Kosmos: The Witch

About a month and a half later, they were still journeying through the snowy landscape. Morgana's birthday had passed by, and since they weren't really able to celebrate it properly, the others promised to throw a birthday party for her once they got back after being pressured by Adriana. Morgana didn't really understand why people got so worked up about birthdays, but she couldn't care less at the moment due to the cold numbing her brain. She tried to name the boy that they found in her mother's lab Snow, but Cassandra adamantly fought her on this. Eventually, she settled for Xenon, and that seemed to appease Cassandra's wrath. As expected, Xenon seemed to be immune to the cold, and was generally walking near Morgana, causing snow to accumulate around the two of them whenever they stopped. Sol was constantly hissing at him, but he just stared at Sol the same way he was blankly staring at everyone and everything. The only time when his expression would change was when he looked at the sky with a curiosity that reminded Morgana of herself, when she escaped a year ago. They had run out of mammoth meat by that point, and were cycling hunt parties to bring food back to the group. Cassandra was capable of maintaining her field of heat for an entire day without tiring too much now, and she had been giving tips to Magnus on how to control his magical energy more efficiently. She would adjust the heat of his flames to avoid any severe burns, and he would try to adjust it himself every time she stopped helping with the control, which seemed to actually yield decent results. He could now heat himself without any real harm using his aura of flames for about ten minutes, which was leaps and bounds beyond what he could do a few months ago, namely nothing.They noticed that as they progressed, the ice and snow were getting harder to melt for drinkable water, and Cassandra told them that it was a good sign because the presence of boreal oaks tends to reinforce all the ice around them. That fact was confirmed eventually, when they reached yet another enormous glacier. When they finished climbing up to it, they could see them in the distance: two gigantic trees entirely covered with ice, piercing the clouds. They could see smaller figures moving about next to them.

With newfound enthusiasm, they made their way to the trees in about a week, and they quickly realized that the smaller figures were actually hyperboreans. Blue giants, towering hundreds of meters tall, and wielding various weapons as they patrolled around the trees. White and blue dragons could be seen accompanying them, flying around them like oversized songbirds. They were wearing metallic tribal garments around their waists, and some of them wore arm braces made of that metal.

- "There's dozens of them…" Cassandra comments.

- "This is bad. Adelaios said they're very dangerous." Morgana adds.

- "You guys are ready ?" Nova asks as she lands next to them.

- "Yes." Morgana and Sophia reply simultaneously.

- "Yes !" Magnus echoes, a lot more enthusiastically.

- "Yup !" Adriana adds.

- "As much as can be." Theo replies.

- "Let's just make it quick." Cassandra concludes.

- "In that case, I'll give you the signal when you can go." Nova says.

- "What signal ?" Cassandra asks.

- "You'll see !"

Nova flies off after saying that, and about ten minutes later they see a catastrophic explosion occur around one of the mountain peaks protruding from the glacier in the distance, engulfing it in flames. Said peak is then bombarded by dozens of fire meteors, each the size of Adriana's tower in the faculty's village. Most of the giants guarding the trees start running towards the chaos, communicating in a loud and guttural language. This leaves about three of them and one of the white dragons guarding the tree closest to the group.

- "That's one hell of a signal." Cassandra comments.

- "How are we doing this ?" Sophia asks.

- "I'll take one by myself !" Magnus asks as he starts running towards the giants.

- "Magnus wait ! We don't even know how strong they are !" Cassandra shouts.

- "Guess I'll find out !" He laughs in the distance.

- "Ugh ! Let's do this quick before he gets killed. Sophia, you go with Morgana and try to take one down ! Adriana, you come with me, we're taking care of the third one ! Theo, you're by far the best at defense with your magic, so please stay back and make sure the kids are fine, and provide support if you have the range ! Adriana will give you some heat to work with for the duration of the fight, so create a shelter !"

