"These bastards are toying with us!", Michaíl yelled out in frustration, as the wizard crushed the head of the second segador sent after him by slamming the skull of the first one into it, which he had detached seconds before.
"...what gave it away?", Ignis asked in genuine confusion, causing Ophelia to stifle a giggle with a snort, as she kept evading and parrying the blade of Maya's scythe, seemingly effortlessly.
"So much for your plan, Mr. 'I've fought many spellcasters before, let's just drag it out!'. If the hag of the tower didn't demand their bodies in as good a shape as possible, they'd be dead already!", Maya growled.
"Enough of this child's play!", the scarlet lykan yelled out, before jumping back and raising her scythe above her head. The blood of which the blade of the scythe was made started to detach, and now formed multiple daggers in the air, all of which were pointing at Ophelia.
"Tch, going against direct orders, as usual. She just won't listen... Very well, if you can't beat em, join em. Alright, human, let's kick it up a notch, shall we?", Michaíl remarked, as he made use of his own magic. The air around him began to cool down, and ice started to grow on his arms, slowly forming 2 large blades, which extend to about one sword length over his claws.
"Oh...ice-weapons? How fun!", the wizard stated in anticipation of ending the fight even quicker than he had thought. However, after a blink of his eyes, he noticed that the lykan before him had vanished.
"Hm?", was all Ignis could utter, before he heard his barrier start to crack behind him.
"Too fast for you, geezer?", Michaíl growled at him, as the cracks of the barrier around his swords started to spread.
"...eh, I've seen faster. In fact, let me show you!", Ignis answered unphased and lightly tapped the floor beneath him with his staff, causing him to vanish in similar fashion, together with his barrier.
Unlike Michaíl, who had to use one of his blades to stabilize himself as to not fall face first into the snow before him, Ignis was not hindered by a barrier as he appeared behind the lykan, thus whacking the back of Michaíl's skull with his staff, causing him to stumble forward even further.
"How the...", he asked while turning around, where he was greeted by a very smug wizard, who was now twirling his staff, causing it to rotate like a wagon wheel.
He interrupted his twirling and extended both arms, before uttering: "Magic!", and vanishing again.
Ophelia, on the other hand, had started to struggle in her fight, as the daggers, which kept swarming her like bees hindered her from getting closer to Maya. She had always preferred close-quarter combat, in which she thought herself near invincible, as she could just rush a ranged foe and rip them apart long before their attack even reached her.
This time, however, she was facing off against someone, who seemed all too familiar with that type of fighter, as Maya seemed to deliberately time her attacks to throw Ophelia out of her rhythm. The fact that even just one cut of a blood-elemental weapon could poison their target and thus prove fatal did not help either.
"Ah...much better, don't you think, you old hag?", Maya mocked her, as she guided the flying daggers idly with one of her claws while leaning on her pole, which she had driven into the ground.
"Tch...I'll show ya what this old hag is capable of." , Ophelia grunted as she kept dodging the blades.
Ophelia had observed Maya's attack patterns carefully, and noticed a small gap between attacks, as conducting 5 daggers with just one finger seemed to not to be the intended way of going about it, which Ophelia attributed to Maya trying to pay her back for toying with her earlier. She patiently awaited the next opening and went for it. She increased the heat in her claws as high as she could and charged Maya.
"As if I'd let you!", the scarlet lykan gloated, as her blood daggers quickly dissolved and reformed in front of her with a quick motion of her hand, before hurtling towards Ophelia once again.
Instead of dodging, however, the elderly lykan started to grin and took a deep breath, before exhaling a torrent of fire. This caused the daggers evaporate in mid-air and created the perfect opportunity for Ophelia to close the distance between her and Maya, causing her to grab her pole in a panic to block the incoming attack.
"Wrong choice, bitch!", Ophelia exclaimed, as she swiped with her claws at the pole, cutting it in half and causing the new ends to warp out of shape due to the heat, making them unusable.
What followed was a loud, pained scream, as Ophelia tore into the body of Maya, who, despite trying her best to dodge, was still struck several times by claws hot enough to melt steel.
"ENOUGH OF THIS SHIT!", Michaíl screamed into the air, having been whacked by the staff of the old man more times than he had any patience to count.
"EVEN IF IT KILLS ME, I WILL TAKE YOU WITH ME!", he continued, seething with rage as he procured a small glass container filled with what appeared to be some sort of medicine.
He opened the container and downed its entire contents in one gulp. At first, nothing happened, except for Ignis stopping to use his
"Resorting to drugs now? Tsk, tsk, tsk. But now that you mention it, I'm running low on juice myself, let's see...", the wizard remarked, before sifting through his pockets for one of his Aeroides-Potions.
