Not Enough Yet

Rocks hit Hilfa's front and back as Terra begins using a lot of her magic to allow the group to charge forward. Hilfa's arms feel the wear of being attacked constantly, so the giant combined the remaining stone covering her limbs to form two shields of her own to protect herself, but reveals her arms, and some parts of her legs in the process.

Virra takes this opportunity to put a few arrows into their target, starting with Hilfa's elbows. The elf knows she won't do much in terms of instant damage, but a **** by a thousand cuts starts with a few.

Terra's magic is taking a toll on her, feeling more and more exhausted as she keeps throwing chunks of rock around. Amilia can see that, and so she puts her hand on Terra's back before giving her friend a look.

Terra looks back for a moment before nodding, silently thanking Amilia for her support as she continues her magical barrage.

As Terra picks up another rock, ready to throw it at Hilfa's head, a quick and powerful gust of wind hits said rock, sending it flying quicker than Terra could possibly throw it right now. Terra and Amilia look to their left, seeing John has sheathed his sword, and is now using the magic taught to him by the elf to help out. The human gives them a little smile, obviously proud of his skill with a basic skill. Terra also smiles, realizing that she's got another helping hand from her pupil. Guess her teaching wasn't for naught after all.

Kira continues her charge with Kyuala a mere second behind. The centaur and the orc are quick to assess just what they need to do in order to turn the tide of battle in their favour. In this particular case? Hilfa's legs.

They had previously weakened her legs in the first charge, but now those wounds are the most protected. However, those protected parts plus the shields Hilfa has formed has given them a good amount of exposed skin to work with.

After slightly stumbling after they're **** to dodge some of the falling debris, both Kira and Kyuala have made their way underneath the giant. Splitting up, each take a leg. Kira takes the right, and Kyuala runs to the left.

Spear sinks in. Axe chops away. Both weapons doing what they're needed to as the giant above them let's out a pained and angry groan. Hilfa wishes to do something about it, but the sudden increase of rocks being fired at her front is keeping the giant occupied.

Kyuala digs her axe into the newest wound she's been working at, the blade of her axe shining with dark crimson. The wound may look bad, but even with the **** on both ends, Kyuala thinks that it hasn't made a difference.

Unbeknownst to those below, Hilfa is angry, frustrated, and most importantly, unable to come up with a plan of attack. She knows that the smaller fighters are simply just doing whatever they can, yet it's somehow actually working, and it is pissing Hilfa off.

Back over with Karray and Clarva, the pixie is trying her best to quell the stone that is still crawling up her friend, but it's a losing battle. Clarva is extremely dazed from the hit, almost like she's just an observer in her own body, but she can see how hard her friend is fighting.

Clarva thinks back to just before that hit in particular, when Hilfa said that she wasn't quite ready. What could she have meant by that? Most likely, it was a jab at her being weak, or not being a full giant, but Clarva felt like there was something more to it than that.

The stone felt like snakes slithering up Clarva's body, the stone has moved so much that it has now begun to fuse with the ground beneath the half-giant, beginning to make it difficult for Clarva to move her legs. It's only a matter a time before it spreads up to the rest of her torso, even with Karray's attempts to stop it.

"C! You gotta move! I can't stop it!" Karray pleads, seeing that her attempt to stop the stone encasing her friend is failing.

The pleading makes Clarva want to tear up, hearing her best friend beg like that, but Clarva knows that even if she wanted to move, she couldn't. Hilfa's stone magic has fully fused with the ground, making any sort of movement with her legs completely impossible. Clarva could try smash through said stone, but it would probably just transfer onto her hands, making the process of slowly dying go much quicker.

Why couldn't Clarva move before this all happened?

Yeah, she was dazed by Hilfa's attack, but it was those few damned words of Hilfa that seemed to have the most effect. Clarva wondered if it was some sort of magic, but it didn't seem like it.

The words confused Clarva at first, but now? All they did was piss her off. She wasn't ready?! She wasn't good enough?! Why the fuck wasn't she?! She was already here! She had already killed a few giants! She already went toe-to-toe with Hilfa multiple times, and Hilfa couldn't beat her without using her magic. So, who was Hilfa to say that Clarva wasn't ready?!

