Lily x Harold

The energy in the room brought Lily to her knees literally. To be in a place that everything she had been taught told her was a source of great evil and corruption, and for that place to resonate with her new magics was terrifying.

She had always taken the utmost care of her soul, some of her peers accused her of caring over much for it, and in this moment in the presence of a Demoness she felt keenly the sin that had set her on this path. Before this moment a part of her harbored the idea that her sin had not been so bad, but hearing the marks it left in her soul sing in harmony with the evil in the room around her drove that thought away.

"Holy saint by thy grace'

She mumbled, words distantly reached her, but her soul must be protected from this her greatest test of faith and will

'Lead me through this fire, to find my place in the protection of your arms."

She glances up as metal strikes metal, Shiro and the Commander clash as the Commander shouts something. The men behind her leap to join the fight, Ezma intercepting the knife fighter with a delicate rapier.

Lily hesitates a moment, surely this is a test too. Even if it is not it would be at worst Shiro and the Commander physically resolving their differences…Right?

The big man, Harold, charges Lily throws up a barrier in front of him. He is still a citizen of the Holy kingdom and Lily will be the princess of the Kingdom again one day. 
She cannot put her soul in further jeopardy by killing one of her people.

Harold brings himself up short of the barrier and stabs it with his dagger, the metal crumbles and rusts in seconds. Lily flinches at the sound and smell of the contact, not pleased that her new magics made this her least lethal option.

Harold took a step to the side, seeing that the barrier was only as wide as his arm span. 

With concentration Lily slid the barrier along in front of him, to which he responded with a juke in the opposite direction. Lily barely reacted in time to keep him from slipping past.

Harold Quarrysafe focused, many of the nobility, old and new, looked down upon his family. 

They were new to politics, and having made their fortune off of mining made them barely better than the miners they employed in the eyes of many, and an apparent affinity for earth magics only served to reinforce that prejudice. 

What the family never told anyone was that their gift was not exactly earth magic. Sure there were plenty of strong earth mages in the family and it proved useful in a fight and in the numerous quarries they ran, but their true strength lay elsewhere.

The Quarrysafes could see weakness. The average Quarrysafe could only manifest this as a knack for knowing where, and sometimes when a wall, a beam, a bridge would give out. 

Among the upper members of the family, and Harold particularly, it could be used to see how a person or event could break. His sister and father used this in politics to great advancement for the whole family, Harold in a street brawl as a teen had discovered it could be used in a fight.

Once he had a few years of black ops under his belt he found he could now see, not just the physical weaknesses that would win a fight, like a leg with an old injury or how many strokes it would take a sword arm to weaken and slow, but also the words he could use to create lethal hesitations.

He grinned, this woman holding a corrosive magic in-front of him was from the Kingdom, even without his gift the hesitations the clergy fostered for such moments were potent.

Harold took another couple side steps, slower so Lily could keep up but not so slow as to invite suspicion, ending the movement close enough that she could hear him easily.

"Are you really siding with the demon your highness?' he crooned 'I do not make it to court much but I was always amazed by the stories of the holy princess untainted by sin, and when I saw you the first time at a party I knew they had to be true.'

His tone changed to hold shock,

'I was so surprised when I was told a defiler was traveling with the Hero. Then I saw you and thought that it had to be some kind of mistake. Lily the saintly princess surly would have done nothing to warrant such a fall from grace."

He shifted tones once again, this time filling his words with bitter accusation,

 
"I watched, to see if I was wrong, or if maybe some corrupt priest had falsely credited to you sin. I saw how the 'Hero' made you do things, blasphemous things not obviously as we were camping on our way to Dawnwall, but still small corrupting looks and requests."

Lily's barrier wavered, 

Harold pressed "I cannot imagine what… Debauchery he lead you to preform while in the wood, all alone without a protector.' 

His voice no better than an whispered insinuation, anger starting to flare in Lily, but this was the moment his gift told him,

 
"What a shame that the only reason you were such a holy princesses was because you had been kept safely away from all temptations and at the first one you folded."

Harold smiled a wicked grin as the barrier fizzled away and he resumed his charge. Returning his attention to the battle field around him he was brought up short.

The Commander fell into the water, 

Leopold was suddenly impaled and crab food before said crab leapt upon the Hero, razor sharp claw getting caught in the net above and delaying the strike that should have killed the Hero.

The net wrapped itself around the pincer as the crab pulled itself free with a mighty heave. Rope and wood fragments bursting from the walls.

The net which kept the birds out of this part of the sanctuary.

The birds that were upset at just unwelcome visitors

The birds with a taste for Harold already

He turned to flee, using his earth magic to reach for something to help him

In a tree

on a lake

Far from stone and earth

Harold Screamed.