Felarya's Nightmare

Chapter 16 - The Sorceress Supreme

            The naga then opens its huge mouth and hits its face with everything on the ground trying to devour Richard and the child but in a reflex of instinct, he jumps with the child in his arms before her attack and by the force of the naga is thrown about 39 feet away. Falling backwards with everything on the ground while the child was in his arms, very scared but safe, Richard feels a huge pain in his back from the impact, but he gets up and runs and then, the naga recovers from its own blow, seeing who just swallowed a lot of debris and stones, she gets furious and sees the two running away and she smiles screaming: "NO USE RUNNING, I WILL DEVOUR EACH ONE OF YOU!! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!" so Richard holds the child tighter and as they ran.

            The naga took its nails to the ground and propelled itself with its hands wedged, achieving a jump of 16 feet high and covering all the distance in seconds that Richard ran and landed right in front of them. and she said, "Didn't I say...?" and more than quickly she manages to grab Richard and the child at the same time and when she hangs them both over her mouth she completes: "Try not to struggle too much on the way down", she opens her hand and the two begin to fall to certain death, and in midair the child clings to Richard with all his strength and he hugs her back and then he pushes her away, only he falls into the naga's mouth closing it.

            The child lands by luck on some sofas that were nearby and the naga realizing that she didn't devour them both, went with his huge hand towards the little girl.

            And then the terrified child screams: "MOMA!! HELP M-" and before she can finish the cry for help, a huge fist of fire appears, hitting the naga's face at surreal speed, breaking some teeth and a little bit of the bottom jaw and throwing it more than 328 feet away.

            On impact, she ends up vomiting Richard, who appears to be unconscious and then the surprised naga says: "WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT? I'M GOING TO KILL-" and the same closed fist of fire hits the naga's belly, causing her to vomit blood in absurd amounts and making her desperate, she makes an extreme decision, to go all out on whoever is hitting her and when she sees who it is, her soul feels a fear she has never felt in her life, her scales tremble with sheer terror, her eyes are filled with despair but even so, she presses forward with a single thought in her mind: "You shouldn't have left me alive that day" and from the face of the person who attacked the naga a tear flowed and in a flash of light, the naga while in the air is split in half, falling to the ground along with its innards, making a huge pool of blood on the ground.

            Richard wakes up a little dizzy and gets up looking for the girl to see if she is ok, starts looking everywhere, screaming: "GIRL, WHERE ARE YOU?? FOLLOW MY VOICE!!" but he has no answer and starts looking around in the debris and then he hears a female voice saying: "Thank you for protecting my daughter, the refugees are safe and your group is in the innermost part of the city, you will find them .... We'll meet again." Richard finds that voice strange, because it was very similar, if not, like that sorceress who had taken care of him from the attack of the inexperienced naga.

            He tries to look around to find the woman, but he doesn't find anything and then a kind of bracelet falls from the sky right in front of him, getting scared by it and being careful, he touches the bracelet and notices that it had dragon details, naga, harpies and other creatures that would be mythological, appearing to be in a war setting and had what appeared to be a jewel in the middle of the bracelet, as if the creatures embedded in the bracelet were fighting over the jewel.

            Richard took the bracelet in his hand and gave the gold piece a better inspection, saw that there was nothing new, he threw it slightly up to just play with it and then the bracelet opens and falls perfectly on his right arm and when he closes his arm, it starts to burn Richard's arm intensely and he screams in pain trying to take the bracelet off, but it doesn't come off at all and it wasn't hot, lasting 30 seconds of third degree burns, the pains stopped and his skin healed almost instantly, removing all the pain from his arm.

            Looking again at the bracelet attached to his right arm and the jewel that was just a red jewel, starts to glow with an intense fire color, making a kind of vortex in its center, like a hurricane of fire and then the whirlwind of the hurricane on the jewel stops and stays that way.

            After this bizarre situation happens, he manages to reunite with the refugees he rescued and asks if they are all okay, with some still injured but alive. Richard notices that Saknesh approaches and waves at him and Saknesh directly asks Richard: "Thanks for everything, but where did you get that bracelet? This is not normal, it has some kind of powerful magic in there"

            After inspecting the bracelet a little better, he saw that it was glued to Richard's arm and continued: "Well, it looks like this bracelet will stay with you.... for an indefinite time" and Richard without understanding anything, asks: " Okay, but how do you know all this? Have you ever seen anything like this?" and Saknesh replies, "Sorry, you're new to town, or what's left of it.... This is the Engineering and Magic district, where we experiment and mix machines with magic, making some activity several times more efficient and this bracelet it was one of those, i already made one of these myself for a powerful sorceress of the realm, it was difficult to manipulate the object because the magic was very volatile, so any wrong hit i could blow up almost the whole district but of course i was paid well for it and this bracelet.... it doesn't seem to have the same function as I did.

            What I did was to channel the power of the one who wears it, regardless of the type of power and/or magic, yours seems to be something to contain , like a lock, better speaking, a filter. What I don't understand is these dragons, harpies and a bunch of stuff carved into the bracelet.... that's weird, maybe it means something, but I don't know what it is."

Richard thanks Saknesh for the information and asks: Where are you going now?

- Saknesh: Let's go to the lowest part of the city, passing through that wall, we will find the survivors of the attack that was where everyone was evacuated.

- Richard: Alright, I think my group should be there too.

            And then they go towards the gate of the inner part of the wall and Richard looks back, seeing the whole city destroyed, fire and flames everywhere, houses, churches and markets falling from the heat of destruction and he still thinks: who was that voice...? Was it the Enchantress's? Does she have a daughter?"

But those were thoughts he should save for later, first he would have to find his group again.