That anger begins burning within Clarva, that feeling from before coming back tenfold, twentyfold, hell even more than that. Clarva is literally boiling to the point where the stone is sizzling as it retracts from her body.

Karray watches as the stone practically melts away from her friend, and relief comes very soon after, but said relief is brief as the pixie can see her friend genuinely boiling from the inside, and another bout of worry strikes again.

John feels almost drained, the constant blasts are taking their toll on him, and he can see that Terra is ready to drop as well. Sweat is dripping from his brow, and his breaths are becoming haggard.

"We need to change this up! We can't keep going like this!" John says to Terra and Amilia.

Terra answers back. "I know! I'm a few seconds away from dropping! Do you have a plan?!"

The ground quakes as Hilfa falls to a knee, unable to take the punishment from Kyuala and Kira any longer. Blood is pouring onto the ground from Hilfa's legs, open wounds spewing crimson from obsidian covered limbs.

"There's our plan! Let's cut her other fucking eye out!" Amilia says before sprinting forward, leaving the other two in the dust as she pulls out her daggers.

Getting to Hilfa in the blink of an eye, Amilia quickly scales up the huge left leg in front of her before heading towards the left arm to climb up the big body to try and get to the giant's right eye.

Kyuala and Kira see what Amilia is trying to do, so they switch their attacks to Hilfa's arms to buy the cat enough time to do her thing.

John and Terra finally got close to the kneeling giant, the human now drawing his sword to help out with the distraction while the elf uses a good amount of her remaining energy to send stone spikes through Hilfa's feet, giving the big bitch a taste of her own medicine.

John feels his legs wanting to give out from under him, exhaustion coming to claim him like a loanshark lurking for money owed. He doesn't know if he's even gonna be able to swing his sword let alone keep it up long enough to actually do anything to help with distracting.

Kira swipes at Hilfa's right bicep, getting a nice slice before seeing John ready to drop. She decides to make a quick judgement call, heading over to the male before offering him a hand. "Get on! We can't stop now!"

John takes the centaur's hand, getting helped onto her back before she takes off again.

"Riding another woman twice in one night? Better hope your mate doesn't mind." Kira jokes as she takes another swing.

"She'd... probably... want to... be next." John says through pants as he tries his best to attack as well.

Kira laughs. "I'd be honoured, but I'm a one woman type of centaur. I have an elf to get back to."

"Well... let's deal with her... then you can get back... to her."

"Sounds good!" Kira responds as she takes a few steps away before turning back for another round of attacks.

Hilfa's mind is silent, something unusual for the mage giant. She can't remember the last time when her mind was quiet, and to be honest? It scared her. This situation Hilfa has found herself in? It's terrifying.

Hilfa has always had a plan for every day. Some may see living like that as meticulous and boring, but Hilfa found fear in the unplanned, the unknown, the spontaneous. However, at the moment, she can't think of a single way out.

Earlier, when Hilfa fell into the lava, that was planned down to the minute detail. Obviously, she had hoped to not had to have done that, but Hilfa knew that the combined forces of the Queen, Musha, the fodder giants, and these smaller combatants would be enough to push her towards that, so she prepared.

It wasn't easy planning for such an **** trick, but Hilfa's burrowing into this volcano had allowed her to find creatures of the lava. It's not uncommon to find lava fiends in volcanos, but because of the Skygrabber Mountains true nature of being a super volcano, Hilfa probably had access to the most lava fiends a researcher has ever had, and right on her doorstep. So, like any researcher would do, she got to work.

It took many tries, probably too many, enough to practically wipe out the entire population of the lava fiends in the Skygrabber Mountains, but she eventually found out the magic needed to literally fuse with the volcano, and still retain her mind.

Hilfa had always been fascinated with some mages being able to fuse with their surroundings, and when she had accomplished the feat, everything fell into place.

At least it had, until now when she was stuck to the ground. Her ankles skewered, legs shredded, arms torn, left eye pierced, body exhausted, and power waning. There wasn't much left keeping her alive apart from sheer luck.

