Some beast of a mage

As the two of you enter the alchemy guild, Citrinas grabs you by the hand and drags you upstairs, pushing past the crowd as you enter your usual alchemy lab. As you enter, Citrinas slams the door shut and the two of you stare out the window, watching the mercenaries disperse into the crowd. Though it was easy to keep track of the men due to their wolf masks, the Kolderia guard seemed to be blind, glancing around the area in confusion. Was everyone in this city blind!?

"Hey Citrinas, you did say Kolderia was the safest city in the world, right?" You ask, watching one guard stand there and get hit by a mace, his arm breaking as he swung erratically at his enemy.

"I did." Citrinas admits as you slump down in a chair.

"... So from here on out it's all just downhill?" You ask as Citrinas sighs, walking to the window and staring outside.

"We'll talk later. I need to handle this." She says as she licks her lips, a stream of numbers leaving her lips as she begins calculating, her eyes fixated on the battlefield as you listen in on her spell. As you take in the numbers she was spouting, you break out into goosebumps hoping you were somehow mishearing her numbers.

The maximum range you could affect was an area approximately 50 meters in diameter due to your limited magical capacity. The equation for finding the area of a circle was πr^2, translating to your effective area being roughly 1960 meters. Mathematically speaking, if you doubled the radius of a circle, your area would increase by 4 fold and require 4 times as much magic to effect it. Triple it, and you'd need 9 times. Et cetera. Currently, Citrinas was calculating a spell to affect an area with a radius of 5 kilometers. 1 kilometer equals 1000 meters. 5,000 meters divided by 50 equals 100. 100 squared meant she was firing a spell 10,000 times larger than your maximum capacity, with this value increasing the more you heard her equation.

Casting magic with an improper equation gave odd results or had poor efficiency, wasting magic power to do nothing. It was for that reason you were limited to casting spells affecting factors within your line of sight, your magical capacity far too small to waste even an iota of magic power. Citrinas' equation was a crude spell that used broad generalizations and estimates that she had no intel on due to the scope of the spell. It was highly inefficient and could burn anywhere between 4 to 5 times more magic power than it needed, quite literally brute forcing her spell with sheer magic power. You wanted to say there was no way she could cast such an absurd spell, yet as she finished her calculations, you feel the ground shake beneath you.

"Okay, I'm done now." Citrinas says, taking a seat as you walk to the window in a fugue state, watching her spell tear reality apart at the seams. The skies clear as your tongue goes dry, the ambient humidity dropping to zero as it crystallized in the city below. The roads crack as you see water bubble up from the depths of the continent, her spell ripping it apart and forcibly drawing up the groundwater itself to serve as fuel for her spell, the mage forcibly terraforming the land to suit her needs. You can't see it, but you know that such cataclysmic scenes could be spotted throughout the entire city. Dread fills your heart as the second phase of the spell began, Citrinas' magic power showing no signs of fizzling or slowing down in the slightest.

You see no less than 300 golems begin taking shape in the snow outside the window in front of you, her widescale spell causing a lull to fall over the city as both the Kolderia guard and the madmen attacking them stopped, watching in equal parts fascination and horror as the world around them reshaped to Citrinas' will. They soon stop fighting and leap separate, both sides unsure on just whose side this spell was as the freshly gathered moisture and snow begin to coagulate, shaping themselves into hulking creatures anathema to the natural world. You knew from her calculations how the golems would look, yet that did little to brace you for what you were seeing in real life.

They were bipedal things standing at a whopping 15 feet in height and weighing no less than a tonne each. Instead of having smooth bodies and looking remotely humanoid, the nature of formulaic magic left them with large, angular bodies ending in innumerable jagged corners that could cut flesh with ease. Their torsos were wider than a horse while their arms were too long for their bodies, dragging the ground them like a chimpanzee. They had no head or face, being a mere torso with oversized limbs jutting out of them due to the lack of need for useless things like a brain or eyes. You see one golem move towards one of the wolf masked men, its uneven movements making its movements slow shamble more than a step forward. The man takes a step back, intimidated by the oversized magical monstrosity as the creature raises its hand. Despite its target being more than 30 feet away, it swings its arm downward as though it were swatting a fly. You see the limb suddenly extend mid-swing, the ice giant redistributing its mass to that limb in an instant to reach its target. You don't even hear a scream as the man is turned into a crimson mist, the only traces of his existence a deformed iron wolf mask. Learning from their compatriots' ****, the masked men re-orient themselves, situating the Kolderia guard between the lumbering giants to deny the golems another easy kill.

