Melli's Playbook

Melli

I'm not weak.

I'm a mage.

Celeste didn't keep me waiting long. A person can only breath in smoke for so long, and soon she fell out of the cloud with the intent to land on the ground below.

I wasn't going to let her.

I ran to the the side and lined up my shot. I only had one, and then I was dead.

"Come on." I growled, and aimed my staff. "Fire Orb!"

It hit true.

The **** of the explosion detonated right against her body, bursting whatever bottles she was trying to keep safe. More importantly the **** from the explosion sent her flying backwards.

She might be more powerful than a human, but she still had the same mass.

She flew backwards out of the cathedral and into the back wall of the western chamber. She hit the wall, and bounced on it scrambling to catch herself on the floor below.

Only you may recall that there was no floor for the western chamber, only a deep dark pit.

I sprinted into the room, and with my dark vision I was easily able to find the narrow path in the center of the room I could stand on. I gazed down into that hole and saw that it ended in a bed of spikes. Spikes which she had crashed through, but which had broken against her hard skin.

Had I done it? I had I won?

"I can smell you up there." She called from deep within the hole. "That was a pretty clever trick."

I said nothing. I hated this woman. She'd killed Ruby.

"I saved your life you know." She said again. I watched as she blindly stood up in the darkness and started to find her bearings. "When you took this dungeon over, he came running into my shop begging me to save you, and I did."

This would have been so much easier if she'd just let me die that day. So much simpler. And yet.

I'd just defeated a three star. Back then I would have never had even dreamed of such a feat, and now... it had been easy.

I mean it.

I wasn't even close to being out of mana, and I'd cast plenty of spells. Herald really was amazing, these powers he was giving me...

"You should have stopped him." I called down to her. "You're the only one who could, and now it's too late." Now his shadow would sweep over the world. It was as clear to me as anything. He'd taken someone like me, and made me capable of this...

"I don't see why that should be the case, do you know something about my situation that I don't?"

That clever little comment cut me like a knife, she didn't feel endangered? Must be nice to live your life behind a shell. "Solider get over here." I commanded to the automaton. It started clanking towards me. She could obviously survive a direct strike from my spells, but we'd all seen the damage the solider could do against her.

In the moment it took me to turn to shout at the solider she'd begun moving. She jumped from one wall, buried her fingers into it's surface and then jumped to the next. Up and up she went, climbing the chasm that would have spelt my doom.

"No you don't! Fire Orb!" I caught her mid jump, and the results were the same. The explosion threw her back down into the ground, the shaft lighting up brilliantly.

"If you want him dead why are you protecting him?" She grunted, getting back up. "You're standing in my way now, move aside and let me do my work." She tirelessly started jumping between walls again.

"You killed Ruby!" I called, then "Fire Orb!" And she flew back into the ground.

"Irrelevant. Anyone I've killed was an enemy combatant. It's ridiculous to hold that against me, and does not at all..."

"Fire Orb!" Just as she started to get up, I hit her with another one, and pinned her to the ground. "Fire Orb! Fire Orb! Fire Orb!"

She laid their pressed against the spiked ground, unable to move against the constant barrage. Her right arm burning and healing in between salvos. Her skin sizzling, her robes reduced to ash, but there she remained like a charred rock that refused to melt.

"Just die!"

The solider finally at the edge of the abyss, and fire a bolt down into the darkness. I'm not sure if it could see down there, or if it aimed by the light of my explosions but it shot its bolt, and aimed true. It hit her directly in her hip. There was a scream and they sound of shattering stone, the shattering of her bones was much quieter.

I grinned.

Had I ever felt, what was this?

...Joy?

Had I ever felt joy at the **** of another being?

I'm not sure.

I looked down into the pit and saw her just lay there, still as a stone.

I sighed, in thanks. The solider chugged, feeling no joy pride or joy at the kill. Not like me. It slowly winched another bolt into position.

When my village pooled all their money to send me to train, had they imagined this would be my destiny? It was so much grander and more terrible than anything I think them capable of dreaming. Me, slaying a three star. Me, a servant of a dark god.

