Kosmos: The Witch

The travel had been relatively uneventful up until this day, as they were able to witness just how terrifying Theo's magic could be when applied offensively. His fighting style was a bit similar to Morgana's, where he would create swords and other weapons out of glass. However, instead of creating one and wielding it, he would create dozens, or even hundreds of them around him sometimes before raining them upon his target(s) with extreme precision. These attacks were so fast, paired with the fact that the weapons were made of glass, that they were practically invisible. On top of that, his glass was so magically reinforced and so sharp that it could easily cut through steel. His defense was also impeccable thanks to the versatility and hardness of his glass, so most creatures attacking him would be killed in around twenty seconds. However, one day, while they are trudging through a wide plain, a powerful gust of wind starts blowing around them. Sophia seems to notice something, and warns them:

- "We're being attacked, this is not a natural wind." she assumes a fighting stance.

- "Sophia is probably right !" Magnus says with a wide smile as he takes a boxing stance.

They are the only two to react fast enough before the wind turns into a fully fledged tornado around them, and sends them flying upwards. Sophia performs a backflip and jumps out of the area, and Magnus dashes out of its radius. Everyone else is picked up by the winds and scattered around the plains into the surrounding forest, hundreds of meters away. As they are flying, they notice countless winged creatures flying towards each of them, that look like twisted fusions of multiple animals and monsters of various sizes, in other words chimeras. However, the most noticeable of all was the ginormous two headed bird above them, cloaked in fire and lightning hovering a few kilometers above the ground. It was harnessing a storm around itself, and doing battle with a small winged silhouette that probably was Nova, who was producing cataclysmic bursts of flames and severely wounding it with every attack. However, it was rapidly regenerating from its injuries.

Morgana is separated from the rest of the group, as everyone was getting flung in different directions. She lands in a tree and manages to break her fall, and when looks up after hitting the ground, she is faced with a younger girl with gray hair and incredibly pale skin staring down at her. She was wearing a black and white dress, complete with black frills and white gloves. A vertical cross was drawn on her forehead, and she looked ethereal, almost like a hallucination. Her eyes were pitch black, like bottomless abysses.

Morgana notices the white gloves and has a shiver. The eyes of the girl felt empty of life.

- "I've finally found you, Morgana." she says in a very quiet voice.

- "Who are you ?..." Morgana replies, on the defensive.

The girl's eyes widen in shock, making her almost look betrayed for a fraction of a second before she regains her composure.

- "In a sense, I am your sister. Mother has been looking for you, you know ? It would be best if you returned." She continues.

- "...Did she experiment on you too ?"

- "Indeed. She helped me become more." Morgana has chills as she says that.

- "Don't you want to leave too ?"

- "No, that would be ridiculous. Unlike you, I am one of Mother's successes. I have no need or desire to escape."

- "That… that can't be right. Come with me, I can help you."

- "Ah, Morgana. Just as stubborn as Mother described you to be. This must be your draconic genes making you spout nonsense. I'm assuming you will not follow me willingly ?"

- "No. Follow me instead. Mother will leave you alone in Eretria."

- "Try to avoid inflicting any lasting injuries." the girl snaps her fingers and her shadow rapidly expands, covering the ground they were standing on in darkness. From that darkness, a creature emerges behind her. It was a ten meter tall gray dragon with two pairs of wings, crimson red horns and claws, a red glow in its eyes. Morgana could see dark blue flames oozing out of its mouth.

- "I engineered this dragon specifically to beat you. You won't be able to do much with fire spells, so it's still time to peacefully surrender."

Morgana responds to this by creating a longsword of flames in her right hand. The woman sighs and snaps her fingers, causing the dragon to roar and breathe a cone of dark blue fire in Morgana's direction, completely engulfing her. When the flames dissipate, Morgana was standing behind a large shield made of flames, that seemingly deflected all of the breath attack from the dragon.

- "Oh." the girl comments. "I thought mixing Shadow magic to its fire would prevent you from absorbing the attack with any defensive fire spells, since they can only really absorb heat. But somehow you learned energy weaving. That was not in the information I was provided."

- "Please stop, I don't want to hurt you. You can escape mother."

- "Fool." she snaps her fingers again, and the dragon starts running towards her. "No one ever truly escapes Mother."

