Kali watched on with a hawk-like gaze as the translucent needle plunged into the thick trunk of an ironwood tree.
These were the best target dummies she found to test her spells on. Their barks were about as hard to puncture as an adolescent troll's, according to Vorgnar.
The needle went in easily, leaving only a finger width hole in the rough metallic surface of the trunk, and Kali started counting down in her mind.
5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 - Aaaaannnnndddd?
Flames burst through the small hole as the whole tree trunk expanded and then collapsed back down. The explosive sound shook the nearby branches, but it was still much more muffled than a regular fireball. The ironwood tree creaked, making that horrible screeching sound of iron tearing apart before it doubled over and smashed into the dirt with a resounding crash.
"That wasn't too … silent," Izuna noted, leaning against a tree further away.
"It's either this or we build a bonfire inside the nest after chopping up a troll." Kali huffed. Her nerves were straining from the fox-kin's incessant whining. There was always something wrong that she was doing and the girl couldn't keep herself from pointing them out.
"Fair," said Izuna, chewing on her lips as she stared at the fallen over tree.
She should know that this was their best chance. Kali had worked tirelessly, barely sleeping on making this damned spell work. The base idea was to shove a fireball into that silent needle and let the troll explode from the inside out. The flames should have been more than enough to keep it from regenerating. She even managed to learn another new rune.
Amplify. It was a simple one, though almost as complex as the Silence one. She just threw it at the end of the Spell and it somehow amplified it. The spell matrix grew a touch more stable and she could channel much more mana into each rune through this one, making them all stronger without giving up on structural integrity.
That was a problem too, as it turned out. If she overcharged a Launch rune too much, it'd rip apart the mana structure it was supposed to be launching, which was obviously suboptimal. This rune was an Overcharge that didn't work on singular runes, but the spell in its entirety.
That was the only reason the damned ironwood tree as much as shook from her spell. Before she incorporated the Amplify rune, the spell only scorched the bark, but the tree kept standing just as it had been standing before. Even the needle only penetrated a finger's length into it, unlike now.
That would be a tricky problem to have. She might overshoot on an actual troll. What if the needle flew through the troll before it exploded? She'd need to make sure she timed the delay rune just so it'd explode right after it went through the hide.
She really started feeling the downsides of her obvious lack of knowledge about Magic circles and Enchanting languages. The Tome mentioned that it was possible to tie the delay rune to a 'conditional clause' like '1 second after impacting something', which would work perfectly for this spell.
I'll just have to calculate it on the run. Shouldn't be too hard to do if I know the needle's speed and the distance should be easy enough to judge …
"Didn't you say you had some exploding plants or something, too?" asked Izuna, interrupting Kali's musings.
"I do have some of those," she glanced up at the girl. "Though I'm not sure how they work."
"How?" Izuna massaged her forehead. "We need to test them at least once before we use them in active combat. We were planning to go tonight, Kalitra."
"It's supposed to have a powerful poison," Kali scratched her cheek, suddenly finding the clouds above to be especially interesting.
"Do you need to coat a dagger with them, or will they explode in a shower of acid? Do they work through the skin — troll skin — or do we need to inject them into a wound?"
"Alright, I get it," Kali stomped her feet on the ground, glaring at the fox-girl whose tail fuzzed up at her sudden aggression. "Let's go test it then."
Kali huffed, turning away and quickly locating a sizable bear-like magical beast not too far away from them.
As she dashed in its direction, Izuna rushed after her. Seemingly intent on keeping up with her.
Kali cared little for stealth at the moment, foregoing paying attention to her steps in favour of speed, which took her to the opening of a shallow dirt cave opening up between the roots of a sizable tree.
Izuna came to a stop next to her, throwing an annoyed glare at Kali, who was tilting her head left and right as she listened to the sounds of the beast only tens of meters away from them. Even at the entrance, she could smell the beastly scent of the animal and hearing its low growl echo through the soggy walls of its nest wasn't much of a challenge.
It was just a bit larger than the regular bears she'd seen until now, so it should be a rather low leveled magical beast. How did she know it had to be magical?