- "You are surprisingly efficient at troop management." Theo observes as he creates his miniature glass castle around him, Sol and Xenon with his orbs, and starts absorbing the heat Adriana is emitting.

- "I've been rehearsing ! Alright, everyone move out !" Cassandra shouts as she starts running after Magnus, who started picking up speed.

On his end, Magnus makes it to the hyperborean in the middle. He was wielding an enormous greatsword, and was somewhere around four hundred meters tall. At first, the giant doesn't see him, and he yells.

- "Heeeeey ! I'm down here !"

The giant looks down and sees Magnus waving at him with his hands on fire. At first seemingly confused, he raises his greatsword and strikes down at Magnus. The latter propels himself to the side with a burst of flames, and the sword creates a massive crevice in the ice upon impact.

- "Haha, that could've killed me ! This is gonna be fun !" Magnus shouts as he propels himself up towards the giant, but he collides with a scaly mass. It was the dragon that they saw earlier, standing at ten meters tall. Its scales were white, and a large, sharp ice crystal was growing at the end of its tail. Its claws were also coated in a blue, glowing layer of frost, and its eyes emitted a similar glow when they crossed Magnus'. It roars as it drives him towards the ground with overwhelming strength.

At the corner of his vision, Magnus sees the hyperborean on the left raising his spear to strike him down, but his attack collides with a giant axe made of sparkling orange flames, and a small red glow starts flying up towards it. The one on the right is wielding a staff, and it taps it on the ground, causing the skin of the three hyperboreans to be covered in a thick layer of ice. Magnus quickly understands what it was doing: mitigating the weakness to fire their species is known for. However, Adriana's gigantic sun appears in front of it, and seemingly starts melting its spell slowly but surely. After seeing that, Magnus focuses back onto his initial target, knowing that his allies were handling the other giants. Or rather, he now focused on his targets, since the dragon was now standing in front of him. He assumes a boxing stance, and the intensity of the flames on his left hand increases. The dragon lunges towards him, an aura of frost gathering around its claws before it strikes. Magnus jumps about fifteen meters up and then dashes down using his flames after the dragon passes by him, landing on its neck.

- "What's up ! Think you could stop interfering ?"

The dragon roars in response and starts thrashing, attempting to get Magnus off of its body. The giant behind them raises his greatsword once more and strikes down, and Magnus quickly understands that he doesn't have the firepower to counter this attack quickly enough. Instead, he focuses a large amount of flames into his hands and releases them at once, creating an explosion that propels him about twenty meters away from the sword's trajectory alongside with the dragon, damaging the both of them in the process (5 K Fire at base). The dragon seems to be weak to fire, like the rest of the region's fauna, and Magnus notices this.

- "Hey, how about you take me up to your master unless you want me to do that again ?" He nonchalantly says as the flames from his left hand gain in intensity once more.

The dragon takes a look at the rift in the ice left by the giant's second attack and realizes that it probably would've died too. It silently takes off and starts flying up towards the giant's head.

- "There we go !" Magnus happily laughs as he punches towards the giant's right knee with his left hand, sending forward a massive wave of flames. The ice on its knee melts, and the giant's right leg is completely engulfed in flames (20 K Fire, x5 = 100 K due to its size).

The giant bellows and opens its mouth, breathing down an enormous wave of cold down towards Magnus and the dragon. Magnus answers with another wave of flames, clashing with the frost produced by the giant for a few seconds. Magnus kept it going, but he could feel his magical energy rapidly depleting while the giant showed no signs of slowing down.

- "Keep going up with all you've got !" He shouts to the dragon as the heat produced by the flame on his left hand became so potent it was almost unbearable, increasing the power of his oversized flamethrower.

The dragon roars and starts pushing forward with all its might, fighting back against the force generated by the giant's breath. After thirty seconds of struggling, they break through the attack, and they make it about twenty meters above the head of the giant, who looks up to them while raising his greatsword.