Morgana strikes the dragon with her longsword, but her flames are completely deflected by the scales of the creature. When she notices this, her sword turns into a spear, the flame at its tip crackling violently. The dragon swipes its claw down towards her, but she completely blocks its attack with her shield before retaliating and stabbing her spear into its flank, penetrating its scales (5 K True fire). The dragon roars before furiously striking her. Morgana is taken by surprise due to the difference in speed compared to the previous attack, and she doesn't have the time to manifest her shield before she is hit. She is projected into the tree behind her, and the force of the impact forces the air out of her lungs (15K Physical). She quickly catches her breath and throws her spear towards the dragon with a powerful burst of flames, and it cracks some of its scales as it pierces it (15 K True fire). The dragon hisses, and its flames spread from its mouth to its claws and horns, lighting them with a dark blue fire. It then leans back and delivers a devastating hit with both its claws, with enough force to create a shockwave past Morgana and uprooting all the trees behind her. She manages to manifest her shield of flames in time, but the dragon still shatters it and hits her with what was remaining of the force of the attack (10 K True Fire). Morgana is sent flying into the sky, struggling to stabilize herself. Once she starts falling, she sees a giant, probably two hundred meters tall replica of the sun floating a few hundreds of meters away. She could feel the heat from there, and she saw dozens of chimeras being incinerated in its vicinity. It was identical to the spell she was using when fighting Theo, ableit hotter and even larger.

She sees a silhouette under the sun, and she recognizes Adriana's voice.

- "Morgana ! Come towards me !!"

Before Morgana can answer that she can't fly, she notices the dragon flying up towards her. She materializes a new fire spear in her hand and throws it downwards, hitting it in the chest and destroying its scales even further, causing it to roar in pain as it loses blood (22.5 K True fire). However, it keeps ascending, and Morgana sees the giant sun slowly moving in her direction as Adriana seems to disregard her own safety and flies extremely quickly in her direction while the chimeras are chasing her relentlessly. Morgana extends her hand to attempt to grab hers right before the dragon gets to her, but before any of that can happen, an extremely long tendril made of pure darkness coming from somewhere between the trees wraps around her leg and quickly pulls her down towards the forest. She sees the girl from earlier for a second, the dark tendril coming from her right hand, before she is flung into a nearby tree. She braces for impact, but instead she falls on a hard floor. She gets up, and realizes she is in the corridor leading to her mother's laboratory. A spike of adrenaline rushes through her body as she runs towards the door, but the girl appears right in front of it.

- "It is too late, I know when to stop taking risks. You must be aware that you cannot escape by yourself." she whispers.

- "I will fight you if I have to." Morgana replies, materializing her flaming battleaxe.

- "You can try. All I have to do is stall you out, we are moving to the location aligned with Mother's laboratory in a few minutes."

- "What do you mean ?..."

- "There isn't just a single laboratory that moves around. There are multiple, identical laboratories spread across the entire continent, where Mother stores her children. The entrances are only active one at a time, but we can teleport between laboratories. I've already started the spell. You have five minutes if you want to try to find your way out of here."

- "...Are you trying to help me ?"

- "No." genuine fear fills the girl's eyes for a second. "I would never help a defective product such as you, Mother would be very disappointed in me if she saw me doing that when sifting through my memories. I am simply giving you pointless information to stall for time."

Morgana, puzzled, raises her battleaxe, but before she can do anything a bright light fills the entire room, and the girl is sent flying down the hallway by a burst of heat and plasma. Adriana was standing in front of the door, heavily breathing and bleeding from multiple wounds.

- "Adriana. You found the entrance ?" Morgana asks.

- "I have very good eyes ! I saw what happened down in the forest."

- "We're going to be teleported in five minutes."

- "What ?! Then let's get out !"

- "Not yet." Morgana turns and runs down the corridor, towards the laboratory. It was exactly as she remembered, save for the tools floating in the air being slightly different. The girl from earlier was lying on the floor, unconscious.

She had been trying to escape this place for years. This meant she knew the layout by heart. She starts running, and rapidly opens all the doors she can find. Adriana follows her, trying to talk her out of her frenzy. All the cells are closed, and when Morgana opens the cell that used to be hers, there was no bed, and the walls and floor, while weathered by time, had no traces of burns or ashes on them. This confirmed that this place was not the one she grew up in, but a carbon copy of it. Eventually, she reaches the last cell's door, and when she opens it, she sees a small boy, probably no older than ten, sitting on a bed very similar to the one she had in the past. He had a dragon wing on his right side and a bird wing on his left side, along with a halo of flames above his head. His hair was short and unkept. His irises were golden and shining like Adriana's, emitting a very faint light in the darkness. He stares at them, with an aggressive expression. He was wearing rags, with holes at the back to accommodate his wings.

- "We're here to free you." Morgana says.

The boy quite literally hisses in response, and Adriana panics.

- "You said five minutes right ?! We're almost out of time, let's go !" she runs into the cell and lifts up the child before running towards the exit, followed by Morgana.

During this time, the boy is kicking and screaming, biting into Adriana's arm and drawing blood. Adriana just grits her teeth and bears it until they make it to the door. While they are leaving, Morgana runs up to the girl that had passed out, and she seems to wake up.

- "We're leaving. I'll say it again, come with me."

- "I refuse. I cannot betray Mother."

- "Stop being so stubborn."

- "I should tell you that. I called in more chimeras, so now I'm going to stall for time so that they can get you before you can leave." As she says that, her shadow slowly expands.