"You know Citrinas, sometimes you scare the shit out of me." You say, slumping to the ground as Citrinas' golems shamble about, pressuring the attackers with their mere presence. You feel nauseous at sight, looking away from the window and sitting next to the bored mage. Despite trying to ignore what was happening outside, the screams deny you such a luxury as you place this very moment in your list of memories to be traumatically repressed.

"Why would you be scared? It's not like I'm targeting you." She said, ignorant of just how mortifying her spell was.

"You just tore the sky and the land apart to form an undying legion of giants loyal to you alone. It would be odd if you didn't scare the shit out of me." You answer while hearing the fighting outside intensify.

"Oh, this is nothing. You should see Mathias fight one day. Now THAT is terrifying." Citrinas says as you try to picture your drinking buddy doing anything half as terrifying as she was just now. She was probably right. Your brother Mathias was a man among men, and he deserved respect or, at the very least, fear. As you sit back in your chair deep in thought, you feel the air outside the window shift, pinpricks appearing on your skin as you sense something reaching out from the depths of the city, flowing upwards with a single massive tendril the size of a car. You jolt to your feet and look out the window, only to see nothing of the sort leering above you. You can't see it, but your mind is screaming that something was there.

"Something wrong?" Citrinas asked as you sensed the tendril slowly feel its way forward, your eyes still not picking up its presence. Though you're thankful your monster ability allows you to detect the threat, you also curse it for forcing you to watch helplessly as some eldritch thing beyond human perception made its way towards you.

"Do you sense anything weird outside?" You ask, hoping Citrinas had an answer for just what was coming. Rather than answer, Citrinas just seemed puzzled as she walked to the window and stared out where you were looking, squinting her eyes for what you were sensing.

"Is there something wrong?" She asks as the tendril reaches the alchemy guild building and begins compacting itself, worming its way in through the ventilation shafts. You grab Citrinas and point frantically at the fume hood, your mind sensing just where that thing was going.

"Something's going to enter through our fume vents! Get ready!" You say as Citrinas began calculating a fire spell. You soon see the tendril peek its head out from your fume hood, the thing looking at both you and Citrinas as you hear a bubbly voice emanate from it.

"Wow Cici, that was a great spell~ I don't think I could've done something like that at your age." A woman's voice says as you shout and hide behind Citrinas.

"Kill it! Kill it with fire!" You shout as Citrinas squints her eyes, searching for something.

"Kill what!?" She asks as a bright light emanates from the fume hood. Not wanting to let their opponent score a hit on them, Citrinas blindly shoots a fireball towards the fume hood, her attack blowing the tendril and most of the lab apart in a violent explosion. The fire causes you to grimace, the pain almost on par with holy magic as you feel your skin burn and regenerate in the same breath. Despite that, you're more focused on the tendril Citrinas had destroyed.

You sense the severed portion of the tendril fade away into nothing while the main segment in the ventilation shafts continue snaking downwards to you. As the blinding light fades, you open your eyes and stare towards the fume hood. Your head throbs as the tendril your monster side sensed contrasted with the the human woman your eyes saw standing before you.

"Jeez, casting a fireball spell inside? Are you trying to kill yourselves?" The woman asks, her voice emanating from the invisible tendril that snaked towards the two of you. Despite knowing she was not what she appeared to be, you couldn't help but lower your guard when looking at her, the woman's appearance equal parts familiar and foreign to you.

She was young, in her mid-20s with long blue hair that ran down to her shoulders and an outfit that was identical to Citrinas', clad in a large black hat on her head and a matching coat identical to the one Citrinas wore. The only difference between them was the fact that Citrinas' coat was 2 sizes too large for her, the sleeves dangling past her hands and the bottom dragging the floor while the mystery woman's coat perfectly fit her due to her increased height and slightly longer arms. The most startling part of the woman was her face. She had sparkling blue eyes and peach skin with a small nose and high cheekbones, her expression of pure joy contrasting with Citrinas' angered scowl. Despite the two women having polar opposites in facial expressions, their resemblance to one another was uncanny.

