Essentia Animus

63-Stone Fragment

Safely back with the hunters, the three girls took a moment of respite to plan their next move. Rushing ahead would only leave them with more problems and uncertainties, something they already had plenty of to worry upon.

Sryine was relieved to know that supposedly the excess flame just faded with time, but she was at this point the only one who still had the glowing thing going on. Her injury had been healed by the first night of their journey back at least, so there was no exposed flame, but the glow remaining present meant that an injury could flame up at any time. Vwyx and Riyxia had even taken turns with the shield, no longer working with the special weaponry Vwyx had made for them, both of their bodies having gone back completely to normal too. Sryine was only glowing from her elbow down, so it shouldn't be more than a few extra days, but it left her the center of a large number of questions from other people. One of the hunters had asked Ayzherie if she was safe to be around, within her own earshot.. possibly the most painful question to hear. They had even discovered that the excess flame prevented them from dropping their augmentation, meaning she was the only one right now to be incapable of returning to a normal ability. Her overnight giggling had even done wonders for waking up the others overnight, so even her first night home was going to be spent without her bed. The worst part was the feeling that she could very easily get the rest out of her system in a quick instant.. at the price of some pretty excessive destruction. It was that temptation that qualified just how dangerous she could be at that point.

It was such concerns that continued to trouble Riyxia in turn. Looking forward, there was going to be a very possible danger from the flame ahead, a danger that only the three of them had the capacity to fully address. However, this capacity had a cost, they could very likely end up feasting on the flame again in the process, a problem which would only get worse. Their previous battles had occured in the dead sands by the fire mountain, something that hadn't proven to hold much consequence had the flame been left to rage around them. However, if their next battleground was the woodlands, leaving even a trace of flame would start an endless inferno. To avoid leaving such traces, they would have to take up such flames within themselves. Even in that last battle, they had left almost all of the flames to just burn.. and yet things had gone fairly far. Riyxia was the only one who avoided spilling much fire, her blades having taken most of it in.. leaving Sryine in the state she was in. Riyxia hadn't even taken out more than a small number of them, most of the beasts had been taken out by each other.. and a huge number of them had otherwise died to either the sandstorm, the lightning bow, or the wake of fire. However, it was her success in distributing the flames across many blades that showed it would mostly be up to her to segregate and distribute the flame if the need arose. All of the blades could be disposed of and recreated if required, much like the previous had already been, they could throw the whole collection into the fire mountain if they had no other choice, and that would be a prompt way to discard a massive concentration of the flame. At one point, such a concentration becomes world-changing, after all.

Vwyx's attention was completely invested in the shield that was her responsibility at present. This was also a rather substantial concern, the other hunters being fully aware what would happen if the shield was to end up straying too far from all of the three girls. While this had its own general turn of concerns, it also included what would become of the shield while everyone slept. Every night, the shield had been tied fast to someone's arm on their return trip, but that only really worked well sleeping on the ground. An elevated bed made it far too difficult to keep a shield stable. Vwyx was strongly contemplating sleeping right on the stone floor, just to make everything easier.. but technically that would be even less comfortable than the dirt outside. She might be human.. but she wasn't exactly feeling like it. She actually felt she had more in common with an elf like Sryine than any of the humans she knew. Even as an ersatz, Riyxia was fully capable of winning that competition as well, and Riyxia was more like an elf than she would be like a human. They were all of the flame, and that's exactly why everyone else was uncomfortable. It seems there were quite a number of records of their battle taken, especially once everyone was in the air. That was a prime opportunity to get records of three girls glowing, two girls burning, one girl using her own flame to cause mass destruction.. Everyone was really scared of Sryine right now, but not just Sryine. Vwyx was the only one who hadn't suddenly started burning a purple flame, but everyone knew she could. The shield, it could also cause such a flame too, simply because of the fragment inside. This is why she was left with the responsibility of protecting everyone else from the shield she was carrying, and anything such a responsibility might entail.