QuietValerie

CW: Brief conversation about mind altering spells to solidify the lore-reason for their lack of use in the story.

James opened his mouth to hit back, but Maud, his ally, began to pant like an overheated dog. He gave her a confused look, and I used that lapse of concentration to smash a blast of magical energy into his shields.

I expected him to take the hit, brush it off with maybe a bit of effort, and then hit back. I didn’t expect him to stumble and for his shield to falter ever so slightly. Almost experimentally, I hit him with another one of those attacks. He staggered, eyes going wide with surprise and… fear?

Maud was still gasping for air, and she lashed out with a flurry of arcane bolts that were only barely aimed in my direction. I just threw up my normal shields with a dismissive flick of my fingers, then turned my attention back to James, who was glancing around at the battle looking for help.

Eilian was off fighting some huge dude who was swinging a big war axe around, and distantly, I could see Esra hammering away at Fennimore with a deadly barrage of spells. That left one of their number missing, I think?

Well, my shields were up so I guess that was all I could do about the missing mage. I had two in my grip, after all. Which, speaking of grip…

Vines of power twisted up my arm as I cast a spell that I’d previously been using to help drive large foundation posts into the ground. Lines of magic twisted up into a cylindrical shape above James’ head, and I ripped my hand down right when a huge chunk of metal appeared above him.

Swearing, he teleported away, and my massive weight smashed into the ground, powdering stone. As if only just realising that it was an option, Maud followed suit, warping away with a sucking sound.

Both reappeared about thirty yards back down the ridgeline, and so before my several ton weight of steel disappeared, I lifted it up with a casual flexing of my will and threw it at them. James was fast enough to leap out of the way, but Maud, who still had my suffocation spell attached to her shields, wasn’t so lucky. The wrecking ball ploughed into her shields and then through them like they were made of paper.

Blood sprayed in all directions, and I wasn’t sure if I should have been worried about my complete apathy on the subject. I was just so angry. These absolute monsters had lured a robot army into my people, getting many of them killed in the process. I had no sympathy.

The weight tore a massive gouge in the ridgetop, then dissipated as the spell died. To my surprise, she was still alive. Most of her bones had to be powder, but still breath wheezed and bubbled in and out of her half collapsed lungs.

Terrified, James scrambled backwards, trying to put more distance between us as I stepped forward to close the distance at an unhurried walk. More lances of light flew from his hands, but I flicked them out of the way with a dismissive wave of elegant fingers. He didn’t have the power to lock me out of using telekinesis on his spells. I didn’t even need to use any of my spells.

“You are weaker than I expected,” I laughed, perhaps a little manically.

He threw a rock at me with his own telekinesis and shouted, “Fuck you! Crazy fucking bitch!”

The rock paused at the apex of its flight, and I caught it with a raised palm. I kept walking towards him, sending the stone back where it had came from at triple the speed. Like a toddler trying to balance during its first few steps, he barely dodged it, and it went on to rip a chunk out of the mountain. Scree sprayed out into the valley below.

A gurgle came from down near my feet, and I pulled my attention off James to see Maud coming back to consciousness.

“Do you feel remorse for what you’ve done?” I asked her idly, keeping some of my attention on the boy who was still throwing stones at me. “For killing my people. For killing all those before, in Fennimore’s wars?”

“R—” she began, coughing up blood in the process. It sounded almost like a chuckle, and then I realised with surprise that it had been one. “Remorse is— is for the weak. The artless— filthy—”

Calling my blades back to me, I looked up to meet James’ eyes once more and cut Maud’s head from her body with a single vicious cut. Fear radiated from his expression when he finally, finally realised that I was no longer the sweet, conflict averse girl he had met all those months ago. He ran. The flickering flashes of light from his teleportation spell rippling down the ridgeline.

I smiled in exhausted, slightly nauseous victory, then turned my attention back to the rest of the battle. Where was that last mage?

My question was answered when I saw a second flash of light down where James had run to. They stopped and seemed to converse for several long moments. During that time, another flicker of light caught my attention.

Down the slope a little ways, behind a rock, Grace was using a mirror to signal me. Tilting my head, I tried to get a read on what she was saying. Then I saw her rest her long pistol on the rock and take aim. Aha!

Time to try and help Ezra and lure the two runners back.

My mage mother seemed to be an equal match for Fennimore, something that probably irked him to no end. I watched their teleporting back-and-forth for a second or two, then pulled and twisted space-time with my own teleport spell.

I came out behind Fennimore and immediately put a suffocation bubble around him, then followed up with a bolt of magenta lightning. He disappeared in a flash, teleporting several metres away so he could get both me and Ezra in his line of sight.

“Ah, the beautiful and deadly flower makes herself known,” he said with a syrupy sweet smile. “My goodness, how I have ached to view your face again.”

“That is so creepy,” I said, wrinkling my nose like he’d just shat his pants. To Ezra, I asked, “Why in the hell did you accept him as an apprentice again? You should have just killed him.”

