Strike at the Core

GRACE UNDER FIRE

Tapping her feet on the ground, the letter mage was skittish as she peered around the entrance. Here she was again, at the front door of one of the biggest monster pits in the world, and definitely the largest in Fiore. While she had come last time to simply kill a bunch of monsters, she most certainly hadn’t expected another decree to be put out like that. Having simply assumed that last time was a mere emergency, a situation in which they would grab a bunch of mages and kill a bunch of monsters, the newest announcement was alarming. “So…it’s apparently an organized movement.” Frowning, Sorano cast her memories back to the job last time. She had been accompanied by three other mages, two of whom she hadn’t really been familiar with. The redheaded guy… She didn’t even know who he was, he had appeared out of seemingly nowhere and just smashed monsters until he himself was very nearly dead. The other strange mage, Charlotte… She had been a healer type who had definitely been a huge help, especially to that foolish redhead. And of course, Mura was there. Mura was always there, to the point where it was almost irritating. Almost. But not quite.

Turning and raising an eyebrow at Hoshi, the two would enter, immediately finding themselves surrounded by the growls and grunts of various skirmishes nearby. Well, it was only to be expected when all the mages of Fiore were called into one area of the country. Although the percentage of mages still wasn’t very high, the number of magic users was still very impressive compared with most other countries. This should be interesting – she might even meet some unusual mages, or mages she could end up in a sort of alliance with. Remembering Mashyuu, the earth mage with whom she had partnered with for quite a while, she was looking forward to finding someone who might be able to work that well. It wasn’t that Mura, or any of the members in her guild were necessarily bad mages, it was just that she knew them so well that fighting and working with them became repetitive, a journey in which not much was learned from either side. Or perhaps that was just the emotionless side of her hoping for a bit of change in her life? Blinking in surprise at the uncharacteristic thought, the letter mage would brush it off, letting her feet fall down gently on the ground, barely making a sound as she fox-walked through the forest.

As she looked around, ready to begin investigating the situation, a sudden flash of aura would catch her eye. Blinking in surprise, she would move towards the clearing, feeling out the contours of this new person’s magic power and emotional state. Another mage? Finally stepping inside, she stopped in surprise. This was…pleasant. And while such a statement shouldn’t be surprising in most situations, this was the Fat Monsterland, where things were most certainly not supposed to be pleasant. Looking towards the source of the natural energy, she would notice a white-haired woman, reaching down to pluck a flower from the ground. All around her, a natural energy would radiate, forming a field of magic where plants would slowly reach their limbs out from the ground, raising their petals up to greet the cloudy sky. Sensing her companion tensing beside her, Sorano could see that Hoshi could feel the pull of the natural magic, being someone closely intertwined with the natural world as well.

Awkwardly approaching, Sorano would offer a small wave. “Mm, hello there, are you here to perform the job as well?” While it was almost guaranteed that she was here for the task – most mages who normally came here simply had the purpose of training or showing off their ability to kill tons of monsters to friends, to impress someone they had their eyes on – the letter mage still considered it polite to ask. Additionally, while Sorano was more than capable of performing a job by herself, this was something where the magic council had specified was almost impossible to perform by oneself. She would need to work with others, and as she hadn’t arranged anything with anyone (though knowing her history, Mura was probably gonna pop up out of nowhere sometime soon), this could be her chance to find someone to work with.

GRACE UNDER FIRE

Before the white-haired female could speak however, Sorano shipped her head around at the sudden presence of figures that weren’t there before. Blinking away the surprise, she let out a small puff of air through her lips at the familiar sight. An unconscious Mura was collapsed on the ground besides her, looking nothing like the ace he was supposed to be, with Kyuken looking down with a guilty expression on his face. Raising an eyebrow at the samurai spirit, Sorano reached down, awkwardly adjusting her sweater as she bent down, finger tracing the air next to Mura even as she inspected their surroundings again, realizing something was off. The girl from earlier had seemingly vanished into midair, something that caused Sorano to pause in her spell-writing, almost losing the spell thread completely before she quickly recovered her attention, turning to quickly trace out the rest of the letters before releasing the particularly effective smelling salt gas into the air around Mura’s face. “Hey, Mura, you okay?” Hoshi hovered above him, looking only faintly worried as she tried to hide a smile behind her paw, tail twitching this way and that. “What did you do to him?” she asked Kyuken, grinning in an amused manner at his sheepish expression.

