Father Briggs

Hayden stood casually next to Ariana, one hand out, palm up, as if he were waiting to be given something. 

"Now, Father Briggs," he drawled, slightly louder, "You gotta think about this situation carefully. You got your whole flock watching you square up on a bunch of Outworlders. Now, I'm no expert on Third Saint faith, but your folk and your god are the ones that brought us here, apparently. You really wanna fight us? You're essentially saying that you think your god was wrong."

The people in the church started to murmur and gasp. 

The priest gripped his staff more firmly, clearly angered. "Heathen," he spat, "How dare you presume the will of god?!" The staff began to hum in a trichord.

Hayden's hand glowed. "Whelp, hard way it is." 

The staff arced with a radiant energy. Hayden’s hand swirled with a clear white light as if it were the heart of a storm. 

Father Briggs thrust the staff forward and unleashed a stream of arcane energy. Hayden’s arm swiped off to the side in response, and the bolt was diverted with an obvious curve towards his hand. 

Hayden glanced to Ariana and Ellie. “If y’all wanna get him to stop the light show I’d be mighty grateful!” 

The two took ready stances. Ellie transformed into her crow form again and took flight towards Father Briggs. 

Ariana summoned forth more pumpkin vines and thrust them upon the priest. 

The vines smacked against some kind of invisible barrier, as did poor Ellie. She was dazed a bit, but flew back to Ariana’s shoulder.

Ariana sprouted a tent-sized pumpkin on another spring-loaded vine, then unleashed it like a ballista. It slammed hard into the barrier, and some cracks formed in the air next to Father Briggs. He flinched at this, and he tried to redirect the arc towards Ariana, but Hayden pulled his other hand up to reinforce the beam’s diversion. Hayden looked to be struggling. 

Ariana flooded the area around her with magic and sprouted five more ballistic gourds. She launched them one after another onto the forcefield, expanding the cracks further. Father Briggs chanted something and waved his free hand towards Ariana; a blue light radiated out, and a wall was erected. 

Ariana summoned another round of siege squash. She was starting to feel fatigued, but she was impressed that she was able to cast at this scale for this long. 

Then she remembered Mirabelle’s gift. 

With this in mind, she pumped almost all of her remaining magic into the garden of bombardment, and a dozen more “cata-pumpkins” popped up, poised to propel the prodigious pumpkin payloads. 

The entire vegetable volley was unleashed within seconds of each other, pummeling Father Briggs’ defensive measures to the brink of breaking. In this moment, Ariana hastily pulled a blue potion from her bag and choked it down, spluttering a bit as some of it went down the wrong pipe. 

She felt revitalized, and with this second wind, she poured another half of her magic into a single pumpkin seed. The power was barely contained; the seed vibrated as if straining to hold in her magic. She held it up to Ellie. “Drop this when the shields go down!” Ellie nervously took it into her beak and took flight once more. 

She again readied a volley of another dozen. 

Father Briggs seemed panicked, her took both hands to his staff to focus on the beam even more, desperately pulling to redirect. Hayden struggled to maintain his pull. His feet were dragged along as he fought the beam. The swirl of light around his hands expanded, and he grit his teeth to pull control back. “Running on fumes over here!”

Ariana threw her hands overhead and forward with a fierce scream, releasing the whole assault one after another. 

Every last one slammed into the priest’s walls, finally cracking them, with the last pumpkin slamming HARD into him. He somehow remained standing, but it was clear that the pumpkin did a number on him. 

Ellie spat out the seed; it plinked against the priest’s head, then violently expanded into a car-sized pumpkin. Father Briggs was tossed backwards by the force of it into the wall of the church, slumping down and gasping for air. 

Hayden took a knee. “Damn, he packs a punch.” 

Ariana rushed to his side with a blue potion. He took it and chugged without hesitation, then ran his arm across his mouth. ”Hah… much obliged, miss.” He pushed himself back up to his feet. “How many you got left”

Ariana focused back on the priest, readying vines to bind him. “One left on me, another nine in my bag.”

Hayden nodded. “Make ‘em count.”

Ariana sent a flurry of vines at Father Briggs, but he swung his staff wide and knocked the vines aside. He huffed and puffed as he rose back to his feet. “Vile… heretic BASTARDS!” The staff arced up again, as did his body. He planted the staff firmly into the ground before him, and a field of light spread around it. He began to chant. 

