The travel was slower than Niphru was happy with, considering that one person was hobbling and another being carried, but there wasn’t much he could do about that. The more worrying thing was how noisy the group was. While the group of mages he usually spent time with were far from silent, they at least didn’t sound like this.
He had no doubt that anything in the area capable of hearing knew where they were. And there was only so much that he could pay attention to, so he was almost expecting an ambush. Surprisingly, over an hour passed without incident, and he jumped up above the canopy with his force magic again. Seeing that they were still heading in the right direction, he descended back to the unfortunate band of warriors.
The continued peaceful travel worried him immensely before he reminded himself that maybe the problem was just something he didn’t consider worth his time. He had needed to spend an abnormal amount of time burning various hazardous plants, after all. The bumbling fools surely couldn’t handle those, and he was mystified as to how they made it this far into the wilderness to begin with.
With how they just stumbled through the vegetation, the bladed ferns would have torn their legs up in no time flat with how dense they were. The emberblooms would have burned them and their armor badly. The lightning creepers would likely have dropped them as well.
At least with his group, they actually paid attention, and he didn’t have to burn a path, merely remove occasional dense areas. He let out a huff as his foxfire incinerated another tangle of vines and shook his head. Unfortunately, he had chosen to try to rescue these idiots before he realized how badly out of their depth they were.
On the tail of that thought, he heard rustling coming from downwind and stopped, turning his attention to it. The humans nearly walked into him before they turned to look as well, and a moment later, the bushes parted to reveal a badger. While it looked normal, his ability to sense mana was screaming at him for the first time in ages.
The group he was leading did at least have some intelligence as they immediately spread out and treated it as a real threat, but there wasn’t much they could do without good weapons. Niphru considered ignoring them for a moment before sharing a warning, “This has a huge amount of mana radiating from it; something is wrong!”
With a growl from the badger, Kira, as well as the person carrying her, were both blown from their feet by a blast of air. The leader of the group stepped between them, her mace raised at the ready. Instead of continuing towards them, the badger swung its gaze to Niphru even as he sent fire toward its head.
As it began to burn, the creature thrashed its head about for a moment before it managed to leap clear of the foxfire with an incredible burst of speed. Immediately after it landed, Niphru could feel the air being drawn toward it as a large ball of water condensed from the air. The blob of water then lowered to soak the badger, leaving it dripping, with even more water held against its head.
As his foxfire rapidly moved toward it again, he formed an intense, compressed lance of fire and threw it at the beast. Against his expectations, it seemed to splash against the fur, instead of burning it or even simply evaporating the water. The wall of force he slammed into it did seem to impact, however, though the badger only swayed to the side slightly before the magic shattered.
Seeming to decide he wasn’t a threat, the creature turned to face Ralph and pounced. Though it was well over a dozen feet between them, it easily crossed the gap, slamming into him. As claws raked against armor, its jaws came down towards Ralph’s throat, only stopped by him hastily shoving his hand in the way. Even as more bolts of flame skittered off the badger’s coat, Ralph wailed in agony as the badger’s jaws clamped down, the crackle of bones breaking ringing out.
A moment later, the beast shook its head, and gore sprayed across the ground. Seemingly annoyed by the repeated blasts of fire hitting it, it turned back towards Niphru and growled. Having seen what happened before, Niphru did his best to stop the shockwave with his own magic, slowing it down enough to only be forced to take a few steps away.
With a panicked thought, Niphru leapt into the air, forming both a platform to land on, as well as a steeply-angled wall right as the badger lunged for him. The next thing he knew, he was lying at the base of a tree, his back pulsing with pain. His actions did seem to have saved him from a worse fate, however. The badger was upside down and facing away from him, a divot in the ground where it had clearly impacted headfirst.
As Niphru staggered back to his feet, he saw that the humans hadn’t been idle. The woman with the mace had reached the beast and took a double-handed swing at its head, a dull thud echoing through the woods as the weapon bounced off its skull. A man to the side was holding a lightning creeper like a whip, seemingly without a care, and snapped it forward.
