Fight with fireballs

There’s still enough distance between you and the ghost for you to get off a few ranged attacks. As you raise your arm and point your open palm towards the approaching apparition, all you can do is hope that your magic doesn’t just sail right through it.

“Roar, searing blaze! Ignition!” You feel the mana flow out from your chest, through your arm, and collect in the palm of your hand. It feels like this is the most mana you’ve ever used for this spell, and it shows by manifesting as a basketball-sized flaming projectile. The size of the thing almost scares you, considering it’s about six times larger than the last fireball you created, but you manage to remain calm enough to launch the thing down the hall.

The good news is, it makes contact with your incorporeal foe, covering it in red flames and forcing it to stutter backwards several paces.

The bad news is, it only stuns the ghost pirate for a moment. The flames quickly die out, and the enemy doesn’t appear to have suffered a tremendous amount of damage. Worse, the ghost seems like it’s about to charge at you.

If at first you don’t succeed, you think, preparing to fire another shot. You pelt the spirit with two more basketball-sized fireballs before it finally stops in its tracks. Seeming to run out of its ability to disperse the flames, the ghost stumbles to its knees and burns away at your feet.

…And you fall to your knees as soon as it disappears. Turns out that firing three of the largest fireballs you’ve ever made, on top of using some of your mana on healing less than five minutes ago, has completely burnt through your mana supply. I’m getting really fucking tired of this mana fatigue bullshit, you think as you struggle to maintain consciousness. You do a visual sweep of the hall, but there don’t seem to be any more enemies. The woman you protected, Miss Smith, is sat on the floor behind you looking like she just… saw a ghost… the big hoop skirt of her Victorian dress splayed out around her like a puddle.

“Y-you k-killed it, right?” she asks. “It’s not going to c-c-come back?”

“Probably not,” you say, before clapping your hand against a splitting headache. “Who fucking knows.”

“Y-you should know! You fought it!” The Victorian beauty regains some of her pomp from earlier, saying, “Any man worth mentioning ought to be able to kill hundreds of ghosts! If I’d b-been dressed for it, and had my bow, I bet even I could’ve killed that… that… evil thing!” Puffing out her cheeks in frustration, Miss Smith starts making an effort to stand back up. You do the same, and despite your wobbly legs and aching head, you manage to stand before she does. I wonder if the dress really makes it that difficult, you think, or if she’s just like this. You lean against the wall to help steady yourself against the still-rocking ship. After watching her struggle for ten long seconds, you reach down and hoist her up onto her feet. “Ah! What are you—!?”

“Less talking, more walking,” you say. “I feel like I’m going to pass out if I go anywhere right now, so I need you to find me a mana potion. Do you know what those look like?”

“Please, of course I do,” says Smith. “What do I look like, an idiot?” She almost turns and walks off before abruptly stopping. “Hey, wait! I don’t have to do anything you say! Besides, my… my ankle! I bruised my ankle when the storm hit. It would be cruel to have me move around so much right now.”

This bitch. She looks genuinely distraught about her ankle, but in the sort of way that a spoiled child looks after they’ve been asked to eat their vegetables. You really don’t have time to be dealing with her, and you have even less time to be stuck here unable to defend yourself. Throwing caution to the wind, you drop to your knees and duck under the woman’s giant hoop skirt. She screams, of course, and tries to kick you away, but you just grab a hold of her “injured” ankle, causing her to fall backwards onto her ass. The skirt falls back and reveals you still holding the offending leg, and you quickly chant a healing spell that completely erases the bruise. Using even more mana when you’re already running on fumes was never going to be a good idea, and you quickly feel the effects threatening to knock you out for good. With your last vestige of energy, you lean in to where your face is mere inches from the woman’s.

“Find me that potion,” you say, staring daggers at her. “Before another ghost shows up.”

Then you black out on top of her.

…

You feel a liquid in your mouth. This is familiar somehow, you think. Except last time, someone was helping you swallow; this time, you appear to be ****.

Eyes fly open, body jolts upright, ears take in the frightened squeal of the woman you sent in search of a mana potion. You cough up a storm, then rip the half-emptied bottle out of Smith’s hands and chug the rest of it in one go.

“How long was I out?” you ask.

“Are you not even gonna thank me? I looked all over for that—”

“HOW LONG?” you shout. The ship is still shaking, and the storm doesn’t sound like it’s gotten any lighter outside. Clearly, the situation is still dangerous.

“…Maybe ten minutes, I-I don’t really know,” says Miss Smith, clearly thrown off by your aggressiveness. “It t-took me a while to find a potion. I had to… borrow one from an officer’s room.” As you listen to Smith, you start moving your arms and legs around, shaking the exhaustion out of them as the potion revitalizes your core. Once she stops talking, you push to your feet and start heading towards the stairs.

The difficulty of these trials ramped up way too quickly. I’m going to need Blythe to start training me again.

You’re running on fumes now, so it’s time to end this.