Kosmos: The Witch

That day, Morgana and Cassandra went out to hunt some of the animals in the forest, which they had been using as their source of food for two days now. They had established a small camp with tents made of branches and leaves next to the volcano, and every day two people would go out to hunt and one would stay back to keep the camp safe. They also discovered that Magnus had amazing cooking skills, and his dishes were probably among the best she's had ever since she left her mother's laboratory. It is around noon, and Magnus is bored out of his mind, juggling with the two magic cores to entertain himself until he sees a very discrete light at the corner of his eye. He turns just in time to deflect the fireball with the back of his hand, and his smile widens as he turns to see the source of the attack. It was a group of ten witches and mages, seemingly led by a mage holding a staff and surrounded by floating flames. He had brown hair and eyes, and was wearing a hood and elaborate red and gold mage robes, with glowing rings drawn onto it.

Magnus assumes he fired the attack, since the other mages were only assuming combat positions with their wands and staves.

- "Hey ! You're looking for a fight ?" Magnus excitedly asks as his hands instantly burst in flames and he lets the cores fall to the ground.

- "We're just looking for these." the mage points at the cores. "Give them away peacefully and we'll leave you alone, we know your group is not here to help you."

- "Haha ! Aren't you supposed to get them yourself ?"

- "They never said we couldn't get it from other teams."

- "You make a very good point ! How many cores do you guys have ?"

- "You really think you can take us ? You're-"

- "Too slow, hahaha !"

Magnus propels himself towards the nearest witch of the group and delivers a devastating uppercut to her jaw, taking her by surprise and sending her flying into a tree, almost knocking her unconscious due to the force of the blow (15 K Fire). The other group members immediately begin casting fireball spells in his direction.

- "That's the weakness of spellcasters like you !" Magnus scoffs as they release their attacks.

He spins with his hands extended outwards, surrounding himself in a ring of flames. The volley of fireballs crashes into it, and they are all deflected to the side.

- "You talk too much !" he finishes, before dashing at the nearest mage from the group, igniting his leg and kicking him in the stomach, which sends him flying back about 30 meters ( 22.5 K Fire ).

- "He's fast ! Keep your distance !" the leader yells to his group.

He then waves his staff, and extends his hand towards Magnus. He barely sees it, but he notices small silky threads being projected from the mage's hand and wrap around his leg before they burst into flames at an incredible speed. He tries to quickly burn them before the flames spread to him, but it surprisingly doesn't seem to work and the flames reach him, setting his entire body on fire (5 K Fire). He overpowers the fire with his own, covering himself in shining orange flames, but the damage is already done. The rest of the group runs away in different directions, taking cover behind trees while the witch that got flung into a tree is desperately struggling to get down. The heat of the flame covering his left hand drastically increases in intensity, and he punches in the air, towards a part of the group attempting to get some distance. His punch is followed by a massive wave of fire spreading in a very wide 50 meter long cone. They all attempt to defend, and their defensive spells clash with Magnus' attack before getting completely destroyed. They are hit by the flames they didn't manage to stop (10 K Fire). A few of the group members start panicking after this show of strength.

- "Drop the single target spells, it's too easy for him to defend against them ! Switch to large scale ones !" the leader yells.

- "Oh you noticed ? You're interesting !" Magnus comments.

The mages seem to get a hold of themselves and gather large quantities of flames around them before showering Magnus with meteors of fire. He performs three spins in extremely quick succession, creating three domes of flames around him stacked on top of each other. The meteors crash down, destroying them but he manages to mitigate a lot of the force that they originally had when they hit him, and his aura of flames seems to be absorbing some of the damage (45 K Fire, 10 K after all mitigation). Magnus arbors a demented grin as he increases the intensity of the flame on his left hand even further before punching into the ground under him, creating a circular wave of fire that spreads outwards at a terrifying speed, leveling the forest and turning most trees to ashes in a 100 meter radius. The remaining mages attempt to defend, but the flames are too powerful and the heat makes them lose consciousness, all of them collapsing to the ground besides their leader, with five of the six rings on his robes having lost their glow (30 K Fire). Some of them are actually immediately surrounded by red flames, protecting them from lethal amounts of heat, and are shot into the sky towards the campus. Magnus wipes a trickle of blood at the side of his mouth before turning towards the leader of the mages, now alone and surrounded by burning vegetation, smoke and ashes, and his smile widens even more.

- "So, how many cores do you guys have ?" he asks again.

The mage takes a step back, a shiver running through his spine, and Magnus takes this opportunity to dash towards him, intending to strike him with his right hand. However, he is stopped by an invisible force, and realizes slightly too late that he got caught in the thrill of battle and forgot to pay attention to what the leader was doing. He is caught in a web of those almost invisible silky threads, which wrap around him. They were so resistant he couldn't break it with his physical strength, and they seemed to be impervious to his flames. The mage looks down at him as he falls to the ground.

- "That's the weakness of meatheads like you. You don't think about your enemy's next move." he snaps his fingers and the threads light on fire, with flames way more intense than the first time Magnus was hit by them, eating away at the veil of fire burning around his entire body like the two spells were clashing.

He then starts backing away as fast as he can, making sure to keep Magnus within his sight.

- "That spell that covers you in flames also absorbs external sources of heat to some capacity…" he says as he's walking towards the camp, which was spared from Magnus' large-scale attack. "It's powerful but not invincible, you'll just slowly burn at that rate."

He rapidly picks up the cores from the ground where Magnus left them before turning back towards him to watch him, as he was still silently burning and trying to free himself.

- "I'm not one for torture, so if you want I can just finish you off quickly to fail you, if you don't defend. Realistically, you don't have enough power to burn my threads, they're highly fire resistant." he says.