During the rest of Michaíl's transformation, Ignis nonchalantly retrieved one of the vials, opened it carefully, and, while holding his nose, downed the entire potion, which was followed by a loud exclamation of disgust. The moment he finished wiping his tongue with the seam of his robe, Michaíl stood up from the ground, now panting heavily from the pain the transformation has caused.
His expression was no longer that of beastkin, but that of a wild animal, as he raised his head and started to howl at the sky. He looked back at Ignis and started growling at the wizard, before getting on all fours and readying himself for a pounce.
As Michaíl leapt into the air and towards the wizard to tear him to shreds, however, the wizard simply struck the ground with his staff, causing four fireballs to appear simultaneously, which now hurtled towards the airborne lykan. Upon coming into contact with him, the explosion they caused stopped his momentum like a wall, causing him to drop on the floor a mere yard away from Ignis.
"Eugh, I'm terribly sorry for this. Usually, this would be enough to finish the job...kinda having a deja-vu here, huh?", the wizard proclaimed as he looked at what his spells had done to the beastkin before him, who was still very much alive.
"Fighting fire with ice was not the best of choices you could have made, but there's no helping it, I suppose. Better luck in your next life!", he continued, before conjuring another fireball.
Before he could end the lykan's misery, however, Maya suddenly charged at the wounded Michaíl, and retrieved his body. Large parts of her fur had been burnt off, and now showed only deep wounds and scorched skin where Ophelia's claws had reached her.
"...Y...ou...sa-ve...me?", was all the barely conscious Michaíl could utter as Maya looked him in the eyes, but the expression on her face was all but friendly.
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Before Michaíl could try and say another word, Maya opened her maw and mauled him to death. Ophelia could not help but recoil in disgust at this gruesome display, as Maya started to tear into her comrade.
"Hrrk...by the Titans, what the fuck is wrong with you...", she retched, as Maya continued to devour the flesh of her former comrade.
As the body of Michaíl was no more than scraps of gore and broken bones, the scarlet lykan's wound started to mend, and her fur began to regrow where it was lost.
"Ah, how refreshing. The dwarves were nice appetizers, but nothing beats having friends for dinner, don't you agree?", Maya joked, as she wiped the blood off her muzzle.
Ophelia wanted to retort how one could be so mentally deranged to not only eat one's own comrade but make a joke in bad taste about it right after, but was interrupted by the mad cackle of Ignis, who seemed fond of such insane humour.
"How quaint! It seems like there do exist people who appreciate my sense of humour! However, the undead bitch in her broken tower will probably throw a tantrum if I don't end this quickly, so, no hard feelings, okay?", Maya sighed, before quickly closing the distance between herself and the still laughing wizard.
"What? NO!", Ophelia yelled out and went after her, but she was already out of her reach.
"Adio!", Maya proclaimed victorious, but just before her claws reached the old man's head, something started to change within her body.
A shiver went down her spine, which quickly escalated into uncontrollable muscle spasms.
"What's happening!", she yelled in panic, as she dropped to the floor, and her muscles began to bulge and contract more and more strongly.
"MICHAÍL, YOU BASTARD! WHAT DID YOU DO-", she roared in anger, but a loud snapping sound turned her curses into screams of torment, as one after another, her muscles started to snap her bones in half.
This ripped the wizard out of his hysterics and made him retreat several steps. Ophelia decided to not go near the writhing lykan either, and just like Ignis, decided to watch on in silence. After an agonising five minutes, all movement within the scarlet lykan ceased.
"...Is she dead?", Ophelia asked the wizard standing next to her, as if to imply that he should go and check.
"Probably?", was the response, as Ignis did not intend to approach her either.
"What the hell even happened? I thought she ate the blue guy to grow stronger, but it killed her?"
"Maybe she overdosed on the same drugs he took before she ate him? I saw him empty the entire bottle, that can't be healthy, right?", the old man concluded from what he had seen.
"Sounds about right. So, what's next?", Ophelia asked, turning away from Maya, as the sight of the mangled body started to turn her stomach.
"I mean, she did say something about eating dwarves, so I guess the one we were looking for is dead? I think we should return and- ", the wizard replied, but was soon interrupted by sudden movement from the ground.
"...ain't...done...yet!", Maya uttered weakly, before raising one of her claws, causing a dagger of her own blood to manifest in the air. With one last grin, her claw dropped to the ground as she sent out the weapon towards Ignis and exhaled her last breath.
It had been a long time, longer than he could remember, since the wizard last had found himself in this state. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as the blood-dagger started to fly towards him like a bullet, a phenomenon only observed within powerful magi, known as stress-induced mind-acceleration. As seconds turned into minutes, he started to weigh his options.