She would understand if she was getting beaten by the Queen, Musha, even the half-breed, but it was none of them. It was the damned smaller races. She had told them to try their best to take her down, and they had actually got her close to ****, all they needed was that big final blow.

And it filled her with rage that Hilfa never thought possible. Her rage was powerful enough to flatten cities, topple empires, and she couldn't kill a couple of fucking insects that wouldn't even leave a stain underneath her shoe. Why couldn't she just rise up and tear them all limb from limb?! Why couldn't she use her power to spear them all, leaving them like scarecrows in a field as a warning?!

Why wasn't she powerful enough?!

Power. That's all she needed. She just needed more power.

There was a technique that Hilfa that heard about over the many years of her life, a technique, that if survived, could give a mage their full, unleashed potential. Total, unrelenting power.

Hilfa remembered hearing it as recently as the attack on Reduna'z Gaze, and that news made Hilfa's inner scientist get butterflies. If some barebones necromancer could somehow do it, then Hilfa was certain she could do it.

Hilfa's clear mind then became a boon. The silence allowed her to focus solely on unleashing her power, her fury, her need to win, her need to conquer.

Amilia had successfully climbed over Hilfa's torso, and had now reached the top of Hilfa's head, and was ready to tear the giant's remaining eye out.

Kyuala had swung her axe so much that her arms ached, and the blade of the axe was becoming blunt, but she had done so much damage that she could've felled a forest with the amount of damage she caused.

Terra was practically on the floor, heavy breaths trying to get breath into her lungs, passing out becoming less of a possibility, and more of an unavoidable future. Terra had used so much energy, that she even felt like a vampire had feasted on her in the night.

Virra's fingers were bleeding with how much she pulled her bowstring, feeling exhaustion of her own. Her magic may not be as strong as Terra's, but constant use with controlling her arrows had their effect.

Kira's legs felt heavy. She could run around for hours if she wanted, but that's without someone on her back. Every stab, slice, and swing combined with running around, and having John on her back, acting as basically dead weight, made everything much harder.

Karray wasn't as tired as all the others, but she felt emotionally drained. She had seen her best friend fight get knocked down twice, getting completely knocked out once, and now, her friend was becoming hotter than a blacksmith's furnace. Hilfa had used her magic, and had nearly suffocated Clarva by fusing her to the ground. The pixie could only wait, unable to help the others, unable to move away from Clarva.

John was the most tired out of everyone. Sweat dripping from his forehead, body closer to dropping each moment.

He had used magic for a prolonged period for the first time, couple that with running around, swinging his sword, avoiding **** multiple times. It had made him want to sleep for another couple weeks, hell, a few months at least. He knew that he couldn't unfortunately, not because they weren't done yet, but because he felt that it was too calm at the moment.

"John! Let's end this!" Kira says, turning her head to him.
"Hold on, I've got a ba-"

A wave of power explodes from Hilfa, sending everyone flying. Kyuala hits the wall that Hilfa was knocked into earlier. Terra and Virra were sent flying, tumbling far, far away from the fight. Amilia, who was still on top of Hilfa, was sent behind the giant with no one seeing where she landed, or if she landed at all.

Karray held onto Clarva as best she could, but her tiny body was no much for the blast of wind, sending her the furthest out of everybody. On the flip side, Clarva was the luckiest as she was still somewhat fused to the ground, so all the blast did was rip the remaining stone away, freeing a very pissed off half-giant.

John and Kira were also lucky in a sense as since John was riding Kira, the combined body weight managed to stop them from going too far, unfortunately that also means that they landed together. John hit the floor first, feeling his right ribs cracking in the process, but that was just the start as Kira came down soon after.

The wind from the blast of power emanating from Hilfa echoed throughout the volcanic cavern, drowning out the agonizing scream John let loose as he felt the full weight of the centaur land on his left ankle, completely shattering it.

The wind eventually faded away, and the echo followed soon after, leaving only the bubbling of the lava beneath and the groans of those afflicted by the blast.

Eventually, they all start looking back towards Hilfa as they try to process what the hell just happened, but that's when they see it, or rather, they see what Hilfa managed to do.

Hilfa had gone phoenix.