AN: No, you are not hallucinating, this is a MONDAY update. I put a challenge out to the people on the discord that if we could reach two different milestones, that I would release this chapter early, and I am a man of my word. Make sure to thank those little goobers in the comments.
If you wanna come by and vibe, maybe even hear me read you a book, or be a part of the next time I decide to offer a chapter early, just slide in the server.
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28 years after the death of Himmel the Hero, The village of Abzug, located in the northern lands
In the lulls of combat, one should always be willing to ready themselves. The one who was not ready would not live. Senken cupped his left hands together, making a small, shadowed space, and pulled from within it his spear.
Holding it upright, he witnessed as the burning house was snuffed, wind blowing from the inside in such a violent gust that what was left of the thatch roof blew off. His fire arrow had fully collapsed the canopy upon which it had been sat. The newest ash billowed out with the mana infused wind, acting almost like a fog, and letting him see the trio of survivors.
The one who had cast the spell was also the one whose mana was wavering, evident by the fact that a fair bit of his body was bare and red with burns, including his head. His staff, which looked almost like a shepherd's staff that had the hook closed, was burnt black and gray. Senken could see the man's fingers had fused together, damning him to hold that staff forever.
The two other mages were women, one short and one tall. The tall one would only come to his chin, her face decorated with thin painted lines that crawled from her lips up to her nostrils and down to under her chin. Her hair whipped behind her, a coppery orange, caught in the magic wind. Her staff was a length of Iron that split and twisted near the tip, before coming back together into one piece.
The short mage had her black hair tied up into a tight bob, almost laminated in these lime green beads that made it look like a very stupid looking hat. Her staff was almost as tall as her, wooden with the tip a metal structure like that of a three toed claw, mid grasp, the palm of it set with an amethyst.
In this calm after the first attack of the battle, Senken studied them as they studied him. The man was irate, probably in shock from the burns he sustained. He didn't see the two mages he had killed, but a fair bit of the home had collapsed, perhaps they were under there. What he was more curious about was how two of them were perfectly fine.
He could think of three likely answers.
The first was that it was a ruse, an illusion of some sort to hide the fact they had also just gotten lucky within the confines of his attack. It wouldn't be worth doing, however, any bit of mana was better used dealing with a threat than trying to make them think they did nothing.
The second was that one or both of the women were versed in the magic of the goddess as well as regular magic. To be able to heal themselves so quickly would put them in a tier of priest he had never seen before, but their clothing would have still been torched. Their ally was still wounded as well, who even if they weren't friends, wouldn't make sense not to heal. Three fully able mages were better than two and a cripple.
Which led to the third answer. They had a spell to protect them. The man had not been as quick to cast it as them, and that was why he was injured and the other two were otherwise fine.
The nature of a defensive spell that could survive the heat of his furnace would make it a fundamental spell, something he could understand not knowing, as he was not classically taught magic. It either worked off of the concept of damage, likely something resembling "A spell to avoid being burned", or it acted more like a physical barrier, redirecting mana outwards like a shield would with a sword blow.
For it to be the latter option, the spell would have to be rather complex to be so readily effective against Furnace — likely requiring a great deal of mana.
Senken inverted the push generated by his flight magic, plummeting to the ground far faster than one could if they just fell. As he did, he gestured with his spear, three magic circles forming in his wake, the white blasts of Zoltraak streaking through the air towards the mages. A test of their defences.
Each one of them performed the same spell, a wordless gesture that made several small hexagonal windows spring into existence and interrupt the trajectory of his spells.
A physical plate it is, then. His intuition had proven right.
Now to figure out how sturdy they were.
His descent was nearing the ground, so he created a wide air bubble beneath him and leapt off of it, changing his downward force into linear movement. Dust kicked up behind him with speed as he busted through the still smoking remnants of the house, homing in on the weakened mage. Even at the pace Senken was moving, the mage was preparing a spell, mana drawing the wind towards the tip of his staff, like a handheld hurricane.
This spell was abandoned for defense again, that same spell forming between them, the hexagonal windows rippling out from one another.
First test; could he cleave the spell itself?
His fingers brushed the surface of the spell, and Schrein found its faults immediately, tracing along where the hexagons joined, cutting it apart. The burnt mage stumbled back as his instinctual defense failed. Senken followed through, planting his feet and having his spear rip through the mage's chest and out the back, lifting him bodily off the ground, piercing his heart.
Second test; could he dismantle the spell?
Senken pivoted, swinging his spear in a wide arc to send the dying mage off the end of his spear along with a dismantle towards the other mages.
The slash passed through the burnt one, cutting him in half at the waist, hurtling towards the taller of the two mages before it crashed with a shudder into the shorter's defensive magic.
'A crack…'
"Three of us in under a minute," she breathed. "Terrifying."
Both mages lifted into the air, activating their own flight magic. Senken presumed they would try to run, or at least split up to try and split his attention. Instead, they floated near each other, and Senken understood what their plan was.
They saw he could break through their defensive magic when he got in close but couldn't do so at range. One of them was going to be on defense, ready to react when he attacked, while the other would keep him away from them so he couldn't cleave through it.
Theirs was a defensible plan.
However, he was not a defensible opponent.
Senken flashed them a small smile as he gripped his spear in a pair of hands, holding it at the ready, legs bending and feet digging into the warm ash beneath them.
One thing he noticed in all his fights with demons was their immediate hesitancy once he let his mana run wild.
Just as he was about to let his mana flow out, in his widened periphery, he saw the slavers moving in. Some, swords drawn, rushing to their deaths, others setting up crossbows to take potshots.
Senken didn't mind the audience. They weren't going to see the end of the day anyway.
