Millennial Mage

Tala screamed internally as she cut down a wolf the size of a pony, the last remaining one of a pack of twelve.

Okay. This was not the best plan.

-I don’t know what you’re complaining about. Things are going just fine.-

Tala spun towards her next foe. Unable to get Flow around in time, she punched her armored fist into the side of the head of a charging thing.

It looked like a unicorn but wrong. It was much, much bigger. Its head was forward, instead of up like a horse, and it actually had two horns on its nose, instead of one on its forehead. One was much more massive, curved and vicious looking, while the other was closer to a nub of bone.

It’s like the hulking armored knight of unicorn-kind.

-It is pretty outrageous.-

Aside from its mundane features, the magic about it was overbearing.

Even though Tala’s fist connected solidly, and she felt the crunch of breaking bone, she lost out in both mass and magics.

She was physically thrown back as the front horn struck her shoulder, and the wave of kinetic energy sent into her with the hit flung her away at even greater speed to skip across the ground, back towards the dome of stone that housed Be-thric, Thron, and Gallof.

She was able to catch the ground briefly as she skipped along and flipped up to land on her feet, skidding to a stop. That avoided too much concussive damage, but it was still highly unpleasant.

Terry was, as usual, a blur of teleportation and blood. They’d already been fighting for close to five minutes, and things were going well so far, but she had a growing headache.

How are there so many creatures?!

More continued to arrive, almost all coming from the north-west.

Following our trail…no wonder this isn’t a commonly used form of travel. Tala understood why a mandate on those traveling like this was to deal with the truly magical creatures that followed in their wake. She couldn’t imagine the sort of devastation these creatures could have caused if they simply fell upon the nearest city. Even if defenders were close at hand, quite a few normal people would still die.

-Still common enough to be able to depart with a few hours’ notice.-

That’s…fair.

The battle unicorn—bicorn?—was still coming, though it was looking a little worse for wear with half of its head caved in, and one horn missing. Hey, it’s a unicorn, now.

-You’re ridiculous. You’re a biped, even if someone rips off your leg. You’re just an injured or crippled biped.-

It didn’t heal. Maybe, it couldn’t heal quickly for some reason, but it seemed like it didn’t need to, despite what should have been a lethal wound.

Tala was coated in the white-steel armor, her will and power flowing into the material to keep it flexible and moving with her.

On the positive side, she had yet to take anything save whip-lash-like, or concussive, damage because of her combination of magical and material defenses.

On the negative side, her head felt like she’d been doing complex calculations, to the tenth decimal place, for hours.

This is rusting awful.

Most of the creatures she and Terry had killed were in the red and orange to her mage-sight, so it was more akin to stomping out endless streams of bugs than fighting off a pack of wolves.

Though, she had killed at least two packs of wolves.

This bicorn—now one horned bicorn—was one of the only yellows they’d seen so far.

Blessedly, the stream of new opponents seemed to be lessening, and this thing was surprisingly tough. Well, I am fighting up a rank in this conflict. I’d say I’m doing pretty well, all things considered.

Speaking of the bicorn, it was almost upon her, charging once more, and she’d had time to prepare this time.

Flow, as a glaive, was ready.

At the last moment, Tala stepped to one side and thrusted forward, ramming Flow through the thick, magically reinforced beast between its neck and shoulder.

Traditionally, the maneuver would be used on a charging boar, with the spear braced against the ground or something else equally immoveable, but this thing was much bigger than a boar, and Tala knew that that tactic would never have worked.

Additionally, this was a magical creature; so, of course, the glaive thrust wasn’t nearly enough to finish it off. Even so, Tala’s attack did disable one of its front legs.

As it continued forward, that leg buckled, dropping the beast down to a grinding slide on its face as it moved past her.

A flick of magic and Flow shifted to a sword. Tala used the beast’s own momentum to drag Flow’s blade along to cut down its side, laying it open.

Tala’s head-covering pulled back from around her mouth just as she exhaled into the open wound, her breath filled with dissolution power.

That ate away a good half of the beast, and Tala rammed Flow in the form of a void-knife into the beast’s side, ripping out its remaining power for good measure.

She sighed at her own inefficiency. I could have used the void-sword to cut it open.

-Ironically, the void-forms don’t cut as well. So, you might have been dragged back or knocked off your feet. The void consumes more than cuts. I think you made the right call.-

Tala smiled, turning to face north-west.

The smile faded, and a frown pulled at her hidden features.

The creatures she could still see, which had been continuing to come her way, were now dispersing, running north-east or south-west, perpendicular to the path that they’d been on moments before.

What’s that about?