One of the women to the back had picked up a large log and took a test swing with it before settling it against her shoulder. The man who had tested if his foxfire burned was midway through cutting up a bladed fern with his dagger, the leaves scratching his armor as they shook back and forth. At some point, someone had dragged Kira back away from the fighting, and Ralph was crawling away as best as he could, blood trailing from the mess that remained in place of his hand.
That quick glance seemed to be all the time he had free, as the badger finished flipping itself back onto its feet. He hadn’t been idle while he was looking around, however, and the large ball of fire he had been producing flew toward the beast. Unlike before, he held his will around the flame even after he threw it. As it approached its target, Niphru felt like he hit a wall, and the flame split around the badger, though he was able to hold it in place with some effort.
This time, the waterlogged coat of the creature hissed from the fire against it, steam rapidly rising into the air. Niphru quickly pulled the air toward himself, dragging the steam away from the badger in case it might be able to condense it again. As the beast opened its jaws in his direction, he used force magic to shove against the inside of its mouth, causing it to gag and stagger.
An instant later, it was flattened by a log slamming into it, embedding it into the forest floor, a small spray of water coming out from under the wood. Right as the log was raised, bladed leaves skittered across the creature’s skin, and the man wielding the plant cursed as he jumped back. As the badger pulled itself to its feet and snarled, the shocking vine snapped against its head, and it whirled to face the one holding it.
Aware that he had caught its attention, the man threw himself backward to attempt to dodge its lunge and raised an arm. His actions bought him a moment as the beast’s jaws closed on his bracer, snapping the bone below like a twig, with one claw catching him across the face as the other sliced into his armor. In this moment, a mace slammed into the badger from below, lifting it into the air, though it didn’t open its jaws, twisting the wound, resulting in a shriek from the man below.
Niphru shoved his force magic against the badger’s eye even as all of his foxfire managed to catch up with it and settle around its head again. With a sudden hiss, the creature opened its jaws and leapt away, leaving more claw wounds on its former target as it managed to outrun the flames once more, its head slightly singed.
Since his flames were already there, Niphru switched his focus to healing and spread them over the man’s wounds, other than his badly broken arm. As he threw another bolt of fire at it, the badger jumped toward him, only to be swatted out of the air by the woman wielding the log, sending it tumbling across the ground.
With it well out of reach, everyone tensed, waiting to see who it would lunge for next. Instead, it shook itself before walking back into the damaged foliage with an unconcerned gait. A moment later, Niphru leapt into the air and watched as the badger slowly wandered away from them.
“It is actually leaving. I can’t believe that thing,” he shouted to the group as he dropped back to the ground.
Now that he wasn’t worried about getting away, Ralph rolled over to his back and sat up, keeping his mangled hand away from the ground. The other man groaned as he lay there, letting Niphru’s foxfire heal the cuts he had suffered as he twisted his arm back the right way.
“That was a disaster,” their leader exclaimed as she put her mace back on her belt.
“Not that I’m complaining or anything, but why did it just leave? It seemed to be winning, much as I hate to say it,” remarked the woman with the log as she tossed it over her shoulder to thud loudly into the ground.
After glancing at the others, Niphru replied, “I’m not sure, but I’ve never seen anything like that. My magic splashed off it. Fire is not supposed to splash. And it could evade my flames. That was an absolute monster!”
As the others gathered in shocked silence, he tried to focus himself on the wounded, glancing over at the mess left on the forest floor from the attack on Ralph. There was no way he could even try to fix that, but he could at least seal the claw wounds on the other man.
Shaking his head, he told Ralph, “I can’t fix it this time, all I can do is stop the bleeding. Maybe one of the people that I came with can, though, I’m not sure.”
The man simply sat there staring in shock at what was left of his hand. One of the others looked around, emptied one of their pouches, and began to collect the pieces that had been torn off, looking somewhat nauseous.
As one of the wounds on the man he was working on reached a point he felt was safe, Niphru sent one of his flames to Ralph’s hand. He couldn’t hope to fix it, but he could at least stop the bleeding.
Silence fell over the group as they considered what they had just been through.
