Dark Skies

Combat kicked off much faster than Rionriv would have preferred. Still half asleep and confused, she didn't have enough information to assess their new enemy. They were angels. That was obvious to her. This meant that their magical powers were divine in nature. But even the world-lore ability she received by adding Ishara to their trio underwhelmed her. The encyclopedic knowledge she had been given on the divine was minimal, raising the question of how much Ishara knew to begin with.

One thing was certain in that moment. That Ishara believed combat was the only way to proceed, based on his instinct and her mother's cryptic message to him. A thought just as unsettling as jumping into the fray without a clear picture.

"Damn it, Iz," Rionriv muttered, quickly channelling magic across her body and taking to the sky moments before the angels began their pursuit. "What is actually going on?!"

With a graceful twist of her flying form, Rionriv looked back at her pursuers. As she did, the wind whipped at the back of her head as the distance between her and the angels grew. Glancing at the flashes of combat below, Rionriv realized she was the only one putting distance between herself and the pursuers. And as she investigated the battlefield, she began to understand just how much of a disadvantage they were at.

Slipping a hand into her bottomless bag, she withdrew the arcane firearm she had been studying since relying on it so heavily in the Fliant realm. With one hand, she extended the weapon and began firing concentrated bursts of magic. Small beads of condensed arcana flew out, looking like beams of blue light ripping through the night.

Rionriv watched through the flashes of the magical machine gun as the angels dipped and dodged, rolling over the easily avoidable salvo of luminescent bolts. In response, they slashed their fiery blades, casting out arcs of purple flames that split the air before them. But their distance was too great, giving the sorceress time to avoid the strikes.

"Okay, okay," She muttered again to herself as she took her free hand and placed it atop the weapon. "Try this!"

With a flick of her fingers, the sorceress released her grip, pulling away in her free hand a shimmering, spectral image. All it had taken was concentration and a mere fragment of her power to duplicate it. To make her own arcane copy of the ancient gun Ishara spoke so highly of. Made of nothing more than elemental magic, the second weapon she held was formed of her very electric essence. 

As lightning arced over the firearm, Rionriv focused her magic into a single spot on her palm. She felt it pool and build in pressure until, finally, it reached the point where she knew it was ready. With a squeeze of her finger, she began firing quick bursts of concentrated magic behind her. As was in the beginning, the angels dodged the shots. But this time, with two weapons firing nonstop, they couldn't avoid the strikes for long. Eventually the sorceress grew accustomed to leading her foes and watched as beams of light struck the angels' armoured forms. Some pinged off the metal, while others scorched the exposed skin. 

But the strikes did little more than annoy the divine beings. And after the first dozen or more bolts made contact, the angels began using their swords to deflect the blasts.

With every bolt their flames consumed, Rionriv watched as wreathes of fire cut through the air towards her. They were divine discs of retribution lighting up the night as they scorched the sky. And even though they missed the sorceress, the attacks did not disappear. Instead, they would inevitably reach a point where they locked in place. Held aloft by some holy force. Left perpetually burning. Acting as obstacles clogging the airspace. And with each additional strike, the immolating maze grew, igniting the air above Tahvinstead in holy flames.

"Gyahh!" Rionriv growled as she clipped one of the flaming halos, hissing in reply as it burned at her thigh. "Tch! Fine, try this!"

With ears folding back in preparation for the dive, Rionriv flipped midflight. As though she were in water, her body twirled and spun as she began to loop back towards the manor. No longer was she climbing into the sky to flee her pursuers. Instead, she positioned herself to charge them. Electrical currents arced over her body as she began to pool lightning in her palm. Similar to the concentrated bolts of magic she had been firing, she focused her lightning into a single pinpoint shot.

As Rionriv finished her maneuver, now moving fast enough that the air behind the sorceress quaked at her speed, she threw aside her weapons. Instead, she would do something she had seen Ishara do. Making an L with her finger and thumb, or what her companion would call a gun, she rolled the rest of her hand into a fist. Gripping it in the palm of her other hand, she aimed at the approaching angels.

By this point, the light crackling at the tip of her finger was so bright it matched that arrow Aesandoral had fired at Kr'throc. But unlike then, this time, Rionriv had not used all her magic to fuel it. Her last semester had taught her how to properly channel her spells, and, with just a few adjustments, she could deliver a mighty blow at a fraction of the arcane cost.

With wind whipping through her hair, Rionriv smiled in the moments before she parted her lips to speak. Sapphire eyes alight with electricity as her voice escaped her mouth like a clap of thunder.

“Lightning Finger Gun!” She yelled out, bringing her thumb down with a thunderous explosion.

A dense pearl of crackling electricity shot out faster than any of the bolts before. It impacted the first angel's chest, cracking the metal breastplate before activating. In an instant, the divine being was consumed by a sphere of electricity twenty feet in diameter. For the second time that evening, night became day as the angel cried out in agony. Behind it, unable to stop their flight in time, the second angel crashed through the orb.

Both disappeared within the sphere, only to emerge from the bottom a few seconds later, charred and stunned.

With another twist of her body, Rionriv stopped her flight and held herself against the pressure of her turbulence washing over her. Floating there, she watched as the angels plummeted. Their bodies motionless and burnt beyond recognition. It was then, as the sorceress waited, holding her breath and quietly hoping they would not recover, that she felt her heart drop. The moment they were about to collide with the ground, their wings flapped back to life, and they corrected themselves. 

"Oh, come on!" Rionriv yelled, watching as the angels shook the burnt flesh from their bodies as though it were nothing more than dust. "Th-that's impossible!"

Rionriv watched as the angels glanced at each other before holding their weapons aloft. The longswords, wreathed in purple and black flames, became brighter. The light began to melt and shift as the weapons transformed into something else. In an instant, they released their forms as blades, replaced by longbows as tall as the angels themselves.

“Crap,” Rionriv muttered as she quickly scanned the battlefield, only to see how dire things were becoming. “Double crap—”

But before she could say any more, the air was knocked from her lungs. From over a thousand feet away, a flaming arrow found purchase in her gut. And as blood sprayed from her mouth, she could only watch in horror as two more raced for her chest.