After passing on the potions, Theo ran with Meti and Hasio toward the edge of the Grove, glancing up as they began to see embers overhead, carried along by the wind. They ran into the rush of hunters and nomads of the grove, setting up a fire line by rapidly digging and burning away plants to keep the fire from going past that point. The group rushed past them, heading into what they knew would be an oncoming blaze. A part of Theo wanted to blame herself for the fire - for everything that was happening since the group’s meddling had forced those people to act so rashly. But she forced the thought down for now and focused on running. This was different from when she was a child, when things just set ablaze in her hands and in her presence, and she had no idea what was going on or how to stop it. This wasn’t her doing, but she had the power to stop it before the Grove suffered irreparable harm.
“Just in case, I’m gonna go ahead and hide, but I’ll stick close.” She heard Hasio say, and when she glanced back toward him, he was already disappearing before her eyes. She nodded, then looked forward, where she could already see the fire in the distance. Unfortunately, Theo knew that Hasio wouldn’t be able to do much here while they were fighting the fire. But the reason he came was to protect her in case the ones who started the fire came around and saw them trying to put it out.
“Alright. Oh- here. Take these. When the fire gets close, mash them together and then toss them as fast as you can!” Out of her alchemy pouch, which was a small version of her storage bag that Callipho gave her specifically to keep her different ingredients from mixing, she pulled out a handful of minerals and herbs. Crushing them together produced a violently cold reaction, so Hasio should be able to put out something around him, if only a little. She held her hands out and watched the reagents disappear as Hasio grabbed them, then she closed her eyes and began to breathe deeply, focusing her aura.
Even the increased heat and the smoke around her as the fire got closer wanted to pull her closer to fire, but she calmed the raging elements inside her and began to focus on water. With each breath, her aura settled and bent to her will, and attuned itself to the element of water. More and more, until Theo felt like she could draw it out without unbalancing the other elements immediately. “It’s almost here.” Meti spoke, pulling out her staff and getting ready to cast a spell.
Water swirled around Theo as she focused more and more. With the added aura control from all of the training she’d been through, she found that taking a slower approach to her ‘spellcasting’ prevented the elements from unbalancing themself too much. Quick applications, like the ones she’d use in a fight, rapidly unbalanced her elements, but with the better control she got over her aura, she could even slow that process down.
Opening her eyes, she could see the fire moving towards her. Slow enough that they could outrun it if they needed to, but as long as she had aura to use, Theo would try to put out this fire as best she could. Releasing the gathered aura in front of her, a wide wave of aura-conjured water flew out toward the oncoming fire. A loud hiss erupted as they two collided, and steam filled Theo’s vision briefly. To her side, Meti cast a spell and created several long panels of pure magical force, creating a wall that the fire slammed against, and then began to peter out as it rapidly ran out of fuel.
Theo looked around, but didn’t see a burst of frost from the materials she gave Hasio. Focusing back on the fire, she started gathering water again. They’d cleared a space of the fire a couple dozen feet across, but they had a wide area to cover. Hopefully, it’d stop at the line the nomads were building long enough for Theo to put most of it out. As she pondered this, she felt a tremor in the ground around her. She glanced toward Meti, who looked to her at the same time in confirmation.
Without warning, something slammed into Meti’s magic panels, shattering a couple of them on impact. Looking closely, Theo saw what looked like a clump of molten earth, and she followed the direction it came from. Glowing in the distance, but lumbering closer, she could see a large creature with a vaguely humanoid shape. A ten foot tall giant made of magma. A cooled and hardened outer shell imitating a layer of skin with burning earth bubbling just underneath. An elemental of some kind “Sorry about that. We can’t have the fire stopping too early.”
A man moved a few feet behind the elemental. With short hair, a thin frame, and the dark clothes of the Crow’s Black Feathers, Theo recognized him as the man that Hasio trailed before, when he found the orb in the tree. He looked between Theo and Metilia, glaring at them, and shrank back. “Don’t look at me like that, it’s just business I swear. Could you two step aside so things with this guy don't get messy?”
“Why don’t you just send it back where it came from?” Theo asked, though she already knew they wouldn’t stop what they were doing just because she asked. “Or I will, but you’re not gonna like how.” She shifted the rising water-aspected aura inside her toward ice.
The man looked between the two of them, and looked thoroughly unimpressed. He was likely too far away to see the swirling aura around Theo. “Fine, fine. I don’t like getting into fights with women normally, but there’s simply no choice if you’re forcing my hand-” As he spoke, a burst of frost erupted against the elemental’s side, causing it to stagger back in pain. The man whipped around, and quickly jumped back, out of the space where Hasio’s dagger appeared along with the rest of him.
“Then why don't you fight me, jackass?” He quickly led the man away with a flurry of swipes from his dagger, leaving the elemental to Theo and Meti to deal with.