It was like looking at an older version of Citrinas.

"What the fuck are you?" You ask out of instinct as Citrinas raises her hand, shielding you as the woman tilts her head, surprised to see you before looking at her double. She forms a proud smile at the sight as the doppelganger focuses on you, ignoring the numbers leaving Citrinas' lips as she formed a new spell.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, I had no idea Cici had a friend along. Where are my manners?" The woman said while taking her hat off and clearing her throat. For some odd reason, you feel the room begin heating up by several degrees, going from frigid to somewhat chilly. You see Citrinas' face grow stern as your back warms up. You turn around to see several rays of light shining down upon you from the window, the warmth not unlike that of sunlight. The woman continues her introduction, ignoring the fact that you no longer were focused on her.

"I'm Tristiana, but you can call me Triss." She continues as you watch the beams of light outside intensify to unending spires of pure magical light reaching to the heavens themselves. Looking at the base of one of the spires, you see Citrinas' golems entrapped within them, the rays of light melting them at a breakneck pace. The crunch of rapidly melting ice resonates through the city as Citrinas' golems are systematically eradicated by thousands of white spires, their bodies exploding in a cloud of mist just as quickly as they were spawned. The light show soon darkens as a thick fog descends over the city, obscuring the light spires to vague shapes glowing within the gray mist. You almost want to laugh at the sheer destructive power of two master level mages.

Within a minute, Citrinas managed to harvest all the moisture in a 5 kilometer radius to summon an army of ice golems numbering in the thousands. Within a second, Tristiana was able to evaporate that army using focused light magic as a laser. You walk backwards, awestruck as Tristiana appears by the window, maintaining eye contact as the tendril that was her shifts forward, its presence less like a mass of flesh like you and more like a hazy smoke. As Tristiana stands by the window, she gives you the warmest smile of your life, the picturesque scene of her standing by the windowsill contrasted with the the scream of vaporizing water and the unseen tendril that served as her true form. Despite your fear, she finishes her introduction, taking her hat off as Citrinas grabs your arm and flees the room in a panic.

"I'm Cici's older sister and hero... Former hero of magic." Citrinas throws the room door open as she speaks, still calculating numbers while Tristiana stays by the windowsill, amused by your attempts at escape. As the wooden doors open, the two of you find yourselves staring into a thick cloud of purple smoke waiting outside as you focus your senses on the building. You can sense the civilians and the guards on the first floor are lying on the ground, **** while the few people still capable of walking are holding their breaths and frantically pounding on the front doors and windows. Sadly, their attempts at freedom fail miserably, every door and window sealed off by reinforced ice crystals.

In the building, you can only sense one other person walking around, their body resisting the poisonous gas without the slightest issue. Despite meeting them only once in your life, you remember them with crystal clarity as you see a pair of glowing green eyes greet you within the purple cloud. She was a tall woman with olive skin and pale white hair with scars all over her body. In terms of armor she wore light leather armor that protected her vitals without weighing her down, while her waist wore a belt holding an array of knives, poisons, and trapping gear. Stepping forward, you can see the conflicted look on her face while as the glow in her eyes flicker for a second, her movements jerky as though she were trying not to move.

"We'll talk more in person." Tristiana says before looking to Fenri, her face causing the hero of the hunt snarl, the green glow in her eyes flickering at the sight.

"I'll... Kill... You... Fucking... Mage..." She forces out, the sheer hatred she held overcoming whatever mind control spell Tristiana had on her.

"Fen-fen, don't kill any bystanders and do as little harm to these two as possible when catching them. I need to go distract Mathias. I'll pick you up later, m-kay?" Tristiana says before the illusory body she conjured and the tendril that was her body fade away into oblivion, leaving you alone with Citrinas and the hero of the hunt. The acrid purple smoke flows into the room as you see Fenri open her mouth, visibly twitching as she tries to restrain herself from taking another step forward.

"Run... Away..." She manages to **** out with great exertion, the green light in her eyes flickering for a microsecond before stabilizing. "Don't resist. Just take a deep breath and go to sleep." She says, her voice now monotone as she unsheathed her knife, poison dripping off its edge as both you and Citrinas took a step backwards, both your backs up against the wall. It seems diplomacy was out of the question for her.