“Hey, does anyone know where that girl from earlier went?” Frowning, Sorano looking around the clearing, realizing that the greenery that had begun to sprout around Leila when they walked in had disappeared already. What the heck…? She couldn’t have just imagined her, right? Or could it be that she was one of the feared monsters they were supposed to take down? Seeing Hoshi shrug at her, she sighed. First the emotional instability, and now she was seeing things? Maybe she should try to get more sleep these days…ugh… Shaking away the fog in her mind, Sorano looked towards the woods, hearing the occasional snarl or shout and glimpsing the occasional burst of energy from a spell. Good lord, these woods were chock-full of beasts and mages. This would be absolutely terrific. Turning to see if Mura was awake yet, she began talking quickly. “Okay, so we’re supposed to be trying to take down this base of operations they council’s discovered in here, apparently armed to the teeth with monsters. It’s not going to be fun or easy, but we got through this last time, and it’s not our job to take down the whole operation. Like last time, it’ll just be our job to kill as many monsters as we can." Breathing in and out slowly, Sorano calmed down her breathing, inhaling the heavy air of the Fat Monsterland forest.

“You ready to go?” Looking back at Mura, Kyuken, and Hoshi, she faced the exit of the clearing, looking around one last time in case that strange, white-haired girl appeared again. Hoshi looked disappointed that she had disappeared, being a user of nature magic herself. She certainly hoped Leila hadn’t been some monster-supporting mage, because that ruined her chances of working peacefully with her in the future again. Instead, Hoshi would just fly slowly behind Sorano into the woods, senses on full alert, her senses plunging through the nature around her, reveling in the connection of nature she forged. Cringing away from one particular tree, she flew back to her position right behind Sorano, muttering something about disgusting monster-made scent markings. Sorano nodded, looking off in that direction to see if she could sense a monstrous aura. While she had no idea how much territory the monsters “owned”, a scent marker might tell them if there was a monster nearby, particularly if it was freshly renewed. Sniffing around the area again, Hoshi came back again, nodding. Fresh. Pausing in her steps, Sorano cast her eyes around. “There’s a fresh scent marker here, which may mean there’s enemies close by."

GRACE UNDER FIRE

As they walked, Sorano glanced over at Mura and raised an eyebrow at the mess of emotions in his head, seeming to stem from the emotions that Kyuken and Zirconis were also experiencing at the moment. Wondering what it would be like to have to live with voices squabbling in her head, she shook her head slightly. (Of course, there’s no way she would know about the thousands of voices and personalities clashing for attention in the back of her mind, yeah?) But just as she was about to turn to keep on moving, a sudden cacophony of noises exploded out from the bushes, causing her to instinctively raise her arms in move to protect her face. Mura was already pulsing with green light, probably having used the spirit of Zirconis in the situation. However, that was not the biggest issue at the moment. Amidst the formerly merely tense forest, the air strung with negative energies, something had broken the tension, the monsters bursting from the bushes. One was encompassed in smoke when first appearing, while the other one appeared in a burst of fire. Strangely enough, it wasn’t burning the woods around them. Interesting. Mura would leap up, casting a spell to temporarily push away the smoke, revealing a strangely humanoid dragon. What the heck?

Frowning, Sorano would have liked to look at it for a while longer, but more pressing matters occupied her own attention. The fiery being moved at her, seeming to hold no particular shape as it moved, changing its shape with every step it moved closer to them. Immediately, Sorano would write out a spell, not even thinking twice anymore. It never really hurt to start with the obvious when dealing with elemental constructs like this. Unlike a mage or even a sentient monster at other times, a construct would do nothing but mindlessly charge at you without a thought for the consequences. It was easier to fight them, seeing as you could use the most obvious of solutions and they had no way of defending against it. That didn’t mean it was all a piece of cake though, seeing as this construct seemed to be fairly sturdy. Whoever or whatever had created it must have either had a whole ton of excess energy, or they were extremely good at their craft. Starting out by sending out a wave of random flammable debris towards the rolling mass, she guided it away from Mura and the spirits, not wanting them to get caught up in her planned spell. As soon as they were out of range, she quickly mapped out the letters, the fine mist hanging in the air before a subtle roll of thunder could be heard.

In a sudden burst of life, the letters fed off of Sorano’s ethernanos, pulling up into a hurricane-like storm that captured the fireball, whisking it off into the mess of it all. To her surprise, however, the fire construct suddenly began to move, guiding the storm towards the other mage. Blinking in shock, the letter mage quickly reached into her bag, activating the amulet she’d brought with her, remembering the abilities that Lexa had told her it held. Breathing a sigh of relief, she watched as the storm brushed at the mages but had no effect, seeming to grow soft and wispy as it approached them – oh.

