L [o/i] ve is a journey

A Change Of Season | Centipede

The volley of flame arrows rained down on the giant antlion who had crawled up the wall.

What a monster! I don't remember them being that big! Nerivie thought while jumping back from an attack. The flood suddenly had swept a bunch of other desert living creatures into the valley, the kind that couldn't be persuaded with a calm demenor and kindness. Unlucky for the magician squat on this part of the wall, these were also the sturdy, giant kind.

If Nerivie thought before these were giants, then she would prefer to use the world ginourmous to describe the kind that kept crawling over each other to reach the top. Worse of all, they were quite sturdy, even if fire was their weakness. It felt like siege of all kinds of desert insect that were unable to fly.

„Tarantula!" somebody yelled and a cold shiver ran down her spine. Damn, she never overcame her arachnaphobia completly. She'd rather dealt with slimey things, like slugs than with eight-legged hairy desert visitors. She was quick to throw a fireball with her staff, without even saying the words in her head. She knew how the spells felt, the heat, the fire, the flow of mana. Nerivie knew it so well, to her, it felt like breathing.

A true master of the art of fire magic.

But, even a fire magician could only do so much against creatures wet by a flood falling from the sky, and the limitations of space making her unable to pull out her big guns.

„I don't remember these to be so resiliant and annoying!" she said, after the tarantula needed a third and fourth hit to finally be slashed by a guard. A gooey, disgusting desaster.

Then, the black clawed millipede appeared on the wall.

It looked as if it had been carried away by the current like driftwood, the giant also seemed to have a weird purpose of attacking this side of the wall. It was rearing up, into the sky, the disgusting sound of thousand pairs of insect feet scuffling and scraping on the stone, between the sound of crashing rain drops, and seemed to aim for something.

Nerivie observed the centipede's behavior with a bad feeling in her gut, and it took her a long time, almost too long, before she saw WHERE the creature was aiming: the group of magicians who wanted to throw the monster back into the roaring water of the massive desert flood.

It was not just a rearing up, but rather the preparation for an all-crushing blow with its hard-armored mandibles. Nerivie didn't think for a second, but fired a well-aimed and perfectly calculated fireball directly at the creature's head.

"You there! Get away from there! It's not like the others!" she called to the three, and they looked at her in confusion before hastily retreating.

The monster wanted to follow its prey, but a second, stronger ball of flame exploded in its line of sight, pushing the insect, which was about six meters tall, backwards. Nerivie watched as some of its legs, which had been caught in the cracks and stone of the city wall, tore from their footing.

With fewer feet, the animal would have fallen back into the water despite its magic resistance and would have been swallowed up by the gurgling current as it fell backwards.

„I am your opponent, you ugly infitine legged worm!" she yelled, throwing another one from the tip of her staff. Just like Lunaris', it was made with the intention to allow her to use magic more efficient, and with fewer ressources.

The staff was made from a dead, 3000 year old ash-oak, and the lava garnet it held had all kinds of colours of the sun in it. The inscriptions and embellishments on it, that were painted with thin hammered gold to make it really shine only told about the skill of the master craftsman who must have taken his life-long knowledge to create it.

And if that didn't made it a magnificient staff, it was also given the property to hide in it's owner's shadow, always ready to re-side there without being an additional burden to the luggage of the magician who used it, and to be called upon out of seemingly thin air if needed.

Truely, a magnificient staff by a magnificient person.

Nerivie never revealed how she got her hands of this ancient old treasure, but with the skill of the fox mask she wearing, crafted from a horn or maybe even tooth of a rare, unknown magical animal, painted in vibrant colours and made in a way, it will never leave her face without either her agreeing to it, or when there is a need for it, it was more than possible the person who made that stuff also made the mask.

The centipede didn't give anybody enough time to see the craftmanship of what must be a thousand year treasure, it only cared for one thing: prey, as much prey as possible. And nerivie was one annoying obsticle to overcome to it's filled stomach.

The thing tried to repeat what it did with the others, aiming for Nerivie, but she didn't even let it rear up completly, and let loose as much smaller fireballs into one spot she picked for causing the most pressure to it as possible.

And while that thing bend back much more than before and lost quite a lot of its footing, it also regained that quicker than before.

This thing learns quick. She thought and decided to go about it a different way. It was not wise to recklessing blast it, like she would do usually with monster that had a significant armour, or magic defense, or both (like that one had), but simply pushing it back into the floods would just create the risk of it re-appearing downstream to one of the other spots.

No.

This one, this huge thing, had to die here! There was no other way than this, as things stood. But no sword could just crack the armor, and her magic was absorbed to a large extent. Additionally, she was holding back a lot of her actual power, since she couldn't damage the wall in any way.

There were only two options: damage the creature's armor and deal fatal damage through the gap or gaps that were created, or get it out of range and just hit it with everything she had in one hit.

Both actions had their faults: just peeling a small pit off the armour seemed impossible, and while she might win against this thing easily, she could not guarantee for the safety of the wall.

„Damn! It keeping this thing from getting an actual hold on the wall everything I can do?" she cursed under her breath.

„What do you need?" one of the squat she saved before asked.

„Well, I can turn this into ash. But that would destroy the wall, too."

„That thing? With what?"

„I once killed a dragon that became mad due to old age, and was endangering a small kingdom. There is now a giant lake where the dragon once was. The crater is something." She said, caught in her thoughts.

The magician chuckled: „yeah, right! As if the dragon.eating ninetail would be a small girl! Anyway, let's pretent it's true, what you're trying to do?" she asked.

Nerivie let loose another volley, pressing the centipide away: „Shooting it up, far away, so we can definitly kill it. Midair, further away from here, it should be safe to deal with it. I can delay the full activation of the spell. But..." another series of shots, „It must be a high protection barrier around the centipede!"

„Why that thing?"

„ You can't protect the wall, but you can imprison it in a barrier, right?" Nerivie asked.

„True! Makes sense! I see what you are thinking off! That could work. Unfortunatly, I am earth affiliation, specilized on plants."

„Oh, that sounds fun!" Nerivie said, and the other magician proofed instantly her claim by protecting them and a few others with hard roots from the attack of the centipede. „I am Nerivie, by the way!"

„Kursiye!" The magician said and quickly shook Nerivie's hand, before dealing with the full attention of the Centipede, „We need additional hands, though!"

„Yeah, but I can't-"

„The barrier, that is my work!" Lunaris said in Viriyasci, and Nerivie turned around to see a confused Corsa and a determined Lunaris.

„Lunaris! You heard everything?" Nerivie asked and he nodded, not losing his grip around his staff. 

She was right: THAT thing had to go, for the sake of the city.