It wasn’t like she’d shown new abilities or anything that might have scared them off.

She had used most of her magics in the first couple of minutes of the fight, and everything since had just been a remix of those methods of killing. Though, she’d only used one pair of tungsten spheres, and she still had the siege-spheres in reserve.

Terry, of course, had no issue showing off how easily he could hurt these creatures, which should have been more powerful than him.

He wasn’t able to instantly kill them as he did with most everything they had encountered around the human cities, but his every fight was a foregone conclusion when it began.

You know, I might have killed more of these things than Terry has.

-You have, but not by much. The endingberry-like dissolution is a great equalizer for keeping these tough, regenerating opponents down.-

That made Tala rather proud, actually. She was dealing a bit more death than even Terry. He’d still dominate in his ability to kill weaker opponents quickly, but that just makes sense. It’s what he’s been doing for most of his life.

She, on the other hand, almost always fought against things stronger than herself, at least theoretically so. She felt like some sort of hunter. The killing of stronger beasts a primal part of who she was.

No. Hunter isn’t correct. While I do enjoy fighting, I don’t really seek out the kills. If these things leave me alone, I’d be happy to let them be.

Another minute of killing later, and no more enemies remained near at hand.

Terry took the moment of calm to eat the carcasses that he hadn’t eaten before. Strangely enough, he kept glancing towards the horizon between each little meal. Finally, he flickered over to her and bumped Kit with his beak.

“You want to go inside?”

He bobbed an affirmation, trilling softly, then bumped her in the chest.

“You want me to go inside too?”

He bobbed again.

“I can’t, Terry. I have to stay out here and finish things up.”

He gave her a long look, then tilted his head questioningly.

“What’s bothering you?”

He bumped Kit, then her chest again.

“I’m not getting in.”

He trilled, seeming a bit irritated, now.

“Terry.”

He trilled over her, then turned his back on her, facing the north-west.

“Terry, if you think it isn’t safe, get into Kit.”

Terry glanced back at her, tilting his head again.

“I’ll be fine, my friend. You couldn’t kill me after all.”

He waggled his head back and forth, then squawked.

“Don’t lie to me. You tried. You didn’t put your all in, but you definitely tried.”

After a moment, he bobbed another time.

“So, if you think it’ll be dangerous, go in.” Tala opened Kit for the terror bird. “There is a lot that I can survive that you couldn’t.”

She smiled.

Terry glanced back towards the horizon, then to her.

He gave a mournful trill and then vanished back into Kit.

After he left, Tala turned to look back to the north-east. What is happening over there?

The Zeme, the flow of magic, in the air was…odd.

There had been quite a few currents caused by their arrival, but those had largely settled down.

Her headache was growing, and she was tempted to retract the armor, but something felt off.

Alat? Do you know what’s going on? Can you tell?

-No, but I agree. There’s something. Going on.-

She turned towards the rock dome. What she was seeing, feeling, and sensing, along with Terry’s reaction had made her quite uneasy. I think we should get the others.

-Yeah. That’s probably wise. I’m glad you aren’t letting your guard—-

Something streaked past Tala, and she staggard to the left.

Her right arm, which had been holding Flow, was gone.

In its place was the golden outline of the limb, the always active spell-lines burning with power even as her flesh began to regrow around them.

She could sense Flow behind her, and her mirrored perspective saw the creature still holding her arm in is jaws, the prize still coated in white metal.

What? She couldn’t process what she was seeing.

The lizard-like creature was blue to her mage-sight, at least in power density.

She would have thought it was a mythical dragon, but it didn’t have wings. Is that…

-A drake.-

Its form was unexpected to say the least, but something else dominated her mind as she took an infinite second to examine the newly arrived threat in her mirrored vision.

The material it seemed to be made of was hauntingly familiar.

She felt herself go cold, and for the first time in a very long time, she had no idea how to handle the enemy that had set upon her.

The drake’s claws, its teeth, its skin, its every scale was made of the same indiscernible, indistinct nothingness that marked the edge of every dimensional space that Tala had ever seen.

This massive lizard was somehow composed of the edge of reality.

No, that’s not right. It is somehow… reality itself? Or composed of it, like a statue is made of stone.

-Or the sword that was made of void?-

A counter-magic to void, you think?

-It makes sense.-

Its eyes were the only things that seemed different, glowing with a fierce, white light that somehow made Tala want to make things.

As a whole, the creature reminded Tala of nothing so much as the way reality itself had acted to help force Io’s fount into Flow.