- "Hahaha !" Magnus' laugh echoes throughout the battlefield.

- "And you're laughing. Well alright, burning it is. I'll just stay as far as I physically can, and wait until it's done."

- "You really leave me no choice ! Well played, I like you !"

As he says that, the heat of Magnus' flames starts to rise to insane levels, to the point where the ground under him starts to rapidly melt. The most striking change is that the color of his fire rapidly changes from a bright orange to a pure sky blue, and the strings restraining him burn up almost immediately. He then lunges towards the mage at lightning speed, going through what seems to be two other thread traps that the mage laid just in case he would free himself, which both burn instantly. He strikes the mage, who attempts to defend with a barrier of kneaded burning strings, but Magnus' punch goes right through it and hits him in the face, dealing catastrophic damage (45 K Fire). He notices something he couldn't see before: the last glowing ring on the mage's robes absorbs a significant portion of his flames before it loses its glow, just like the five other ones (6 K damage cut). The mage manages to stay conscious thanks to this, even though he's barely hanging on. He notices that Magnus was breathing heavily, like he was about to collapse, and he decides to run since stalling out his magical energy was his best bet. He projects another thread from his hand, which shoots towards the only tree that was, weirdly enough, completely spared from the massive attack from earlier, just like the camp of Magnus' group was. He doesn't question it, and the thread rapidly retracts, pulling him towards the tree at high speeds. Magnus quickly reacts to this and leaps towards him, following him at an even higher speed. His blue fire goes out as he is right above the mage, and he delivers a powerful kick to his head that sends him crashing into the ground. The mage rolls on the floor until he hits the trunk of the tree, unconscious, and Magnus hits the same trunk as he didn't have enough magical energy left to divert his course. He manages to remain conscious, with blood dripping from his forehead after the impact, and he painfully walks towards the mage, laying on the roots of the tree. His smile disappears.

- "You were a memorable adversary. I apologize for taking you lightly at the beginning of our battle, and I pray to Ares that you will forgive me for this transgression." his usual smile reappears after that. "I'm still taking this back though !" he says as he recovers one of the cores that the mage picked up from the ground in their camp, leaving the other one in his robes.

- "Magnus ! What the hell happened ?!" he hears from behind him, along with two sets of footsteps. It was Cassandra, running towards him with Morgana, dragging the corpse of a deer behind them.

- "We saw explosions. At the camp. So we ran back." Morgana adds.

- "Hey ! I just had a great fight, they were trying to take our cores."

- "Wait you…" she looks around, staring at all the unconscious mages and noticing the red lights rising in the sky, synonymous with people that had been taken out. "By yourself ?! That had to be around ten mages !"

- "Yeah it wasn't easy but I pulled through !" He laughs while covered in burns and cauterized wounds.

- "I knew you were a freak but this is too much…" Cassandra comments before looking at Magnus' hand. "Wait, where's the other core ?"

- "He gets to keep it !"

- "Say what ?"

- "I don't want this guy to fail, I want to see how far he can go so we can have a rematch later !"

- "Normally I'd refuse but you did do all of this alone, so it's already good that we get to keep one of the cores."

- "Thanks for being so understanding !" they all hear a loud cracking noise as a branch from the tree they were under snaps, and the witch that was flung into a tree at the beginning of the skirmish falls with it, covered in leaves. Magnus, despites his extreme fatigue, reacts faster than Morgana and Cassandra and jumps to the side to catch her mid air before she hits the ground. "Hup. Close one, haha !"

The witch looks at him, with a mix of fear and confusion.

- "Why did you spare the tree I was in ?..." she asks.

- "You tried to hide right after you got hit and I started getting serious, so I figured you didn't want to fight after all ! I don't attack noncombatants, that's for cowards !"

- "You.. saw I was still there ?"

- "Obviously ! You need to pay attention to all your potential enemies ! Well that did almost cost me the fight since I wasn't paying enough attention to your leader, but oh well I still won, so it's fine hahahaha !"

- "Please, I don't want to fail… Don't kill me…" the witch sobs.

- "Huh ? What are you talking about ? I told you already, I've got no interest in noncombatants. Just walk away, shoo shoo !" he puts the witch down and gently gives her a push towards the volcano. "Also stop crying, that's a luxury that should be exclusive to winners !"

The witch arbors a very confused expression before she seems to make up her mind and starts walking around the volcano, looking for the river of lava that leads to the massive lava cavern under the volcano that they escaped from a few days ago.

- "Well that happened." Cassandra comments.

- "They have no cores." Morgana says as she comes back, after checking the unconscious bodies of the remaining mages.

- "I figured ! They were probably patrolling around the volcano looking for cores to steal from other groups !" Magnus replies.

- "I thought about doing that to be honest, but that's just scummy. It's technically allowed, but I don't like stealing." Cassandra says.

- "Stealing is bad." Morgana comments.

- "Thank you for your input, Morgana."

- "No problem."

- "The fact that you don't understand sarcasm pisses me off."

- "What's sarcasm ?"

- "So, are the lesser nature spirits in all of those trees and plants dead ?" Cassandra asks, completely disregarding Morgana's question.

- "No. They will be reborn. Create new plants. Rapidly grow. They will be protected. By the powerful spirits. In the trees."

- "You mean the dryads ?"

- "Yes that's their name. The trees that survived. Are trees with dryads."

- "That makes sense actually, explains how forests can still exist despites some monsters being walking disasters."

- "Or Magnus fighting people."

- "Hahahaha !" Magnus laughs in response.

- "Magnus you laugh way too much, it also pisses me off." Cassandra says. "Go rest up, you look worse than me after I was skewered by those unicorns, it's kind of sad to look at."

- "Haha, in that case I'll be in your care !" Magnus almost immediately passes out, and he will only wake up the next day.