Gresham Fennimore just laughed. “Such venom! I hope you keep that spirit when I—”

I didn’t allow him to finish. I rammed all of my magical blades into his shield one after another. Through the exertion of the spell, I growled, “When you, nothing. The moment I’m done here, I’m rigging my brain to explode if anyone successfully messes with it.”

“Oh,” he blinked, looking genuinely taken aback. “Oh, no, my dear! I would never stoop so low as to create mental manipulation spells. No, that’s the realm of our mutual master. I was merely hoping to gain your affections the old fashioned way.”

His words pulled me up short. Emotions rampaged through me, and I glanced at Ezra. What was he talking about? Would she really…?

“Oh, for the love of the Garden,” Ezra groaned, rolling her eyes and summoning a spell that blasted a laser of superheated sap at the man. “A crowd soothing spell is perfectly normal. Especially when it's your own apprentice attempting to rile them up!”

“That was my moment, and you stole it from me!” he shouted, his calm and collected demeanour vanishing as his face flushed with rage.

Oh. A crowd soothing spell. That was… probably okay. I’d still be talking to her later, though, because that shit was terrifying. I knew that magic couldn’t be used to directly mess with people’s heads, or even their bodies, but just like I used my magic to slice and heal at the same time, there was probably a way… I shook my head. No, I refused to even touch that realm of thinking.

Ezra’s spell was deflected with some sort of lensing shield from Fennimore, and he followed up with a blast of raw magical force that threw her backwards. Even before his spell was finished pushing her, she had herself under control, and was back to blasting with the sap. Both glared daggers at the other, their combined magicks meeting in the middle, causing a maelstrom of burning carnage.

Fennimore began to lose their little shoving match right out of the gate, and he frowned. Then his eyes lit with sudden understanding, and he threw me a look that was almost… admiring? Holding up under Ezra’s onslaught, he slowly shifted his form into plant mode, and I groaned out loud. Damn it. His smarmy, proud grin of triumph made me want to mash his face into a blender.

The intense moment was shattered when James and another man teleported in and unleashed a collection of their own spells. The unknown mage went for Ezra, trying to tip the balance, while James slammed me with yet more bolts of radiant fire.

“Talk about a one trick pony,” I laughed, not even bothering to raise a hand in my defence. It just bounced off my reactive shielding anyway.

His prince charming face went as red as his mage-father’s, and he threw two more at me. Both were deflected as the first was, and I raised a hand to ruin him, when I saw movement in my peripheral vision. Grace was lining up her shot. Unfortunately, my hesitation told him something was up, and he turned, looking down in the direction my gaze had travelled.

With a cry of alarm, he threw himself down, just as Grace fired.

A sound like tinnitus, the screams of the damned, and nails on a chalkboard all mixed together assaulted my ears, and a bolt of red and black energy leapt up the slope. It just barely missed James and carried on past him, right into the unnamed mage he’d arrived with.

The projectile of red nightmare splashed across the man’s shields like hot acid, and then began to eat away at it. A few splashes peppered through to hit him, and he dropped like a stone, convulsing amongst the dense scrub and slate of the ridgeline. A high pitched whine of terror and pain emanated from him, like it was being torn out of his throat with embalming instruments.

Everyone went still, watching in horror as the man seemed to shrivel with age in real time. Except, it was worse than that. His bones began to shatter inside him like exploding popcorn kernels, without the force to break all the way through his muscle and flesh to the skin at the edge. Finally, some sort of dark red sludge began to seep out of every orifice. An odd, and frankly disturbing part of my brain thought a tech-bro CEO would probably pay good money to drink that stuff. He’d say it was an anti-aging smoothie. The foul offal smell just added to the potency.

“By the Ring,” Fennimore swore, staring at the shrivelled and juiced flesh-raisin with a look of abject horror.

“There’s more where that came from,” I told him, calling on my magic and turning it as red as the magic that he’d just witnessed. Hopefully he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference in the moment. “I suggest you leave.”

“Oh, he isn’t leaving,” Ezra hissed, sounding way too much like a cat for me not to tease her about it later. “Hit him with it next. I want to see if the magic can find enough colour within him to make anything other than black.”

The ruling man of the largest and most well armed mage coven in this whole slice of the ring just stared at us in horror. “You… you’re monsters. You’re vile. This is… this is too far, even for you, Ezra.”

“Not monsters,” I shook my head, and pulled my hand back like I was going to strike. “Just really motivated to stay alive and free. Now fuck off.”

Grace fired again, aiming right for Fennimore this time. To my surprise, and probably to the surprise of him and his master, James jumped forward and wrapped his arms around the older man. For a second, I hoped he was sacrificing himself for Fennimore, but then they both disappeared with a thump-crack of displaced air.

A very quiet croak pulled my attention down to the ground, and I almost vomited when I realised the unnamed mage was still alive.

QuietValerie

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