- "Thanks for the help !" Magnus jumps off the neck of the dragon, which he had slightly burned due to him holding onto it with his right hand while it was on fire. "You should get away, this next one's gonna hurt for real !"

As he says that while he's falling, his aura of flames appears, and rapidly gains in intensity while he's falling as it mixes with the fire on his left hand. A layer of frost appears around the giant's blade, emitting large amounts of magical energy as he strikes Magnus with an overhead swing. A flash of light occurs upon impact, and the giant is surprised to see his sword partially melt and Magnus fall towards him like a meteor, covered in sky blue flames. He lands on the giant's nose, causing it to violently burn as the hyperborean roars in pain.

- "Close call ! Gotta thank Cassandra later for that technique !" Magnus shouts, as the flames run over his skin without leaving a single burn.

The skin of the giant was even colder than the air, but Magnus' blue flames seemed to counteract its effects for the time being. The giant starts clawing at its face to remove Magnus, but he holds on tight. He expands his fire aura to prevent the giant from touching him, but it doesn't seem to care about the health of its hands as it still powers through it and strikes Magnus, almost crushing him under the weight (30 K Physical). Due to the pressure, he could feel his bones cracking, and he could tell he wouldn't last more than thirty seconds. Magnus gets upright and mobilizes all of his strength to push against the giant, managing to slightly repel its hand and burning through its flesh.

- "HAHAHAHAHA !" Magnus' laugh echoes through the glacier as his flames glow brightly. He knew that he ran out of time, and his fire started incinerating his skin again.

After learning from Cassandra over the past few months, he knew he could use his blue flames for about twenty seconds without any drawbacks save for magical energy consumption. Anything past that and he loses control again, and he starts being devoured alive by the fire. However, he wasn't done just yet.

- "IF I'M DYING, WHY DON'T YOU FOLLOW ME TO HELL ?!" Magnus yells with a demented smile as he raises his flame's output to levels he had never tried to reach before.

On the outside, Theo was watching the battle from a distance. He had been shielding Sol and Xenon from the colossal waves of frost the giants were creating, along with the decrease in temperature that was seemingly originating from the dragon fighting Magnus. The latter seemed completely unaffected, most likely due to the sheer strength of the magic he was using to shield himself from the cold. At some point, he saw Magnus, riding the dragon, and landing on the giant's face before getting crushed as the giant slapped its face with its hand. Theo was afraid it was over, but then he witnessed a sight that looked straight out of the Underworld. A blue inferno was consuming the giant's hand and head, reducing its flesh to ashes and exposing bones. Its head was in fact burning so thoroughly that it was reduced to a skull lit in blue fire.

The giant falls to its knees as it dies (2.4 million Fire damage after natural weakness and extra damage from hitting the head, which is a weak point), and Magnus loses consciousness. His flames are extinguished, and he falls from the hyperborean's face. From his position, Theo hurls forward a circular platform of glass to catch him, but he knew the chances of his spell making it in time before Magnus picked up too much speed were very slim. However, he sees the dragon that Magnus was riding earlier dive down towards him and pick him up before he hits the ground, and he is relieved albeit confused as to why that dragon was helping him. Adriana and Cassandra, on their end, were having a cataclysmic battle with the hyperborean shaman. They had the upper hand, and it's all because Morgana warned them against those types of giants before: they are experts at Ice magic, are a lot smarter than your average hyperborean and excel at supporting other Ice magic users. This is why Cassandra picked Adriana to fight it, since Adriana's fighting style was extremely disruptive to anything struggling against heat based magics. They managed to drag the fight about a hundred meters away using Cassandra's massive explosions to steer the giant, and were now doing battle in the middle of multiple craters in the glacier formed by Cassandra and giant ice spikes emerging from the ground that the shaman used to attack. Adriana's sun was floating not too far away from the giant, forcing it to move all the time and preventing it from casting spells requiring a long focus time to avoid colliding with said sun and probably dying. From time to time, massive streams of orange plasma would erupt from the sun and sear the giant, evaporating its ice armor. On their side, Morgana and Sophia were struggling a lot more to defeat their foe. The hyperborean was wielding a spear, and was every bit as dangerous as the one Magnus was fighting. For every swing of its spear, Morgana would do her best to block it with a sixty meter long spear made of draconic flames that she was controlling, closely resembling the one she normally wielded at a smaller size. She was absolutely bleeding magical energy doing this, and she counterattacked when she could with a twenty meter tall bow made of the same sparkling orange flames forming her spear, draining even more of her energy for every arrow that she fired. At the start, Sophia hitched a ride onto an arrow and was shot towards the giant's chest in a kind of combined attack that they came up with a few days earlier. It wasn't very efficient at dealing damage, but it definitely got Sophia in close range.