Groaning at the results, Sorano hurriedly summoned a rush of wind, blowing the fireball back from her allies. The amulet had started breaking down the spell when it got close to Mura – if the construct had made that decision in a sentient state, that meant that she had woefully underestimated her opponent. However, it seemed that now at last the storm was beginning to wear down the fireball, picking up debris from nearby and lashing it against the beast. Satisfied at her results at last, Sorano then moved over to see what Mura and the spirits were doing. Just as she cast her glance over that way, yet another one of those weird dragon creatures appeared, crashing after its twin, who was now spewing smoke while in battle with the ace. Looking up towards Hoshi, she watched as the exceed instantly moved towards the monster, zipping around the half-dragon at a speed that showed her improvement in her abilities already. After attracting the creature’s attention, the exceed zipped off towards Sorano, looking freaked out of her mind. It seemed Hoshi still wasn’t the confident person she was trying to become, but a little fear was always healthy.

She threw the exceed a brief thumbs-up before facing the giant, watching as a breeze randomly picks up around it, the wind picking off leaves and twigs from the ground and blowing it into a whirlwind around itself. A wind-based monster. She could take care of this. Glancing at Hoshi, she nodded in approval. The exceed quickly pulled into herself a breath of the cool, woodsy air around them, summoning the deity’s spirit inside her. Breathing out again, the energy that buzzed around her caused her to be able to form the large earthen wall that was suddenly erected, one that could resist the force of the beastly winds with Mother Earth’s fortitude. With the beast now somewhat trapped, Sorano could attack it more securely now, writing out another spell, one distinctly stronger than the former one. Wrapping a stream of energy around her body, she extracted a whip of the silvery matter, pulling back her arm and slinging it solidly against the giant. A howl came free from its mouth as the searing energy hit hits scales, and it fought back, slashing a large claw at her. Dodging out of the way just in time, she received only a slight scratch and a small bit of shock before returning to battle, extracting another whip to lash at the creature, this time slapping it across its eyes.

GRACE UNDER FIRE

Hearing crashing and growling noises coming from Mura’s side of things, Sorano would assume that he was doing well, throwing a glance his way as the shaman mage slammed one of the dragonoid creatures into a giant crater with the strength of his attacks. Mura would be fine, she was sure of it. However, just as he quickly reacted to take on another one of the dragonoid giants, she noticed four figures in the back, lurking around in a pretty suspicious manner. Raising an eyebrow, the letter mage would quickly summon a sheet of mirror before her face, tracing out its edges before sending it right in front of the figures’ eyes. Immediately, two of them jumped back, clutching wildly at their fellow companions, before the other two rushed to cover their eyes, a sheet of magic spreading up around them. Watching as the energy from their magic swirl about and settle into place, Sorano became sure that they were mages. Nodding at Hoshi, she leapt up, allowing Hoshi to fly her over to the figures that stood there, watching as their faces would turn up at her presence. Yelling something inaudible out to her companions, one of the mages, obviously female, threw a slew of water at her, the powerful bullet-like spell quickly counteracted with a shock of lightning from Sorano. The electricity flashed down the spell, returning to its owner and giving her a pretty nasty shock, knocking the mage unconscious. The force of the spell was one of Sorano’s strongest, so it wasn’t too much surprise.

Reacting to the fall of one of their mages, the other three grouped together, one of them throwing an energy shield up around the others. Shoot. Frowning, Sorano pulled another whip out of the stream surrounding her body, cracking it sharply in the direction of the shield. As the energy crackled in contact with the sphere of energy, Sorano extracted another rope, ignoring the thinning of the snake spiraled around her torso before shooting in right as the shield shattered, lashing the rope around one of the mages and shoving them into the explosion that occurred between the two colliding forces. With the remaining two, she took the last remaining rope from the stream and sent a large, powerful swipe of energy that had them sprawling into each other and the explosion. Quickly moving over, the letter mage would briefly check for consciousness, finding one of them still managing to push themselves up before she sank her finger pads into the vein on the side of his neck, causing him to emit a gurgling gasp of pain before passing out. Yep, she still remembered her pressure point techniques.

