Winter always comes with surprises. Sometimes it brings you the joy in the form of solitude, other times it comes with a snowstorm that buries your old cabin in a thick snow mountain that has you trapped until Springtime. You had believed that you w...
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"How dare you—" Barin shouts with a growl, and his whole body begins to shake as he raises both of his arms, before balls of silver flame begin to form on each of his open palms.
This time, the fireballs grow rapidly from his hands, much quicker than how they had appeared earlier when he first attacked you. You hear Seokjin's growl when he turns, making an effort to swipe you into his arms just as the siren mage appears and stands beside Mage Cian to counter the unexpected attack. But you make no move to run or to give in to Seokjin's effort to bring you to safety.
You are doing it not out of fear this time, when both the need for giving Seokjin his chance for revenge and your will to fight back are coming to you stronger. Once again, you feel the dread of being completely powerless, and the feeling burns deep inside you with the desperation of wanting to be able to do something, anything, to change the situation.
You close your eyes, trying to remember at least one of the spells your coven brothers had tried to teach you in the past. You picture Jooheon's face as he taught all the younger witches how to protect themselves, to shield themselves from danger with a common spell. You picture yourself being one of the girls in his lecture, chanting the spell over and over again until your fingers began to tingle and sparks grew in your skin. The memory clears and the sensation your feel from it grows stronger, and your tongue tingles as the word begins to hang right at the tip before the word finally forms itself.
"Adorior."
A chilling tremor rises up from within you as the spell slips out of your lips. The moment you open your eyes again, you watch in awe as the pieces of ice which had been scattered around you from Barin's blocked attack previously begin to rise and unite in the air, forming an icy shield around the four of you just as the silver flames arrive, just when Seokjin manages to cover your body with his massive frame.
But even as you are knocked into Seokjin's furry chest, you still have your arms outstretched, keeping the shield up and steady in its place. The ice shield holds against the silver ball of flames, surprisingly strong—as if it had formed into a strong wall standing around you and the others—blocking them long enough until the silver flames disperse into thin air when Barin loses control of his own powers, not being able to hold it open much longer against your protective shield.
The ice shield disperses into the air when there is no more threat being thrown at you, yet your body still shudders with the remaining tremors which you had felt when you first cast the spell. As someone who is not trained to cast such a powerful spell and had only managed to do so out of both anger and anguish, it feels as if all of your energy had been drained out of your body that your knees buckle against Seokjin's careful hold on you.
While it had caught you by surprise to have been able to cast such a spell so suddenly—one that you had failed to do many times over the years of your training period—there is a part of you that feels more relieved than you are in shock. You have always been the kind of witch whose power relies on your emotions, after all.