-Hey, at least we know why everything else was getting the rust away.-

Yeah…and it outweighs us, magically, but two-and-a-half ranks…

-Yeah, it’s time for backup.-

How, exactly, are we going to do that?

The reality-drake was between her and the stone dome which housed her potential allies for this fight.

Well, talking has worked sometimes in the past. Her right arm was back, and as she turned to face the reptile, she called Flow back to her waiting hand.

Thankfully, she hadn’t used all the metal that she’d absorbed to make her armor, so she had enough to reform the protection on the regrown arm. But I can’t do that again…

“Nice lizard. We don’t need to fight.”

The lizard threw its head back and ate her arm with an awkward glug-glug, that reminded Tala of Thron downing a tankard of acid way too fast.

“See? I’m not all bad. Can we talk this out?” She started circling to one side to get around to the—

The drake vanished from her sight, and the world tipped as Tala fell sideways.

It rusting took my leg?!

-This isn’t good, Tala.-

You think?

Tala quickly crouched, gritting her teeth through the pain as she tried to regain her balance rather than falling.

Even as she struggled to do that, her armor opened up across her back and five sets of tungsten spheres cracked the air as they streaked towards the drake.

She turned around to see the aftermath of her attack with her own eyes and saw… nothing. The spheres had splintered on the drake’s scales, and then pulled back together in piles as close to their individual targeted parts of the drake as they could get.

The two that she’d aimed at the eyes seemed to just be gone.

The drake threw back its head and jerked its body a bit to fully consume her leg.

It was as big as the bicorn, but lower to the ground.

Okay, move to the stone mound.

She tucked and lunged that way, diving into a roll just as the reptile vanished again.

It missed her this time.

Just straight lines, then?

She came back to her feet, her leg restored, and sprinted perpendicular to her attacker, making for the dome.

She briefly considered retracting her armor, but felt like the drake would have been ripping away much larger sections without the support that the armor offered around her.

Tala was closing in on the dome.

Almost—

It took both legs, sending her spinning end over end, screaming in agony.

Alat helped clamp down on the pain, even as Tala slammed into the ground, the normally innocuous impact sending shivers of pain through her.

It felt like the two legs that she no longer had were broken.

That’s awful in just about every way.

She wasn’t going to make it to the dome.

She only had one choice.

In desperation, she jammed her hand down into Kit and pulled out the set of siege-spheres.

Untested, untried, my last hope. She really didn’t like the sound of that. Nothing this powerful should be anywhere around here. How am I this unlucky?

Without delay, she moved the targets of the spheres to the center of the drake’s chest, and they boomed away through the air.

The beast had been about to charge once more, and its mouth had been open and aligned just right for one of the two to shoot straight down its throat.

The second one missed the open maw by a hair, slamming into the side of its neck and dragging across the scales before it struck the drake hard in the shoulder, the first telling blow Tala had managed.

The beast flinched back from the hit, and when the deflected ball of compressed air quickly came back to strike again, albeit quite a bit slower, the drake tried unsuccessfully to dodge.

The one it had swallowed seemed to have done some damage, as glowing, white blood was leaking out of the drake’s mouth.

After the third, now far weaker, hit from the sphere on the outside, Tala decided it wasn’t going to be enough.

My second air sphere is sphere B and nothing else.

A flicker went through the sphere now pressing to the drake’s side, and the gravitational affects vanished.

BOOM!

Tala was flung backwards as a thousand cubic feet of air expanded outward in a freezing flash.

The drake was tossed aside like a ragdoll, its entire left side now encrusted with ice, but as it came back to its feet, clearly a bit disoriented, there didn’t seem to be any actual damage done.

You have got to be kidding me! Tala came back to her own feet, still trying her utmost to get to the dome, which housed her salvation from this nightmare of a fight.

The drake rolled to its feet, eyes locked on her as it growled.

Fine. My first air sphere is sphere A and nothing else.

A WHOOMP resounded through the surrounding landscape, a wave of dust radiating out from the drake even as the ice on its side broke loose and fell free.

Tala felt the concussion resonate in her chest, and the ground buzzed beneath her feet as she ran.

The drake staggered and fell to its belly, its eyes closing in obvious pain before a gout of white liquid shot from between its teeth.

Tala gasped in relief, stumbling to her knees and forcing her armor to take a more static shape, finally allowing her mind rest.

I did it. I killed a —

The drake’s eyes opened, the powerful white glow now tinged with obvious rage and just a bit of pain.

Nope, not dead. Up, Tala. GET UP!

She staggered to her feet, even as the drake did the same, clearly at least somewhat injured but not actually in danger of death.

What is that thing made of?

-Magic, Tala. Maybe even reality itself…whatever that means.-

Oh…right.