With a rapid swirl of energy, Theo willed the aura around to converge into three large spikes of ice. She didn’t want to use too much aura, but if they didn’t take this thing out, it wouldn’t matter how much of the fire they stopped. She fired them off, and the spikes slammed into its molten form, causing it to stagger back. It recovered quicker than Theo expected, though, and it seemed to mark her as the cause of all the cold, which wasn’t entirely false. It started to rush toward her, basically ignoring the several magic bolts that Meti fired in its path.
Instead of running, Theo met it head on, her rising anger at the situation bubbling up. When it reached her, she dodged away from its fists slamming into the ground, breaking the earth where she’d stood a moment before. As soon as her feet hit the ground, she took a deep breath, getting into a stance, and lunged forward for a punch. A loud crack resounded through the air, thunderous force erupting out from her first and sending the elemental sliding a dozen feet back. It had a sizable hole in its chest, from which magma leaked out, and then rapidly cooled to seal the hole.
“Hold it down, Theo.” Meti told her. It seemed like she had something in mind, so Theo nodded to her and prepared herself as it came at her again. She kept dodging away from it as she gathered her aura, feeling her body temperature rapidly cooling as her soul tilted perilously toward the ice element. She’d only become unbalanced that way once before, when they fought the lich, and in many ways it felt scarier than being unbalanced toward fire. Where the heat gradually became unbearably painful when unbalanced toward fire for too long, her ice unbalanced slowly dulled her senses. She’d know when she was about to burn up from heat, but she felt like she’d die without even realizing it if she stayed in cold for too long, so she tended to avoid it.
Not that it presented as much of a problem, these days. She still didn’t like forcibly unbalancing herself and avoided it when she could, but she made sure to keep a surplus of medicine in her storage bag and alchemical pouch. Finally, when she felt like she had enough aura, she waited, and when it went to slam her into the ground again, she caught its heavy arms. Her hands, arms and legs screamed in pain, as the ground underneath her buckled and cracked from the impact, but her aura shield held, and her strengthened grip kept it from moving.
Keeping it firmly where it stood, she released the gathered aura in an ice-aspected burst. Solid ice formed tightly against the elemental’s body, sealing it from the waist down, and around its arms where Theo gripped it. She then backed away, watching as steam formed around its body. The ice rapidly began to melt, but she’d used so much aura at once she felt on the cusp of tipping into an ice inbalance. The ice would hold the elemental for several seconds still. Meanwhile, Meti, as soon as she saw Theo grab onto it, began chanting.
Hasio, on the other hand, had been dueling the one who led the elemental around. The man had pulled a halberd out of his storage bag, and tried to use its range to his advantage. Hasio, however, quickly adjusted, using Murabi’s teachings to carve out waves of aura, while staying just out of the halberd’s range. He had him on the ropes, but needed to end the fight quickly since each attack drained his aura rapidly - and he wasn’t sure if the other guy’s aura shield was draining him at the same rate. Though from his expression Hasio could tell that he was pressing him to a degree. He pushed the man back, leading him toward the restrained elemental before he realized, and stayed his blade momentarily to prevent accidentally breaking the ice and letting it get free.
At that moment, he and Theo would feel a rush of mana surging and look to Metilia. A brightly glowing spear of magical force coalesced just overhead, humming with power as she aimed it at the elemental. Meti had told Theo about this spell as she learned it from Zorhe’s spellbook. The advanced spell, Javelin. The spell hovered in the air, and she held it for a moment, letting Theo and Hasio clear the area before she commanded it to fire. At that moment, the elemental freed its arms, rising up with a roar, just as the javelin pierced its chest with enough force to break it free of the rest of the ice. It fell backward, right on top of the man who led it to this point, who barely had time to cry out before it crushed him, the weight, and heat breaking through what was left of his aura shield.
The elemental didn’t move, and the three of them could see the magma within its form beginning to cool down. Hasio gave a whistle of admiration at the magical spear of force still inside its chest that pulsed for a moment, before fading away. Theo also came over and gave her a hug. “Meti! That was amazing.”
Metilia shivered from the cold of Theo’s touch, but returned the hug. “Nothing you couldn’t get up to while unbalanced. S-speaking of which, you are rather frigid. Are you alright?”
Realizing how cold she must have felt, Theo backed away. “Oh, right. I think I’m one good spell away from unbalancing. I want to use more but I’m not sure I should use my medicine like that just yet.”
“The fire line the nomads were making will hold for a while. You can harvest from the elemental, and I suppose the man underneath, so you can warm up a bit.”
At Theo’s nod in agreement, Hasio sheathed his daggers. “Sounds like a plan. I’ll stand guard. You never know if there are more of these guys running around.” With a wave, he turned invisible once again.
As Theo steadied her hands to begin work on taking valuable materials from the elemental, based on what she knew from prior reading, a shadow passed overhead, and she glanced up to see a bird passing through. The Raven, maybe? As it passed out of sight. Theo hoped that Tahir and Shukri were doing alright on their end, and resolved to join them at the barrier once they’d taken care of the fire.