The dagger's aim seemed to be off, which was to be expected from someone barely clinging onto life. However, despite this meaning that he was out of harm's way, his comrade was not so lucky, as even if she managed to notice the dagger, evading it would be next to impossible. Magic was out of the question, as no spell in his repertoire, which he could possibly cast within the time-limit given to him, could deflect or stop the dagger.
Trying to somehow make Ophelia evade the dagger also seemed impossible for the same reason, and blocking the projectile with his staff was out of the question, as it would probably pass through. Pushing the lykan out of the way was his only option, but she was too far away for him to just use his staff, and she would likely be too heavy anyway. This left only one option, which would put Ignis himself in harm's way, however.
Having steeled his resolve, he started to sprint towards her, still magically enhanced by his haste- spell, and rammed her with his shoulder.
"HEY, WHAT THE-!"
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At first, Mira the rat did not know what to make of the one who asked her for a favour. She instinctively knew that whoever she was must have been a being from the heavens, but why did such a high being appear before a common rat after it had swallowed a one of those shiny things, just to wake up some sleeping human in the middle of nowhere and keep him safe? She quickly disregarded such thoughts upon the being mentioning that the reward would be a long and easy life, something she had dreamt off since the day she first formed conscious thought.
Thus, Mira fulfilled the task she was given, though it turned out that she had been lied to, as the coming years of her life neither turned out to be safe, nor easy, as her new master was a scatter-brained man with complete disregard of self-preservation when it came to his own amusement. Maybe it was punishment for having eaten the shiny thing? Despite all his shortcomings, however, he started to grow on her, and not only because he provided her with a constant supply of food and accommodation within the sheer endless space of his pockets.
Despite it all, her goodwill towards him often fell on deaf ears, as he tended to disregard her warnings every single time, she uttered them. So when the day came when she had noticed a hazard more life-threatening than anything she had ever felt before, and the old man disregarded her warnings yet again, and even suggested that they parted ways for a while if she insisted on him returning to safety, she decided to ask others to talk some sense into him, as they seemed to be far more reliable when it came to assessing danger.
Though as she had finally caught up to her master and watched him defeat his enemy once again with ease, her beliefs in the capability of the wolf-people turned out to have been misplaced, as it was not him who was about to be saved, but the very female wolf she had sent to protect him. And if the smell of the dagger, which he was about to intercept, was any indication, he would not survive the attempt.
It was like the old saying goes, Mira thought, if she needed a job done, she had to do it herself. Ignis had taken good care of her for longer than she even believed to be graced to walk this world among the living, and it seemed it was time to repay his kindness. She could only hope that he would not hate her for what she was about to do, as she jumped to intercept the dagger.
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Ignis closed his eyes after he had body-checked Ophelia to the ground in anticipation of the pain, but it never came. Instead, he heard a shrill squeak and a dull thud noise. He opened his eyes and checked his body, but nary a scratch was found. Next his gaze wandered towards Ophelia, who looked less angry, and more shocked than he had expected, as she looked at the ground before him with wide eyes.
The wizard followed her gaze, and what he saw, made halted all thoughts within his mind.
'It can't be...I sent her back to safety! ', he thought, as he sunk to his knees to inspect the blood-soaked, white rat on the floor.
He wanted to touch her, but stopped himself as he noticed the black fur-patch shaped like a star, which clearly elevated itself from the rest of her white, and now partially red, fur.
Tears streamed down the wizard's cheek as he realised that this was indeed Mira, his companion throughout the years and only creature he ever regarded as a friend. Memories of their life together resurfaced and entered his mind, of the battles they had fought, the people they had pulled pranks on, and countless other moments the two had shared. To never experience such joys again, and worse, to never share them with his oldest and most loyal companion weighed heavily on Ignis' heart, and he voiced his pain without reserve.
After a while, his tears had dried, but he could not avert his eyes from Mira.
"Hey, you okay?", Ophelia, who had no experience in dealing with consoling others and had until now just stood there awkwardly and watched Ignis, now decided to try her best to comfort the old man, to moderate success.
"Yeah...I think, I can manage. It's just... I knew her for all my life, you know? At least as long as I can remember. When we met some 30 years ago, she became my companion, the only one I could ever call my friend. She helped me through many a peril, the little fuzzball, and almost never complained...", he answered through a sniffle, never letting her body out of his eyes as he did.
"Damn... I'm sorr- wait, did you say 30-something years? How the fuck did a common rat manage to get that old?", Ophelia asked in confusion, but decided not to dig any further into this matter as she received no answer.
"Hmm, what's this?", the wizard suddenly exclaimed, as he saw a sparkle within the rat's blood. What looked like a large blood-clot of some sorts, revealed itself, upon further inspection, to be a ring.
"Did she swallow this ring before she got here?", he mumbled as his hand approached the ring. As soon as it came into contact with the ring, however, the world around him went dark.