Eventually, after Sophia destroyed enough of the layer of ice covering the chest of the giant with her repeated attacks, Morgana starts charging a shot that was seemingly more powerful than all the previous ones, flames gathering around the center of the bow. Sophia sees this from above, and she jumps off from her position, grabbing onto the handle of Morgana's giant spear. The latter releases her arrow, causing a devastating explosion of flames reminiscent of Cassandra's stronger spells, that completely engulfs the giant in its blast. It dies on the spot (80 K after weakness times 6 due to size = 480 K) and Sophia gets down from the spear, landing next to Morgana before the latter deactivates her spells and loses her balance due to her lack of magical energy. Sophia catches her and they nod to each other in approval. Eventually, Cassandra and Adriana defeat their giant, who succumbs to their unrelenting assault, and the group gathers up next to the tree after Theo joins up with them, along with Sol and Xenon.

- "Good work out there !" Cassandra enthusiastically says.

- "Yay ! Go team !" Adriana adds, holding a chunk of ice from the tree.

- "Seems like you didn't struggle much." Sophia comments.

- "That's because we're just that awesome !" Cassandra replies.

- "Where's Magnus ?" Morgana asks.

- "Oh about him." Theo replies. "He's with the dragon over there."

- "Say what ?" Cassandra asks, confused.

They turn, and they see the dragon, a few dozen meters away from them, shielding Magnus from the cold with its wings. Well at least what they assumed was Magnus, given how unrecognizable he was. Cassandra's face distorts in horror and she rushes towards the dragon, quickly followed by Morgana and Adriana. The dragon hisses when they get closer, and Cassandra begins forming a small fireball in her hand.

- "I don't think it means any harm." Theo intervenes. "It saved Magnus from a fall that would've been fatal."

- "Hey… guys…" Magnus weakly says. His voice was unrecognizable too, most likely because his vocal chords were affected by the flames that consumed his body and left him as little more than a charred mass on the glacier's floor.

- "Magnus !! It IS you ! How are you even talking ?!" Cassandra screams.

- "He needs to be healed quickly, he's going to die soon." Morgana says. "Sol can cure burns, ask him."

- "He barely even understands Greek…" Adriana says as she turns towards him. "Sol, can you please heal Magnus ?"

Sol simply stares up at her and smiles, and Adriana turns back to Morgana with a defeated expression. They then hear a rumbling sound in the distance, before a familiar loud voice reaches them.

- "I bit off a bit more than I could chew ! We're taking off, class !"

They turn to see Nova flying towards them, sweating bullets. She was being chased by about a hundred furious hyperboreans, all weapons drawn and some shamans hurling giant stalactites of ice in her direction, that she was barely dodging. When landing, said stalactites were shattering mountaintops and digging crevices in the glacier. Nova finally reaches them and a veil of red flames envelops all of them before they are all propelled into the air by a giant disk made of that fire.

The hyperboreans keep pelting spells and projectiles at them while yelling things that probably weren't very nice, and their disk eventually flies far enough away.

- "Phew ! I knew it was a bad idea to attack a hyperborean village, man these guys are tough !" Nova comments.