- "At least tell me your name."

- "...Kymara. I'm Kymara. And I cannot fail the mission Mother entrusted to me."

- "I will come back for you, Kymara. I promise."

- "You won't come back, because you won't leave."

Morgana shakes her head and runs towards the corridor leading to the exit with Adriana and the boy, who was still fighting against her grip. A powerful wind blows when they get close to the door, repelling both Morgana and the child away from the door. Adriana sees this, and her panic quickly turns to anger as she realizes what's going on.

- "Like I'm ever going to let that happen ! I'm the daughter of a Titan !" Her skin bursts into flames, in a fashion similar to when Morgana used to burn from the inside out, but emitting a heat that wasn't even comparable. Morgana could tell that she was only able to survive it thanks to her resistance to fire, and the child seemed to be in a similar situation. "I am the Sun !"

When she says that, the flames fill the entire corridor, as the stone begins to melt. Morgana and the child are spared, as the fire swirls around them without touching them. Adriana turns, extending her hand to them.

- "Come with me ! The heat will make the wind rise !"

The child has an expression of wonder as he looks up to her, and gets up on her own before walking towards the door. The wind blows once more, but it mixes with the inferno and is diverted towards the ceiling. Morgana quickly gets up and follows her as Adriana opens the door while shielding the both of them from the winds. A flash of blue light blinds them, and the next second they are back on the forest floor. Adriana falls forward, unconscious, and her flames go out.

- "Adriana ?" Morgana asks, worried. "Oh, those are horrible burns. She needs help." She starts looking around to try to see if anyone else was nearby.

The boy sits next to Adriana, crying profusely and trying to wake her up by shaking her with the little strength he had. Morgana notices that the burns that came into contact with the child's tears were slowly healing, until Adriana's life seems to be out of danger.

- "You healed her." Morgana comments.

The boy ignores her, still sobbing over the fact that Adriana wasn't waking up. They then hear Cassandra's voice in the distance:

- "Over there ! I'm picking up high heat signatures !"

Morgana is relieved to see the whole class along with Nova running towards them after a few minutes. They were all in perfect condition, except Nova who seemed to be pretty severely wounded. She flaps her wings and golden flames spread to Adriana, healing all her injuries and causing her to wake up.

- "Are we out ?... Oh everyone's here !" When Adriana says that, the boy jumps on her side, clinging to her like a koala. "Woah there !"

- "Who's that kid ?" Cassandra asks.

- "He's from mother's laboratory. We rescued him." Morgana replies.

- "You went to your mother's laboratory ?..."

Morgana briefs them on what just happened, and Cassandra seems shocked.

- "You're serious ? There's just a bunch of identical labs ? That makes it a lot more difficult for you."

- "It's fine. We managed to free one captive. We can free more of them."

- "That's one way to look at it…"

- "So… are we cancelling the trip or something like that ? What do we do with the kid ?" Adriana asks.

- "Absolutely not !" Nova says. "You all can take care of him, that'll add some difficulty to your trial."

- "Hey, I'm not taking the risk of him dying !" Adriana replies.

- "If it gets too dire, I'll just keep him next to myself so that he survives the cold. Plus, I can always heal his injuries !"

- "Let's try to make the injuries not happen in the first place..."

- "Whatever floats your boat !"

- "By the way, Miss Nova, why are you not healing your own wounds ?" Theo asks.

- "My golden flames let me share my life force with others by burning some of my own. I can't create life force out of nothing, or take it from unwilling things, so I'll just have to heal naturally. I'll be fine though, I could still fight all day long !"

- "If you say so…" Theo answers, uncertain.

- "So, Morgana. You say that this was an attack organized by your mother ? You think she'll strike again ?" Cassandra asks.

- "I hope so." Morgana replies.

- "Erm, how about no ? We got healed up but we were living a nightmare out there ! Gotta thank the gods for Magnus' and Sophia's quick reflexes, because I don't know if I would've made it out of this fight in one piece if they didn't run after me to help."

- "Haha, I knew that Morgana, Theo and Adriana could handle themselves !" Magnus comments.

- "Yes. The only one at risk was you." Sophia adds.

- "Actually, I'm turning you guys into practice targets once I get a boost to my magical energy." Cassandra grumbles.

- "If she sends something, that means an entrance is nearby." Morgana continues. "If I can find it, I can rescue more captives. Also, there's a chance I can rescue Kymara. If mother sends her again."

- "I guess that makes sense… But that Kymara gal, isn't she just an enemy ? She tried to bring you back to your mother and all."

- "She's also a victim of mother. I can't leave her."

- "You might be a little too nice for your own good…" Cassandra says.

- "It's more about obstination !" Nova says. "Us dragons are usually very stubborn by nature, so if she got any of that blood flowing in her veins it's probably going to show in her behavior."

- "That checks out…"