” The best she could describe the feeling was when you were on a high floor, looking out the window, at the apex height of a ferris wheel, or on one of those space drop rides that lifted you really high then dropped you. The bad feeling gathering in her gut as she wondered if the ride would hold her or if she would fall through the floor was the same feeling that assaulted her senses now, only accompanied by something else. Some other bad feeling that told her to run far, far away.

  Fargus looked around while gripping Clair’s shoulder protectively.

  “Perhaps you’re correct. I think it best we wait another day,” Fargus grunted as he pulled Clair out of line. But, it was already too late. Concerned murmurs broke out in the crowd, drawing Clair’s attention to the portal. The portal suddenly started to blink and shutter vehemently, sending lightning bolts flying into the crowd and roasting random bystanders. The murmurs turned to yells as the crowd started stirring. The portal mages shouted at each other, trying to figure out what was wrong. That was when, with the same ominous energy as the feeling of your stomach dropping, the portal shifted to vermillion red.

  “Come, we need to flee,” said Fargus while tugging Clair.

  “No, we can’t,” she refused, fighting against his pull. “We need to help.” It’s what Faith would do, she thought to herself. Fargus stopped urging her.

  “Very well,” he said as he squared his stance and armed himself with his shield and morning star. Clair peered at the portal with a hollow feeling in her chest. She was scared, but that fear felt disconnected from her. As if she knew she should be scared, but wasn’t. At the same time, she didn’t feel courageous, just a vague sense of longing, something on the other side of the portal called out to her.

  Through the portal, a vast red wasteland laid in a black void. A spine shivering cold wind passed through and entered the mortal plane. The air burnt Clair’s lungs and smelled like the filthiest sewer she could imagine. Traveling on the wind was a blaring scream of agony, louder than accidently playing music through headphones with the volume turned up to max, louder than a bomb siren, a scream so loud that it shook your insides and reverberated in your skull. As the ringing in Clair’s ears faded, she could just make out Fargus mutter despairingly.

  “It’s a portal to the Abyss.”