"The sound it's making is really strange," Izuna noted. Looking all around the forest with a weirded-out look on her face, her ears twitching in every direction.
"I agree," Kali agreed.
The growl seemed to be coming from everywhere at the same time, even Kali found herself a touch disoriented from hearing the same growl coming in synchrony from all around her. Bushes, trees, leaves, all sounded like angry bears at the moment.
Even with her spatial hearing clearly showing that there was nothing behind these sounds and that the only real one came from the end of that dirt tunnel, she had to shake her head to focus. Sounds. She had to remember that. She never felt like her hearing was a weakness before, just that she couldn't use it well enough yet.
But if a damned bear could give her a slight headache, what could a Mage that specialised in sound based Magic do to her? There had to be mages like those out there.
"Come on." Kali had her brows pulled together in a frown as she walked forward. "Well, if you are going to play dirty." She mumbled ominously as she aimed her palm down towards the tunnel's opening.
She knew just the right spell to fuck with the bear.
Flame, Overcharge, Launch, Channel, Amplify.
She mumbled the names of the runes in her mind, taking special care as she formed the last two, line-byline.
She named this spell 'Flamethrower' and it more than lived up to its name.
The spell activated, and the tiny blob of mana — still connected by a mana-vein to her Core — glimmered in a furious orange before hell descended into the tunnel.
Mana streamed into the active spell matrix and fed the waves of flames that flowed down into the unfortunate bear's home while a nasty grin formed on Kali's face.
"If you kill it before it even comes out, we won't be able to test your poisonous plants."
Right, the berries.
She kept the flames flowing for another few seconds and just as she started, the loud footfalls of a furious bear thundering out of the tunnel's depths; she cut off the mana supply and the spell matrix fizzled out. Kali closed her hand into a fist, feeling the last embers of the conjured flames dissolve into nothing.
"It's coming," said Kali, hopping back a few meters as the bear, coated in magical flames, burst out from the burning tunnel with a roar.
The fire might fuck with the berries.
Thinking that, Kali circled to the left. She eyed the bear all the while as it started rolling around the ground to douse the flames; she decided that she might as well help it to make the testing easier.
Water Collect, Overcharge, Condense, Ball, Launch.
Leaves, grass and dirt dried up in a small circle around Kali as all the moisture outside of her body collected into her spell, making up a blob of water, which then shot off and splashed against the flaming bear.
Maybe it was already close to dousing the flames with its rolling around, but Kali mentally patted herself on the back as she saw the last flicks of fire die out and the monster stumble back onto its feet. Its deep brown eyes burned with rage as it zeroed-in on the white-haired elf that not only ignored its menacing growl, but lit fire to its home.
Unfortunately for the bear, Kali had berries to test, some annoyance to kill, and getting a core was always a good thing.
Kali glanced to the side, spotting the whiny fox-kin looking on from behind a tree. Right, this was a fight to test her poison, not one she'd need help in. Hopefully.
Kali formed a Launch rune in her mind as she took a single glowing white berry out of her storage space and gently threw it into the air. She jumped back as the spell went loose and smacked into the berry, which then shot off towards the bear.
There was a reason Avariel was so careful with the berries though, and it was made apparent as it burst apart in a blinding white light not three meters into its flight.
Kali hastily conjured up a shield and held it in front of herself as she threw herself further away from the poisonous fruit which could supposedly down level 300 beings.
Not that the small shield that only covered her torso could have saved her, had a lucky circumstance she didn't even consider not been in her favour.
When Kali noticed she was clearly not getting bathed in poison, she peaked out from behind her shield and saw the cloud of glittering white death float through the air towards the bear. She blinked, a shiver running down her spine as a chilly breeze from behind caressed her sensitive ears. Wait … breeze.
She heard the bear backing up a bit, obviously not sure what to make of the weird cloud floating towards it.
Kali wasn't going to let it consider its options, of course. The breeze might be driving the cloud of death towards its unknowing victim, but it was far too slow for Kali's liking. Plus, the bear was starting to cautiously circle around the cloud to get the annoying elf that set it on fire back into its sight.
