A few days prior
Alone in the middle of an abandoned park stood a midnight-haired teenager. She was dressed in the uniform of a priestess student and carried a staff. The object was an activator, something you used to help cast spells and control your magic. Not all priests and priestesses used it these days, but typically more traditional ones did. Her hands shook as she held up the huge stick of metal, with the end being arrow-shaped. Connected to it was a collection of silver bangles that had beads and cloth tied to it like you would a ribbon in a child's hair. It was so mighty that the teenager could only manage to lift it straight by sinking the bottom half into the earth. She sighed and bent her head down against her sleeve to wipe away some of her sweat. After this, she closed her eyes and took in a gulp of some of the sweet, fertilizer-heavy air.
Anna received her activator in her second year after ranking at the top of her class. It wasn't like only the best students got them, everyone did. But those they felt that were incredibly gifted or valuable got theirs early. Lizbeth had gotten her activator, a pendant, a year prior and now then it was her turn. She was sad to admit she hadn't been able to practice more than a handful of times a month. The school was too hectic, as all second to third-year students had to take apprenticeships to get their official licenses. The sixteen-year-old would only have free time when she left her dorms to visit her new parents, and they wanted family time. She didn't have the heart to deny them that, even if it irritated her half the time. So, she had to go early in the morning to this decaying piece of land to practice uninterrupted.
And practice she would. Her hands felt slippery as her nerves bounced around in the pit of her stomach and she gripped the staff's pole. “Goddess, please heed my call and offer me a single drop of your endless power.” The exhausted teenager's legs shook as she planted her feet firmly into the ground and curled up her toes.
There was nothing that came to her at first and if she had been inexperienced, she would have gotten frustrated. But she had years of lessons and reading textbooks in the back of her mind. She waited patiently with her eyes firmly closed. After what had to be a minute or two of her standing, the staff began to feel hot. The Goddess was answering her plea for help and was rewarding her.
Since she resided in the sub, and the pits of the earth, that help came as heat. A type that only priests and priestesses could withstand without getting severe burns. Anna opened her eyes to see that her previously bronze brown staff was now a furious red. The girl tried to lift the staff and found that it had become nearly weightless. Her eyes widened at the sigh of scotch marks on the ground where she previously had it. The grass was now a crisp black, and the soil looked like it was made of charcoal.
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Despite the change in its weight, the staff's pole was still too long to be positioned straight forward, directly in front of her chest. It wasn't smoking, but she could smell it. Her nose was burning from the heaviness of it that the increase in temperature generated upward. This was something she was going to have to get used to. When she started to use the staff and magic daily, there wouldn't be time to hesitate. She would need to learn to balance her physical limitations versus the deep pot of magic at her disposal.
All humans had that vast amount of magic within them. But you had to almost always be trained to use it. Sure, there were people who were born with an exceptional power that allowed them to work untrained. But they were often scouted very early in their childhood, usually before they were even six. Then they were taken in as wards of the state to be trained in the country's capital.
To be as skilled as a government-trained magic user, she needed to practice. Anna steeled her resolve as the staff linked itself to her mind and soul. “Lock on,” She didn't have to say this, but she found it helped. Her attention was on a tree. “Fire.”
Like a gun, the staff shot out with what looked to be a golden-tinted bullet. But it quickly expanded, ballooning into a shiny orb. The orb hit the tree and looked like it melted into the bark itself. The teenager waited patiently, sweating from the wave of hot steam that hit her face from the action. Like clockwork, the bark suddenly began to darken just like the soil had. It cracked down on the tree in an unruly manner, without any form of pattern, as the tree cooked itself.
Anna could smell whiffs of what had to be the plant dying from the inside out as she stood. Last week, she had done the same thing to an abandoned headstone that sat without a name. She left a food offering of bread to calm any offended undead before unloading into the stone. It crumbled like a burnt piece of toast in ten minutes. From what she could see with the tree, any type of plant melted much faster.
She tested out this discovery once more. The mighty staff glinted gold under the orange sky as she lifted as much as she could. This left the staff directly pointed at a large collection of tree branches and dying fruit. The fruit was long gone by now as the person responsible for taking care of this land gave up years ago. This left the apples promptly pruned and sunken in like a rotten tomato, almost in texture. Anna figured this would be a good test subject. With her eyes solely focused on the decaying plant life, she uttered the same words as before. But this time, she made sure to imagine the bullet instead as an arrow. She wanted it to fly free and sink itself directly into her target. With a grunt, she felt her body move backward as an arrow that had to be as large as a hammer shoot out. Her eyes widened. This was new but proved she was strong enough to not just shoot tiny bullets.
“Oh, goodness.” The dark-haired teenager muttered as the arrow hit a handful of the rotting apples and instantly exploded them. The remnants of the carcasses fell and showered her body in stinky fruit. “Ugh. Disgusting.” Her face was sour.
She spent the next ten minutes picking the remnants off of her face and her hair. This was going to be hard to explain to her new parents when she came back later that night. Even harder if she decided to just go to her dorm. Plus, her nose turned up, and she grimaced, she smelled heavily like a trashcan now. But she was satisfied with the development that she had made.
The arrow took more energy than a simple bullet, but it was worth it. It pretty much disintegrated what was in its path due to how wife and powerful its new form was. If she kept developing the arrows, she could make them as long as her arm and as wide as the tree trunk. Anna looked over at the tree, or where it used to be. Its entire body, from the bark to its roots, had been turned into a blackened blob of goo. The teenager couldn't help but think of what would happen if her bullet had met a human arm or head.