“Okay, breathe… this can’t be that bad, right?” Beryl took a deep breath, and reassessed her situation. No mana in the air around her. Completely unknown location. And trying to utilize her own mana…
She really doesn’t think that the lightspeed mana inside of her would react very well to magic, but in case of an emergency, it’d probably be better to try to cast from her own reserves since the mana is extremely potent. Beryl braced herself as she placed the simplest mana circle she remembered onto the stream, and was promptly disappointed when it immediately overloaded and dispersed the circle. Not a total disaster, considering what unstable mana is capable of doing to spells. This still left her relatively defenseless though, so she picked up a clump of the mana rich soil to use in a pinch. “Not like I’ll need it though, heh.” Beryl, Archmage Extraordinaire, could definitely find civilization before having to resort to pocket dirt to save her own skin against any wild animals or bandits. Thus, the mage general picked a direction and started walking.
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“I hate this forest.” Beryl didn’t have a watch to confirm, but she could recognize that she’d been wandering for an uncomfortably long amount of time. The air was both manaless and just cold enough to be bothersome. The sun was mitigating that at first, but it had set not too long ago, leaving her in the chilly dark. It’d been a long time since she felt the annoyances of the elements, by now she’d typically have wrapped herself in a nice film of temperature maintaining mana. She ended up using the dirt to power a light spell, so it wasn’t like she was completely blind, but having an area outside her purview was making her uneasy. The magic-desolate air made it hard for her to sense mana from too far away. Her circumstances weren’t all terrible though, for some reason she didn’t feel any less energized than when she started moving, the only thing bothering her was the pesky cold. As someone who, for lack of a better term, used magic as a crutch to mitigate her “physical disadvantages”, she previously avoided exerting her body as much as humanly possible, even going so far as innovating new methods of movement to never walk again. This sort of strenuous exercise would’ve left her gasping for air at this point, if not dead. “Probably a side effect of the state of my mana circuit right now… but I really want to sleep…” Not to say that Beryl was looking forward to setting up camp in these woods, but the fact that she wasn’t feeling any fatigue was concerning for another reason. How would she get a great night’s sleep if she couldn’t even feel tired!?!?
Beryl was forced to divert her attention from her comfort concerns when a soft light became visible in the distance. It was somewhat obstructed by the titanic trees, but the glow was unmistakable. Perhaps it was someone going for a night stroll! She began to run towards the beacon of salvation, when she caught herself before getting within visible distance and darted behind a tree. No, the fact that there’s a light there does not mean that it’s a friendly entity. Hell, the Celestial she was fighting was also positively luminous, though she was pretty sure it wasn’t one of those since the mana seemed unperturbed by its presence. Still, it could be a lantern held by a bandit scout, or some sort of magic beast! She peeked from behind the tree to once again look at the light.
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It was a lot closer now, and two glowing eyes a sizable distance above her own head gazed back. Beryl’s breath hitched as she quickly scanned the beast barely a pace in front of her as it did likewise. The first thing she noticed, as stated before, was the piercing gaze of the animal’s beady blue eyes, planted on an equine shaped head. It was mounted upon a gargantuan neck looming several times her height, ending in a quadruped body, the entire thing covered in splotches of white glowing spots. She recognized it as a Lumen Giraffe, and immediately after that revelation, she slammed a teleportation circle on the tree she was previously hiding behind and started running the opposite direction. The defining trait that made the beast so dangerous…
The giraffe’s mouth opened, an orb of light materializing within its lips. It made menacing warbling sounds, and just as quickly, the light suddenly burst forth at extreme speed, burning a hole through the tree trunk with the diameter of a pencil.
…was the fact that its species was defined by their adept usage of light magic.
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Beryl was running. Beryl was running very, very fast, so much so that she was surprised that she could maintain this speed. Unfortunately, the Lumen Giraffe was able to match her pace and was accelerating at an alarming rate. She zigged and zagged through the trees to prevent it from having a clear shot, but evidently the strategy wouldn’t work for too long, as the giraffe was beginning to prefire where it believed she would dash. Thus, she once again prepared a blink spell circle to implant into the trees. The trees had a lot of mana in them, but it was, naturally, resisting her will, as the plants were living as well, wanting to keep the energy to themselves. She could only teleport 3 or so paces away, so when she cast the spell again, she continued running. By the sound of its thundering hoofs and the screeching light, the giraffe was unperturbed by her sudden disappearance. She cursed internally. Obviously the magic beast would have some amount of arcane sense, it might even be able to adapt to it later on as it had to her running, which she deduced would likely hurt. A lot. Thus, Beryl racked her brain until a new plan came to the surface. She held her breath as she prepared yet another circle upon her palm. She could detect that the giraffe was wary of her blink, and was holding its beam to unleash the moment she popped up somewhere else. She pushed against the tree, then stomped her foot where the true magic circle was set.
Beryl covered her mouth as she strained her ears to keep track of the giraffe. She was completely in the dark, but she figured that the giraffe probably couldn’t see her either. It continued clopping forth, and she heard muffled whooshing as it whipped its head around to figure out where she went. It stood completely still after it couldn’t find her in a moment’s time. Unbeknownst to the beast, Beryl was directly underneath where it was currently standing, 3 feet buried into the ground. She managed to draw enough mana from the rich earth to both hollow out a space and teleport herself inside. She figured that since the giraffe was sensing her mana, it wouldn’t be able to detect her while she was surrounded by the mana dense dirt… However, the giraffe wasn’t moving from where it stood. She heard some shifting, and a soft thump. “Did it just lie down right here!?!” Beryl screamed in the silence of her own mind. She hoped it would just continue sprinting after phantoms, but it seemed determined to find her. At least she could rest her head now. She promptly leaned her head against the wall, hitting a rock.