Air Collect + Launch + Channel
A large gust of air flowed from her palm, redirecting a portion of the cloud onto the bear, which — having had enough of staring at it — opted for rushing through it and finally sinking its teeth into Kali.
Kali kicked off of the ground, easily launching herself five meters into the air where she cast an Arcane Foothold for herself. The magical foothold launched her sideways, where she caught a high branch and flipped herself onto it with little effort.
She flinched as she heard an anguished roar which quickly turned into a whimper, accompanied by the sound of flesh melting under the acidic touch of the poison.
That is … a bit much, isn't it? … Well, if it has to work on trolls, this much is the minimum, but …
She couldn't help but pity the beast. Just a year ago, it would have had a good chance at making a meal out of her, but now it was degraded into being her poison tester.
She pointed down at it and a translucent needle shot out of her finger, soundlessly going through the beast's head not a second later and ending its suffering.
Kali dropped down, landing with a slight bend of her knees before walking up to the quickly liquidating corpse of the bear. It stank, it stank really damned bad, but she had no one to blame, so she just had to bear with it.
"Well," Izuna walked out, keeping a respectful distance from the corpse, "it worked."
"Yeah," Kali grimaced. It worked more than she expected and she almost got to test whether her bracelet could save her from being turned into elf soup.
Sorry bear.
Kali held her nose and stepped a few meters away before she recast her Flamethrower spell, pointing her palm at the corpse. Cremation was the least she could do for the bear after making it suffer through that.
Plus, it'd save me the hassle of having to dig through its liquified entrails for its core.
With mana no longer reinforcing the bear's body, the flames burned it to ash in less than a minute and Kali quickly snatched up the small blue crystal poking out of the leftover pile of ash.
She twirled it around in her fingers; it was an uneven little crystal filled with mana and essence that would once again push her just a bit closer to her goals.
"Can we go now?" Izuna asked, still standing quite a distance away from the scene of the battle with a deep frown on her face. A supernatural sense of smell might be just as much of a curse at times as Kali's hearing.
"Yeah," Kali shrugged, pocketing the core.
----------------------------------------
Kali was staring at the campfire while the last rays of the sun crested over the horizon and let the moonlight take center stage.
The gentle blue light was dimmer, with the smaller red moon almost eclipsing the blue one. Still, with it being only half the diameter of the blue one — at least to someone watching from the surface of Aetheria — it looked more like a giant blue eye with a burning crimson pupil instead of an eclipse of two moons.
"We need to make a plan for the ambush," Izuna spoke up, her arms crossed as she flickered her gaze between the sour princess and the stoic daemon.
"We have the location, we have the poison to kill a troll silently and we have her spell to fall back on should it fail."
"What are we waiting for, then?" Izuna bit back, feet tapping so damned annoyingly on the ground.
Kali, too, looked up at Vorgnar for a moment, eyebrows raised in curiosity.
"Nothing," he said. "What we need now is for the two of you to calm down."
Kali frowned and Izuna huffed, "I am calm!"
Vorgnar didn't answer. He didn't need to. The simple half-lidded gaze he sent to the foxgirl said it all, and Kali couldn't help but snort.
She was a touch nervous, maybe more than a touch, but the fox girl was visibly vibrating from the stress and it was only getting worse with every day they spent just scouting. It also had the adverse effect of straining Kali's own nerves.
They should be done and over with the ambush sooner rather than later. Even Kali knew that with the way things were going, their chances were only going to get worse.
A distant howl made her grimace. That was probably the primary reason all of them were so on edge. Some damned beast had been circling them for days on end and no matter how Kali searched, they couldn't find any tracks or signs of where or what it could be.
"We should get it over with," she said, though she looked up at Vorgnar, seeking for any signs of displeasure on his face.
She found none as the man nodded.
"We should do it tonight," he said. "The red moon should make it harder for them to notice us."
"What about the howling dog?" asked Kali. She was more than willing to get this thing over with, but that thing following them around was concerning.
"Once we get the core, we can figure out what to do with it," Vorgnar shrugged. "Or just ignore it and get back to the village. It is only a day's run away."
Kali nodded, her heart starting its obnoxious hammering in her chest while she took some measured breaths.
Finally.