The worst part of it all...

I hate this.

The worst part... is that I think the herald felt worse than me.

I felt bad obviously, and guilty as hell, but...

If I'm being honest. When all my feelings are passed through a filter and separated, my primary emotion was anger. Anger that... fuck.

Anger that my set of twins had been ruined, broken.

Mine. My belongings, my property. They were a set, Ruby and Sapphire, and now it was just Sapphire. She seemed so much less desirable without her matching pair...

It's disgusting I know.

I should have felt more, cried harder, been better, but...

She was moving again.

Celeste. Damn her, she was moving back up the walls.

"Fire Orb!"

"Poison Breath, Three star!"

I flinched for a second. What? Why would she use her poison again. The herald had already proven quite successfully that these slimes on our faces worked. Was she ****, scared?

It's was a moment's hesitation, but it's all she needed. I released the mana, and formed the spell at the tip of my staff.

Meanwhile her poison attack had flown up the shaft as a powerful gust of air. It hit my sphere just as it was formed on my staff, and the two reacted with each other, and... exploded.

I was thrown, out of the chamber, and she continued to ascended. The solider took a shot at her, but she managed to avoid it. Then leapt fully out of the hole, as the solider switched to a melee weapon she lightly brushed her fingers against it and called. "Touch of Midas, 1 star." Suddenly the machine was no longer copper and steel, it was solid gold. Too heavy and soft for good machinery, and it's weight pulled it over the edge of the abyss and down into the hole below.

Her eyes were fixed and she shot forward out of the chamber.

"Wall of fire!" I raised it right at the exit, hoping it would scare her off, but she burst out, naked and aflame. I saw her right arm was raw and bleeding, burned by the fire but healing grotesquely still somehow. Then there was her hip. The grey there had given away to pink flesh. The solider had cracked it. Good gods, what did she have to do to free herself from the bolt when it pinned her to the ground?

These were my thoughts as she rushed, me and not how to defend myself!

"Smoke and ash!" I aimed at her, but was sure she would dodge. So I hit the ground beneath her, subjecting us both to the burning cloud. Only thanks to the slime on my face I could breath, and my eyes could see.

"I can smell you!" She called out, her voice was manic. Why not? This fight was getting ****. "It's so nice to have this back, I was afraid I'd have to fight that woman again..." She wasn't bluffing I could see her moving through the cloud directly at me. "But it's just you."

"Fire orb!" Her foot came out of the cloud and hit my staff down towards the ground. The orb exploded fight between us, and threw both of us back. I wanted to scream in pain, but I couldn't my mask had blown off. I held my breath instead, even as my skin sizzled, and wept. I slid against the ground.

I'm not weak.

I scrambled for my staff. She'd been scrambling but she did it all three times as fast as I had, and she wasn't even hurt. She was rushing me now.

I grabbed my staff and whiped it wildly, not to cast as spell but just to **** her to keep her distance.

She wagered she could tank the hit to her head, and she had won that bet. My staff clanked uselessly against her, and she jabbed her hand forward. I expected a punch to my ribs hard enough to make them explode out my back but instead i felt a simple sting. She shoved her finger right between my ribs, and now I felt something surging through me.

I couldn't help myself. This time I gasped in pain. Immediately my lungs burned with ash, and a drowsyness assaulted me.

I coughed, then swung my staff again. I barked out the name of a spell, but it was closer to a bark than the words of a human, and nothing happened.

She brushed past the staff, and stabbed me again her her bloody finger, once twice three times. Every place she stabbed me instantly went, cold, numb and dead.

She raised her hand up, one just stab for my throat, I thought.

Then woosh.

Her arm flew off, cut at the elbow by an invisible knife.

I stumbled back, most of my body was shutting down, and what wasn't, was fighting to cough. Yet as I fell to the ground, I saw the Herald standing tall, by himself.

If I didn't know better I'd have said he came back to save me.

Can't he do anything right?