- "And you still did it ?!" Cassandra exclaims. "Anyways, more importantly ! Heal Magnus ! He's almost dead !"

- "Magnus ? He- Oh." Nova flaps her wings in Magnus' direction, and his skin is slowly restored back to its normal state by her golden flames.

Cassandra gasps as she sees Magnus' eyeballs seemingly regrowing, indicating that they had been completely incinerated. His hair also returns, and eventually after ten minutes, which is infinitely longer than any healing Nova normally performs, he sits upright.

- "Oh I thought I was gonna die ! Thanks guys !" he joyfully says.

- "You fucking imbecile !" Cassandra yells. "I knew you'd do something crazy again ! Stop worrying me like that !"

- "Sorry !" He has an awkward chuckle.

- "Magnus, don't do that again." Morgana adds, seemingly relieved.

- "No promises, but I'll try not to !"

Cassandra goes to help him up and hugs him.

- "You keep throwing your life away like there isn't anyone who'd care if you died. Stop that, or I'll personally go reclaim your soul from the Underworld like Orpheus did, just to kill you again." she says.

- "Scary !" Magnus replies with a nervous laugh.

- "Can I have my turn now ?" Adriana asks as she moves Cassandra to the side and slaps Magnus at the back of the head. "Just ask for help ! I'm sure Cassandra or me, or even Theo could've done something to prevent you from doing whatever you did ! We'll talk about this over a cup of tea when we come back !"

- "Ouch ! Haha, alright, I get it !" Magnus replies, massaging his neck.

- "Huh ?" Sophia notes. "What do you mean ouch ?"

- "It…" Magnus pauses, seemingly realizing. "It really hurts ?..."

- "What did you do to him ?" Sophia turns to Nova to ask her. "Adriana isn't even that physically strong, how come this harmed him ? I or he normally can't even feel small attacks like these."

Nova sighs before fully turning towards them.

- "There's only so much I can do with my transfer of life force. He burned up his magic circuits with whatever attack got him in that state, to deal as much damage as possible. I hope it was worth it, because you're never using magic again, Magnus. On top of that, since most things derive their superhuman abilities from the magical energy circulating inside their body, you will just be as strong as a regular human."

The entire group falls silent after that, and eventually Cassandra speaks up.

- "That's… that can't be true !" she yells. "If only I didn't let him fight this giant alone…" she grits her teeth and clenches her fists.

- "...I might as well be dead ! Kill me !" Magnus emptily laughs.

- "There has to be a way to heal him. I'm sure of it." Morgana affirms.

- "If only I hadn't been in the backlines…" Theo comments.

- "Then who would've protected the kids ?..." Adriana replies. "If anything, I should've noticed sooner and helped him…"

- "That's… simply not true." Sophia says while staring at Nova.

- "...Haha, you got me ! That's what I would've said if we didn't have an amazing doctor back on campus. Plus, even if we didn't, I'm sure a witch could fix you up with some magic circuits she harvested from some monster that had the same magic as you." Nova replies.

Everyone turns to her, and Cassandra is staring daggers at Nova.

- "I don't think I appreciate the joke." she coldly whispers.

- "Sorry it was too tempting ! Also, it probably got you to reflect on all of your mistakes. If I didn't say that, you probably would've kept going the same way you were and eventually get yourselves killed whenever you're confronted with a real situation. Imagine if that happened to him while you were stranded, without help. He would never be able to regenerate from this, and would probably die in ten minutes. And since he's you guys' most experienced fighter excluding Sophia, you'd probably all die eventually ! That was your lecture for the day, now I'm just going to focus on our trajectory. Also, we're being chased by some dragon, it'd be nice if one of you could take care of it in the next hour. I'm kinda running low on magical energy here !"

They all keep arguing with Nova who keeps laughing it off, all except Magnus who walks towards the back of the burning disk. The flames weren't hot, just warm to the touch, but those at the back were actually emitting serious amounts of heat. He then sees the figure in the distance.