She hobbled towards the hemisphere of rock that contained her backup.

This was not the best plan…

The drake didn’t immediately streak past her. It didn’t take another chunk from her, so that was a blessing.

In her mirrored perspective, she saw it limping after her, each stride more stable and sure than the last.

Tala healed faster, but then she’d been less damaged.

The drake, for its part, was slowly slipping from blue towards green to Tala’s mage-sight.

The dome was just ahead, and she was finally able to sprint at full speed. Even so, she wasn’t going to be fast enough, she could tell.

Rust this. She wrapped each hand around one of a pair of tungsten spheres attached near her stomach.

She gripped as hard as she could, bracing herself as she altered the targets of the spheres to the ground just beyond the rock dome, on the side that she needed to get to.

Her mind felt like it shattered, she had never intended for the magics to work that way, but the affect lasted long enough to jerk her off the ground and through the air before it tore the spheres free.

The drake hadn’t seemed to move, but it was now far ahead of where she’d been, clearly having just missed her.

Tala had a lot of trouble focusing her vision as she landed in a roll right beside her destination.

She turned Flow into a Glaive, and fell towards the dome, one hand extended to stab the unprotected patch of stone.

Her other arm had been turned up as she fell, and the drake now feasted on it at a safe distance.

Rust me.

But the small cut she’d managed in the stone was enough.

The entire defensive structure burst, like a soap bubble, and Be-thric strode out, his aura blazing a true blue.

He has been increasing in magical density since his elevation… Tala felt a little delirious from the repeated extreme pain.

Be-thric saw her, saw the splashes of blood around the battle field, then focused on the drake extending a hand.

The creature staggered, confusion replaced the focus and rage in its eyes.

Tala took a few steadying breaths.

Thron and Gallof came to stand on either side of her.

Thron knelt. “Are you all right?”

She nodded, accepting his help to stand.

Be-thric turned away from the drake, which was still standing, though unsteadily now. Panic was clearly beginning to fill its features, but it didn’t move. “It was quite injured, Eskau Tali. I’m impressed with your performance. There shouldn’t have been anything nearly this powerful to contend with, and it seems that you hurt it quite badly.”

“Thank you.” She felt a bit of happiness at the compliment but squashed it. “What did you do?”

“Oh, that?” He motioned back to the beast as it fell over. “First, I erased its innate knowledge of how to move using its legs. Then, I obliterated the portion of its mind responsible for the involuntary beating of its heart. It can heal all it wants, but it won’t be able to move, nor circulate its blood. It’ll die in time.”

Her mouth dropped open. That’s an awful way to die.

“Tali?”

Tala came back to the moment, Be-thric’s use of just her name catching her off guard. “Yes?”

“Where are all the other bodies?”

What? Oh… Oh, no…

-Don’t panic, think for a moment. You’ve got this.-

And she did, too. The reasonable answer came almost instantly. “There was a lull before that drake arrived, and I took the opportunity to put all the corpses into my storage.”

“Oh, that was a good use of resources. I imagine your sanctum will have devoured them by now. Wise of you to continue to offer such gifts to your hungry companion. It is likely actions like that, which have allowed you to attain the relatively stable relationship you have with the void-beast.”

I… didn’t think of that. She glanced down at Kit. I’ll feed you some more tasty things soon.

She looked up at the drake. “Could I have that one?”

Be-thric shrugged. “I don’t see why not. Improving the reliability of your sanctum is worth more than any mere harvest, even from such a beast.”

“Thank you, Pillar Be-thric.” She walked towards the drake warily. It was still alive, but clearly in a bad state. It was rapidly dropping through the color spectrum to her mage-sight as it desperately threw power at any number of unknown attempts at recovery.

Tala occasionally saw flickers of power from Be-thric as the arcane reinforced or re-did his working, preventing any attempt on the drake’s part from succeeding.

Tala guessed that every subsequent working that Be-thric did was easier, as his opponent’s magical weight continued to drop.

She nodded, drawing Flow to her, changing its form to that of a sword, and severing the drake’s head with a single, quick slash.

She then moved the head away from the body, preventing the weakening tendrils of power from being able to draw it back.

That sealed the monster’s fate utterly, and it was dead less than a minute later. Its head and body went into Kit a moment after that. With the other three still quite a ways away, Tala patted her pouch. “Eat up, buddy. Thank you for all that you’ve been doing for me.”

The pouch did not respond.

With that done, Tala returned to the other three, and together, they turned towards the nearby city and set off.

It was time to secure permission for the mission that would allow her to return home.

Finally.

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