I’m supposedly one of the most feared mages alive. I’ll stand my ground!

They had most likely spotted your campfire already; they’d be hunting for you if you tried to hide or run.

Where would I run to anyway? Better to make my stand right here.

You reached in your bag and pulled out your only weapon: a sharp hunting knife. Swiftly, you stabbed it in the earth and dragged it around your improvised campsite, tracing a wide circle in the ground. Then, you dipped the blade in your campfire and muttered:

“Crescere.”

The blade turned incandescent, and a blue flame erupted from it. Vile growls resounded from the shadows behind the trees in your periphery. You touched the flaming tip of your knife to your circle in the earth and exclaimed again:

“Crescere!”

The blue flame magically spread along the demarcation on the ground, encircling you in wall of spectral fire rising up to your eye-level.

Incendo… Depulso… Stupefacio…

A fire conjuration, a kinetic blast, a stunning wave; reciting the incantations in your head, you infused them with willpower, readying yourself to hurt or kill. Your magic aura swelled, and your mind filled with storm clouds ready to burst. Crackling with energy, you peered ahead, trying to see beyond the dancing flames around you.

Multiple shadows stepped into the area of the woods bathed in blue firelight, turning into different visions of horror under your eyes. Dark, twisted humanoids, with pointy ears, sharp teeth, reddish-brown skin that bubbled in spots as if they had been seared: wearing spiky armour and wielding short swords and cudgels, four goblins closed in on you. Beside them, three charcoaled-skin imps flapped their bat-like wings a few feet off the ground. The fiends moved cautiously, all staring at you, evidently startled: they’d probably expected to ambush an unsuspecting traveller, not a mage facing them from within a magic circle of blue flames.

As Segora had taught you, you let your magic aura amplify, and spoke with the authority that your power conferred on you:

“Begone, fiends, or face destruction.”

The mystical crackling of fire seemed to echo your words into the night.

“What’s a young mage like this one doing all alone in this forlorn part of the realm?” screeched one of the imps.

“And why is a horde of Hell’s vermin roaming in the realm of men?” you countered.

“Could he be in hiding?” croaked another imp, as if you hadn’t spoken.

“Could be,” agreed the third imp. “Have we found our quarry?”

You clutched your flaming knife and reached for the power all around you; the blue flame on the small blade burned brighter.

“Are you Him?,” screeched the first imp, turning back to you. "We've come seeking the Underlord of—"

Pointing your knife up, you exclaimed:

“Fulgurio!”

Lightning was one of the harder elements to conjure up, and difficult to aim. The lightning you called down from the sky split in a fork and hit the three biggest trees in your proximity. You hadn’t planned to use this spell; it was one you didn’t master yet. But the fear had jolted you into reaching for one of your most powerful conjuration. Fear that these hellish creatures recognized you, claimed you as one of their own; fear of what it might mean. One of the trees split open and fell towards the horde of enemies; the goblins side-stepped out of the way.

“Impressive!” croaked an imp, excitedly. “A grand display of magic for one so young. What order do you belong to, young mage?”

Brushing his question aside, you muttered:

“Incendo.”

Blue flames burst from his skin, and it screamed agony into the night. The goblins lowered into fighting stances, and one of the two remaining imps cried:

“Take him alive! He might be the one we seek… The lost heir of the Archlord of Kalaphrak...”

The four goblins lurched. The circle of fire you had created amplified your power and shielded you from magical assaults; as long as you stayed within, the imps couldn’t fling psychic attacks at you. But it wouldn’t keep your enemies out. The goblins’ swords could still cut you to pieces; their cudgels could still pommel you to ****. Never mind what the imps had ordered them, Segora had taught you better: you wouldn’t let the goblins take you alive. Slicing your flaming knife horizontally in front of you, you cried:

“Stupefacio!”

The stunning wave, bolstered by your magic circle, hit the charging goblins with a blast of unseen ****. Two of them parried the magical strike, one took the hit on his breast plate, and one took it to the face; all stumbled, disoriented, but the hit wasn’t meant to wound. The spell managed what you hoped: they ceased their ****, suddenly confused, right at the edge of your flaming circle. You slashed again with your flaming knife, shouting:

“Depulso!”

The momentum of your slash carried the kinetic spell in an arc around you; the four goblins were all flung to the ground, one of them with his face open, from the amplified impact of what equated to a flaming sword. Even as you attacked, one of the imps flew over the blue flames, his stinger darting towards you—before you could think, an arrow swished out of nowhere, planted into the side of his head, and he plummeted into your campfire.

Instinctively, you decided the unseen archer wasn’t a threat to you. With a release of your will, you swung your flaming knife: the blue flame launched from it like a fire bolt and exploded the breastplate of a goblin who had just sprung to his feet, throwing him back to the ground. You dipped your knife back in your campfire, igniting the blade again with a mutter of “Crescere”, and swung the knife again, shooting a blue flame at the next goblin, as he leapt through your wall of fire; this time, an arrow sank between his shoulder blades just as your fire bolt struck him in the chest, and his broken body twisted in the air under the double impact.

You turned your gaze to find your opponents all lay slain on the ground; an arrow stuck out of the last imp’s corpse; a dagger jutted from the neck of the last goblin; flames flickered on some of the bodies. Many of the nearby foliage was also catching fire; if you didn’t do anything, the flames would spread. You closed your eyes, clung to the connection you’d established earlier with the surrounding woods and infused your will in the area.

“Exeo,” you whispered.

Where they licked at the trees, the flames were swallowed by the bark; armours absorbed the fire on the bodies, and earth swallowed the wall of blue flames around you; only the warm light and crackling of your campfire remained. In it, the body of the imps who tried to sting you burned away, a long feathered arrow sticking out of it.

The arrow looks familiar, you noted.

Two cloaked silhouettes entered the lit area of your campsite from opposite ends. To your left, a young woman, nocked bow in hand, arrow pointed at the ground; to your right, a young man holding a dagger by the blade, ready to throw. Both had their hoods down; both had dark hair and pointed ears. Half-elves. You immediately recognized the two quick figures you saw cause a ruckus on Charlene’s farm last night.

“You’re not here to shoot me again, are you?” you asked the archer.

“That depends,” she said, her voice like velvet. “You won’t sling spells at my brother again, will you now?”

Her long leather boots climbed to her knees and some of her thighs showed through the movements of her dark grey cloak, under her short, deep green dress.