- "Oh it's you." he turns towards the rest of the group. "Nova, can we slow down ? It's probably here for me !"

- "Oh ? You're sure ? You know you can't fight right ?" she replies.

- "Yes !"

- "Alright, I'm not liable for anything that happens to you !"

The disk slows down, and they all see that dragon that saved Magnus earlier, struggling to keep up with them. It finally makes it to the disk and lands next to Magnus.

- "Hey ! You're here for revenge ?" Magnus asks, and the dragon shakes its head before producing a series of sounds from its throat, shifting the temperature around it ever so slightly. "Oh, you just wanna tag along to escape the hyperboreans ? Sure thing !"

- "You speak the language of dragons ?!" Cassandra asks, shocked.

- "Hmm ? Yeah, I'm fluent in fire, ice, wind and infernal Draconic."

- "How ??"

- "How do you think I got Flame magic ?"

- "Dragons speak multiple languages ?" Morgana asks. "I didn't understand anything this dragon said."

- "Yeah, you gotta learn them though !" Magnus replies. "Fire and ice dragons communicate using slight temperature changes, so you gotta keep up ! It helps if you know their magic or a variant of it !"

- "That's… weird at best. Most people can't understand dragons even while knowing that, since their language is so complex. Even Morgana over there would take years to learn fire dragon language, unless she was raised… by dragons…" Cassandra seems to connect the pieces of the puzzle. "You were raised by dragons !"

- "Who knows !"

- "Don't just brush it off ! How did you even survive that ?! Is that why your physical capabilities are off the charts ?"

- "Probably ! I don't know much about it though, I was really young !"

- "That, or you're withholding information again."

- "Haha !" He laughs it off.

- "Ugh. Have I ever told you that you piss me off ?"

- "About fifty two times !"

- "Make it fifty three !"

Nova makes a series of low pitched sounds in Magnus' direction, and he answers with the same type of sounds, small flames dancing around his right index finger. She has a look of surprise.

- "Oh he's telling the truth. He even speaks infernal Draconic !"

- "What did you say ?" Theo asks.

- "I said: If you can speak infernal draconic, reply yes in fire draconic."

- "And I did !" Magnus adds.

- "Nova, you're an infernal dragon ?" Morgana asks.

- "Yep ! I thought you guys had it figured out by now, with the life force manipulation and all." Nova replies.

- "I thought you guys realized too." Sophia comments. "Her flames are identical to mine."

- "That makes sense to be honest." Cassandra replies. "Anyways Magnus, we can talk about your origins later. What are you planning to do with that thing ?" She points to the dragon.

- "I'm keeping him !" Magnus answers.

- "At the mansion ?..."

- "Yep !"

- "You better clean up after it and make sure it doesn't break anything, or I'm turning it to dragon flavored dust."

- "Haha, that's not nice ! I think you upset him !"

- "Huh ? Wh-" Cassandra is interrupted by the dragon reaching down and chewing on her hat. "My hat !!! Tell it to stop !" she yells as she pointlessly struggles to keep a hold of the hat.

- "Right ! Erm… Titus ! Stop, she's a friend !" The dragon stops, and releases the now grime covered hat.

- "Titus ?" Cassandra asks as she cleans her hat. "You just came up with that name ?"

- "Yep ! He makes me think of someone I used to know."

- "Hmmm. By the way, I thought you couldn't use magic anymore for the time being, or at least that's what Nova said. But you still used it earlier to talk to Nova didn't you ? How does that work ?"

- "Oh it's simple !" Magnus waves his hand in Cassandra's direction and a small floating flame slowly makes its way towards her and dissipates upon reaching her, not really doing any damage. "This was my maximum output !"

- "Oh seriously ?"

- "I wish it was a joke, hahaha ! All I'm good for is lighting campfires !"

- "Well that sucks. At least you'll get some time to reflect on your behavior !"

- "Stop hammering the nail in the coffin !"