Ariana hurled more dirt clumps at him, but they fizzled into nothing as soon as they entered the field. She thrust vines at him, but they fizzled as well. 

As he chanted, a mass of energy swirled into being above him.

Ellie returned once more to Ariana’s shoulder and huddled in.

Hayden stepped closer to them. “Them vines ain’t gonna be near strong or fast enough to get past that, and no magic is solid enough. It’d take something like a bullet from back home to break through. Real nasty protection spell.” 

Ariana thought a moment. “Bullet…” she ran through every possibility she could think of. The shape of a bullet was kind of like a seed; she tried to imagine a seed with that shape. Was there any seed like that? Rounded, flat at the bottom, tapered to a point at the top, and hard… hard shell… a nut… walnut maybe, peanut, hazelnut? No, an acorn! 

She knelt down and poured magic into the ground to summon an acorn from her mind. She pulled the acorn from the earth, then reshaped it with her magic. She reinforced the shell to be stronger, thicker, and harder. She condensed the seed further, then popped the cap off of it. This level of precision and manipulation drained the majority of her remaining magic again. 

She handed it to Hayden. “H-here… can we do something with this?”

Hayden laughed and took it. “As it so happens… the skill I got when I came here is perfect for this.”

He gripped the modified acorn firmly. He produced a field of his own. Things within his field seem to have no gravity. His clothes and hair slowly swayed as if he were in a gentle current. 

The chant of Father Briggs was getting louder, and the trichord hum of his staff was almost deafening. The energy above him had amassed into an orb almost as large around as his protective field. 

Ariana had a feeling this was going to get messy. She ran to the guards that were restraining Koichi and summoned a pumpkin shell to protect herself, them, and Ellie. She also summoned one to block the door of the church. That last summon nearly rendered her unconscious. She fell to her hands and knees. Her vision blurred. 

Hayden rested the closed fist containing the acorn firmly against an open palm. He held his hands out at length. He released his grip on the acorn enough for it to float free from his hand. The index finger of the top hand extended forward, and the acorn remained suspended in the air towards the tip. It reoriented itself and aligned with his finger. 

Hayden steadied his hands and aimed. He breathed in, and as he exhaled, the world seemed to fall silent. His voice echoed into the quiet. 

“Smite.”

There was a flash of light, and Hayden slid backwards with an explosive shockwave.

The seed ripped across the short distance in less than the blink of an eye and slammed through the protective zone. It slowed as it traveled the distance, but the force refused to be diminished. 

The seed impacted the priest’s staff and split the head off from the shaft. There was a blast that sent Father Briggs into the pumpkin blocking the church doorway and shattering it. 

The energy above him lost stability and burst, blowing the roof off the church and knocking everyone around to their backs, except for those behind Ariana’s wall. The wall was instantly destroyed, and the vine tangle that all of the guards were trapped in was slammed flat to the ground.

When the dust settled, Hayden was barely still up; he collapsed to his knees again. The two guards who had restrained Koichi released him and ran to the church. “Father Briggs!” They shouted in unison.

Ellie reverted to her human form again. She rifled through Ariana’s pockets and bag. “Sorry!” She pulled out two blue potions and helped Ariana drink one. 

Koichi was left there on his knees. He was stunned to silence.

Once Ariana was back up, Ellie ran to Hayden’s side and fed him the second potion.

Ariana turned around to check on Koichi. “Are you alright?” She reached out to touch his bruised and swollen cheek. 

He smacked her hand away. She gasped and recoiled. 

Koichi’s eyes welled up a bit. “You… you really are a monster…

Ariana was hurt. “No… no, Koichi, I was trying to protect you!”

Koichi bit back. “I never needed your protection! I’m the hero, I do the protecting! You destroyed everything!”

Ariana stumbled back.

Koichi kept shouting. “I knew it… I should have known when you said to talk it out with the demon lord… I thought you were just some nice lady, look what you did!” He stood up, still crying and sniffling. “Forget you… I… I’m going to slay the demon lord! And if you try to get in my way… I’ll slay you too!”

He ran away. Ariana felt as though a sword had been driven through her heart. Ellie ran back over to her. 

Ariana looked around at the scene. 

Koichi was right. The place had been ruined.

She cried.