'Well then," He drawled, mana thinning as it expanded from him. "Let me show you how terrifying I can be."
His mana swept like a fell wind through the town. The fires of his furnace dimmed and were snuffed in its wake, as it ghosted over the mages. Then the Brigands. Then the slaves. It grew past every building in the village of Abzug and all of its fields, stopping beyond whatever could be called its border.
Both mages had looks of shock on their faces, eyes wide and jaws slack. Senken closed the distance, spear reared to jab into the taller mages chest.
Yet, she reacted. Senken had misjudged just how long the shock of being confronted with the full extent of his mana would last for a human mage. As his spear pierced the air where her chest had been, her body broke apart, a flurry of flower petals that followed the path of his strike but did nothing else.
The smaller mage stared at him, still very much in shock at the quantity of mana on display. Senken could see the realization spring to her face as he changed position, aiming a follow up attack on her.
Her mana crashed out of her in the same moment, and she flew, rushing to the brigands that Senken had seen approaching. He pursued.
She flew close to the ground, dust kicking up behind her. The brigands were barely ready when she passed. Looking back, she saw the four armed mage fly past the handful of men.
The brigands were collapsing, like overworked farmhands, their bodies splitting into chunks of meat in a gestureless barrage of unseen slashes.
A fresh spike of terror worked through her heart as she continued to flee, weaving between various buildings to break line of sight with the monster that had come knocking only a few minutes ago.
Senken flew behind the shorter mage as she tried to make distance from him. He had the means to close the distance, but if she was strong enough to avoid dying outright, then she was strong enough to endure this punishment.
Her tactic changed, strafing towards another ill-prepared group of brigands, before pointing her staff back towards him and firing a zoltraak. Senken ducked beneath it, his chest brushing the ground. The small mage was leading him from group to group of brigands, each one slightly more ready for his arrival, with various spells fired upon him from her fleeing form.
Yet, the spells never hit, the brigands never amounted to any effort, and Senken never fell back from his position. He could see her mana fluctuating more severely, spell after spell failing, her despair growing.
When she next looked back at him, she was crying, teeth bared as her lips were pulled back, crumpled. The noose was closing. She knew that.
Which meant the tall mage had hidden long enough. Senken's perception dragged his gaze up. Above the village, floating, she was no longer simply idle, watching. Her staff leveled, and yellow-gold orbs began firing out at odd trajectories, almost as fast as zoltraak.
Senken's movement was almost fluid through the air, using bubbles of compressed air to quickly change direction, out of the way of the two mages' magical bombardments, his senses overcome with the light of magic, the scent of blood and bare earth. The choice to extend their punishments had quickly formed into something simply too bothersome to continue.
Senken's magic surged, and he whipped to the side, flying out of view of the smaller mage.
She called out, screaming.
"PLATZRE!" She shrilled, not daring to slow down. "HELP! THAT THING IS PLANNING SOM-"
Senken's plan had been simple. To get in front of her. So focused was she on running that she had too much momentum, inertia working against her as Senken seemed to sneak from the shade of a home, spear sliding into her gut. Her scream was silenced as a hand caught her face.
The entirety of her skull was subdivided, split into cubes within cubes, diced into gore and viscera that popped with such force that the beads in her hair fired out like broken glass, bouncing across the ground.
Lowering the tip of the spear to let her headless body slump off of it, Senken turned his attention to Platzre, who still was suspended in the air, alongside with her spells.
What Senken presumed to be her default means of ranged attack, those yellow-gold orbs, had a gimmick to them. They had not dispelled after firing, as Zoltraak would have.
Spread across the sky, dozens of these floating balls, each as big as his torso, floated, mana keeping them held aloft.
"Your mana is a monstrous thing," Platzre spoke across the air. "I don't think I could see myself beating you handily."
Senken could see her lips cock into a smile, coy and small.
"But I can, if I use this spell."
She adjusts the grip on her staff, leveling it towards him.
"Lets have a contest of firepower~," She drawled, and Senken could almost feel his own lips speaking those words, towards an ashen-skin cyclops amidst the smoldering ruins of a city bigger than any other he had been in.
Lifting his spear, the tip of it bloomed with light as a wisp of flame flowed out of it. His furnace was still open. He did not need to be told to arm himself.
A moment of calm followed. The calls of the non-mages dimmed, the sun's light became static. Even the wind stilled for them.
"[Hözellogra]"
"[Furnace]"
Open.
As Platzre cast her spell, and the various balls of mana converged onto Senken, his second flame arrow formed, evaporating the blood on his spear before launching at her.
Senken's large frame was consumed in the light of the projectiles as they detonated, blasting hot wind through the town as a crater was formed. Hotter air flowed above the town, however, as his fire arrow pierced her abdomen, immolating her.
She screamed to the sky, losing concentration on the spell for flight as she fell. Already, she searched her mind, frantic for the spell to fix this. She pulled her staff close, the folk magic activating to snuff the fires around her, just before she lost her breath as she hit the thatch roof of a home and bounced off of it to the hard packed dirt below, into the shadow of that home.
Her skin hurt, every nerve signaling damage as she laid there. She was alive, but barely. Likely in shock. She needed to calm down enough to remember the prayers of the goddess so she could try and mitigate the long term damage.
She almost thought she was hallucinating as the shade around her darkened, getting richer and richer until it was like fresh ink. Only when she felt herself slipping into it did she panic, unable to muster the strength to save herself.
From out of the shadow, rising as if on a platform, was that monster. The shadows dripped from him like water that held no moisture, and he looked at her as she sank further into it, falling and slipping as if on a slope, the view of him staring down at her like a window into the outside world, the only way out of this abyss.
Then there was only indifferent darkness, and the encroaching chill of death.