Mother Nature

Down the sapped channel came a roaring tunnel of fire. It engulfed everything it touched. There were horrible, horrible screams of agony… then silence. Through the tunnel emerged the armored man, followed by Millim. 

Millim had quickly turned the defensive copse into a bonfire cage. She glared daggers at Ariana. It was clear that neither held regard for the lives of her comrades. They were as lions treading upon ants. 

The armored man glanced at Millim. “You still think you can match the Witch of the Wood?”

Millim scoffed. “All that effort and she didn’t kill a single one of them… she’s not a threat, she doesn’t have the spine.”

“You forget she slaughtered the entire Blackleaf Clan.”

“Worthless elven sneak thieves. Any of our breed could have done that.”

Ariana stomped down on a burning branch, snapping and snuffing it. It was time to play the part, monster to monster.

She stepped forward toward the two. "I've chosen this place to plant a forest, one where every life is to be protected, and here you are... spitting on the mercy I chose to give you and your men."

She swiped to the side of Millim, where another of her engorged light motes waited for harvest. "Reaping." Millim flinched. Ariana's hand rose to the air upon gaining the surge of magic. "Churning." The area around them whipped into a frenzied snowstorm, snuffing the inferno entirely. 

Ariana channeled as much ire and loathing as she could muster from all of the moments that hurt her most in this world. The Witch of the Wood should have that look when facing enemies, she thought. "That was the second time I allowed you to live. There will not be a third if you disrespect the law of my forest one more time." 

Millim seethed and glowered. Ariana took this moment to review her skills list for something useful. She didn't scroll very far into the list because she needed something fast. She grabbed the first thing alphabetically that caught her eye: Animate. She remembered a story about a wizard's apprentice and a shovel... or was it a mop... regardless, some planty minions sounded like a thing a witch would have; it was good enough. She grabbed a pumpkin seed from her satchel and started pumping magic into it with plans to animate it. 

Millim roared out. "NO! I REFUSE! I DON'T CARE WHO YOU THINK YOU ARE, WHO THAT COWARD THINKS YOU ARE, WHO ANYONE THINKS YOU ARE!" Her hands ignited and clasped over her head. "THE TEN HELLS!!" 

Almost in that instant, the sky blackened as red lightning surged up out of her body into the swirling clouds. 

Ariana wasn't going to stand around and wait for whatever she was doing to kill everyone. "Reaping!" She swiped along where Millim stood, and reality split with a flash... but there was a metallic clang as the armored man's hand was outstretched. His armor glowed a forboding red. His voice echoed. "Rejection." 

All colors inverted, and Ariana felt as if something sharp had dragged through her. She fell back, unsure of what had happened. 

It hurt.

It hurt so much. 

Sophie, Ellie, Hayden, and Alvin all shouted her name. She could see them rushing to her side.

As much as it hurt where she was cut, she didn't feel anything else. 

She felt herself fading. 

Sophie, Hayden, and Alvin all huddled over her, flooding as much healing magic as they could into her. Ellie, brave Ellie, stood with her back to them and her knife held forward toward Millim and the armored man. All of the soldiers stood ready and formed a barricade.

This wasn't the first time that Ariana had felt herself slipping away. It was more common for her than she would have preferred... she was never sure if she would pull through when it happened. She thought back on those times. She had thrown herself into the jaws of White Tusk, and she'd survived the poison in the forest. 

She hadn't been struck by an attack like this before, nothing this direct. It cut deep into her soul and practically split her existence in half. She couldn't sense anything physically, but she could feel through the magic that there was a piece removed from her. 

She could... feel through the magic...

Her fingers curled weakly into the ground under her. 

She closed her eyes and focused hard on the flow of magic with what consciousness remained. 

She could feel it. She could sense it all around them. She could perceive the flow within the ground, within the other half of her, within her allies, and within the two demon enemies. The energy within one of them was red and surging. They were drawing a lot of power from within themselves. Whatever they were casting, it might have worked like Churning, where it didn't stop until she ran out of magic. If that were true, the thing they were casting would be unleashed soon.

She had developed a method of harvesting the energy from the flow safely; she recalled what happened to her body when she tried tapping into it directly. If she could contact the flow, and she could direct her energy within someone else... perhaps she could tap someone else directly into the flow. They might overload like she did. 

She reached out with the last embers of awareness. She summoned a minuscule sprout of nettle that slowly drooped over the caster's heel. The sprout connected directly into the flow. She gave everything she had left to making this plant grow in a place it was never meant to grow. 

As soon as the margin of the nettle leaf grazed them, the connection was established, and all of the red energy was forced from their body to be replaced by the power of the flow. Of course, Ariana knew that it was too much, and it would keep being forced out. She couldn't perceive anything other than this, but she knew from experience that they must have been in great pain.

There was probably something poetic she could have said to better play her character, but any remaining thoughts had slipped away. 

She hoped the others were safe.