For minutes, the battle was a dance of light and shadow. Emi was a whirlwind of solar energy, knocking bandits down with concentrated blasts. Aria, her fears overcome, wove a web of darkness that immobilized and disarmed. They seemed to be gaining ground, catching their breath.
Until the magical world went dark.
It wasn't gradual. It was as if someone had cut the power. Aria's shadows dissolved into the air like smoke dissipated by the wind. Emi's luminous aura snuffed out with a dull snap, leaving her standing, bewildered and suddenly mortal, under the deadly light of the torches.
"What...?" Emi stared at her hands, empty of power.
The laughter made them turn. From the deepest shadow of the chamber, the leader emerged. He didn't seem as badly wounded as they thought. And in his arms, like a macabre trophy, he carried Serena's unconscious body. He'd dragged her from the rear during the confusion. A perverse smile stretched across his face.
"Did you really think your schoolgirl magic tricks would be enough?" he spat, throwing Serena's body at his feet with disdain. The impact made the woman moan weakly. "This isn't a fairy tale. It's a slaughter. And I'm the butcher."
Emi growled, instinctively advancing, but a guard blocked her path with a spear. Without her magic, she was just a strong girl, not a force of nature.
"You're scum!" Aria shouted, but her voice sounded hollow. Her shadows didn't respond. She felt a void where her power once flowed.
The bandits, recovering, began to close the circle. The numerical advantage was now overwhelming. Alex pushed Aria behind him, placing his own body as a flimsy shield between them and the weapons. His mind, that engine that always analyzed in silence, worked at full speed.
How?
His gaze fixed on the leader. Not on his smile or his staff, but on his hand. On the dark metal ring he wore on his index finger. It wasn't decorative. It glowed with a faint, pulsing light, a sickly green that seemed to throb in unison with... with the magical silence surrounding them.
"It's an inhibitor," Alex muttered, the piece clicking into place. "It doesn't nullify the mage. It nullifies the magical field around them. Pure magic."
"What?" Aria whispered, clutching his sleeve.
"His ring. It reflects your energies, absorbs them, and through the staff, cuts them off at the source. That's why your 'pure' magic—elemental light, shadow—goes out." Alex paused, a bold idea taking shape. "But my ability... isn't pure magic. I don't launch energy. I optimize what already exists."
"What are you proposing?" Emi's voice came low, serious. She trusted that tone of Alex's. It was the tone he had before doing something incredibly stupid that miraculously worked.
Alex turned, keeping his back to Aria and Emi, forming a defensive triangle.
"Aria," he whispered, not taking his eyes off the leader. "You have to trust me. Blindly."
"Tell me."
"The staff inhibits emitted magic. But physical strength, speed, precision... that's not magic. It's potential. Potential that I can maximize." He looked at Emi. "I'm going to channel everything I have, not to give you magic, but to push your body to the absolute limit of what it can do without magic. You'll be a projectile."
"And then?" Emi asked, her golden eyes already gleaming with the same determination.
"You create a monumental distraction. You become a whirlwind impossible to follow. Meanwhile..." his gaze returned to Aria, "...you hide. And when he's disoriented, when his attention is 100% on the phenomenon that is Emi... you cut off his hand."
Aria swallowed. The plan was insane. But the alternative was defeat, or worse.
"The dagger... I'll barely have any magic to infuse it."
"You don't need it," Alex said, a hard glint in his eyes. "You just need an edge, precision... and the element of surprise. I'll make sure he doesn't see you coming."
There was no more time for debate. The leader, impatient, gave the order.
"Finish them!"
Alex acted. He closed his eyes. For the first time, he didn't direct his power outward, to reinforce another. He concentrated it inward, into his own nervous system, into his connection with Emi. He felt as if needles were being driven into his brain, but he ignored the pain. He visualized a bridge of pure optimization between his will and the latent potential in every fiber of Emi's body.
"Now, Emi!" he shouted, and when he opened his eyes, a thin thread of blood trickled from his nose.
Emi didn't feel magic. She felt something more primal. As if all the limitations of her body had been deactivated. The world slowed down around her. She charged.
It was havoc. She moved so fast she left afterimages in the air. The bandits who tried to intercept her only saw a blur that knocked them down with perfectly placed blows, dislocating shoulders and wrenching weapons from their hands. She wasn't using magical energy, just pure, perfected kinetics. She spun, jumped, slipped through. She became directed chaos, a storm of fists and feet that shattered the enemy formation in seconds.
The leader stepped back, his eyes widening with genuine surprise. This wasn't magic. This was... impossible. His ring glowed, but it had nothing to nullify. He could only watch, impotent, as his personal guard was dismantled by a human whirlwind.
"Focus on her! The other one!!" he roared, pointing at Emi.
It was his mistake. By pointing, by shouting, he fixed his attention. He didn't see the real, non-magical shadow that had slipped from behind a broken pillar, using Emi's spectacle as a screen. He didn't see Aria, who had stopped being a princess or a summoner, to become just a hunter.
When Emi made a particularly wide spin that drew all eyes, Aria shot out. There was no magic in her leap. Just muscles tensed by fear and adrenaline, powered by Alex's desperate will.
Her dagger, with no magical glow, was just sharpened steel. The arc was perfect. The target, clear.
SCHLICK!
The sound was clean and wet. The leader's hand, with the ring Alex had noticed that was actually the source of that staff's magic still glowing grotesquely, separated from his wrist. It fell to the stone floor with a dull thud.
For a second, there was silence. Then, the man let out an animal scream of agony and surprise, clutching the stump that gushed blood.
And then, as if a dam had burst, the magic returned.
A wave of raw force erupted from the severed ring before its light went out forever. The wave swept through the cave, and with it, the natural flow of energy returned.
Emi's aura exploded around her, this time not blue, but blinding white, charged with all the pent-up fury and frustration. Without needing a spell, the pressure emanating from her made the remaining bandits fall to their knees, crushed by a weight that wasn't physical.
Aria, panting, stepped back, the blood-stained dagger trembling in her hand.
Alex slumped against the wall, exhausted to the marrow, a brutal migraine hammering his temples, but a weak smile on his lips.
"Good work... team," he managed to say between gasps.
Emi lowered her arms, the light fading. The clearing was pacified. The bandits lay defeated, unconscious or surrendered. The leader writhed on the ground, moaning.