“Sorano, watch out!” Flailing around to face her back, Sorano was met by the snarling face of the skeleton of some giant, prehistoric reptile, Yelling in shock, she barely dodged a swipe to her face, instead getting a pretty nasty-looking gash in her side, causing the mage to stumble in her steps. “What the-“ Gaping almost comically at the colossal beast, she was shoved out of the way by Hoshi, who was frantically summoning her abilities as the letter mage scrambled to collect her wits about her. Struggling with the spell that had been pressed upon her by her deity, Hoshi quickly pressed her paws towards Sorano’s wound, cool light spreading from her paws as she pressed the healing powers into the mage, mending the wound. Normally Sorano would have let something like this slide, but with as serious a mark as it had been, she had to heal it somehow before continuing. Unfortunately, even with her newly energized state, there was more to come besides just a freaky prehistoric crocodile. Scowling heavily, the letter mage and exceed watched as several mages would appear as well, showing extraordinarily powerful magic levels. Flinching at the onslaught of magical powers, Sorano lifted her voice, summoning one of her more unique abilities. Talking to the mages, she began to paint an image of peace and happiness around them, a feeling of absolute calm and drowsiness, something that caused all of the mages, even the ultimately, shockingly powerful one to pause for a moment. However, she knew it was not something that would last for long, seeing their power levels.

So, as they were distracted by the radiating “word power”, the letter mage quickly set up a large dome around the two, preparing themselves for whatever came at them next. Almost instantaneously, a burst of magic and power came from both the powerful mage and the crocodile, sending the shield into shatters. Was the mage an SS-rank? What the actual heck? Hissing through her teeth, Sorano watched as the power slammed back into them, sending the crocodile stumbling head over heels. However, she could already feel her magical power dripping away. She’d used a lot of high ranking spells already, and wasn’t sure how much more she could take. Giving in to her body’s exhaustion, she let her body sink to the ground, manifesting her spiritual form in the figure of mixed white and black. The aural form was something that should be able to take the damage from the mages and the crocodile, though the aural warrior knew that she would regret it later, with sore limbs for days and bruises scattered over her body. But for now, she slammed a foot into the ground, sending tremors of energy scattering through the ground in a grand movement, causing the weaker mages to stumble awkwardly in wake of the sudden attack. Charging forward, she sent a bolt of the mixed energy into the crocodile’s skeletal mouth, causing it to reel backwards before she decapitated it with a series of well-placed slashes, shattering the spellbound bones. Turning then to the mages, she could see that Hoshi was dragging her body away. The exceed had already used up all her energy and ability to call upon her deity, and as such she could only retreat for now when faced with such tremendously powerful mages. The exceed knew she stood absolutely no chance against someone like that.

Sorano had to move even faster, even more sharply than usual now, using the spiritual form to her advantage, taking attacks that didn’t hurt now, but she knew would require treatment later. She had gravely underestimated this job, it seemed, and she finally defeated the two lower-ranked mages after several minutes of intense sparring. By now, she knew that the SS mage was someone who utilized flower magic, sending freakishly large vines and petals to assault her spiritual form. But even now, that mage was getting weaker as well, and she was able to handle the mage a little bit better. Noticing the crest on the mage’s sleeve, Sorano knew that this was one of the aces of the guild. No wonder it was so powerful… What guild was behind this, hmm? Trying to commit it to memory, she was distracted by another sudden, large attack. Infuriating. Sprinting around the back of the mage, she finally defeated this one with a well placed slap to the back of their head. Even the strongest of mages would fall with a good head blow if they were human, for which Sorano was now immensely thankful.

Even so, this was by no means the end. A powerful roar ripped the skies apart, and the letter mage could feel her body wilting in dismay at the figures that dropped from the sky. A terrifyingly large gryphon landed, and another mage, probably also SS ranked dropped down from the back of the mage. What the actual frick. She could practically feel Hoshi’s fearful eyes pressing into her aural back as she pulled herself up to face the newest enemy. Hopefully Mura could help her manage this one, because she barely had the energy required to properly face this one. Pulling up as much power as she could muster, the mage attacked the gryphon head-on, sending powerful sweeps and slashes of the energy, sparring as much as she possibly could with the gryphon. She sustained many injuries, something she could feel she would end up regretting so much over the next few days, but finally, at long last she managed to take down the beast. However, even as she did so, she could feel the energy leaving her body, the aural form dissipating as her consciousness was instantly transported back into her human body. Closing her eyes, she let out a shuddering sigh as she felt Hoshi’s arms behind her, lifting her up.

“Mura, I’m sorry… But it’s up to you now!”