Enmity

Nythana stared as the girl with defiance in her eyes radiated sinister magical energy. It was an odd thing to see a young woman in a pink ballroom dress with torrents of dark energy gathering around her. The guards sensed it as well, but they didn’t react fast enough. The girl rose to her feet as a spell circle formed at her feet, then a ferocious gust of air tore through the room, knocking every person except for the Basilisk King off their feet.  Without the ability to create a shield, Nythana was thrown to the ground as well.

“She’s fast,” Mycelium said.

“I noticed,” Nythana grunted as she fought the fabric of her dress to right herself.

The attacker shaped her dark magic into a spell circle that quickly created an arched blade of air and propelled it towards the Basilisk King.

Nythana narrowed her eyes. The girl wasn’t playing nice. The “Wind Blade” spell was a well-known spell, so she could tell that the girl’s spell was modified significantly in ways she couldn’t recognize. Still, Nythana didn’t make a move. The Basilisk King would surely have some sort of shielding spells or something to protect him from magic attacks… right?

The attack kept going, and she saw panic on the guards’ faces. Was she wrong about the defenses? She looked at the Basilisk King. She could sense that he didn't have any barriers protecting him, but he didn’t move to grab for a rod to create any. He merely watched the attack coming towards him… almost as though he was debating whether or not to let the attack land.

That simply wasn’t acceptable. If he lost his eyes or died, she would be back to hunting dark mages like a beggar living meal to meal. No way was she letting the Basilisk King die without a fight.

“Evade!” she called out.

At the sound of her voice, he reacted. He raised his arm to shield his head, but the spell was too powerful. It slashed through his hand and still had enough power to slash across his face just beneath his eyes.

The guards charged at the attacking dark mage, but she blew them all away with another rapidly conjured spell and launched slashing attacks at each of them as well. Nythana subtly put herself into the attacking range of the dark magic, taking in the attacks to replenish her life energy.

“She’s burning through life energy fast,” Mycelium said. “She’s already used five years of her life.”

The Prime Minister stood in front of the Basilisk King to try and protect him, but the attacker unleashed a furious upward gust of wind that tossed him up against ceiling and let him drop back to the ground.

“There goes another year of her life,” Mycelium commented. “She intends to kill the king even if it kills her.”

As though to prove Mycelium’s point, the girl brought together a frightful amount of dark energy. If she landed that blow, it would be fatal to the Basilisk King, but the so-called kingdom-killing tyrant was clutching his bisected hand and twitching from the pain of the cursed wounds he’d received.

With an angry click of her cheek, Nythana called on her life energy and tainted it into dark magic energy that she shaped into a spell circle. Because she’d been hit by the wide-ranged dark spells that had been casted, Nythana had just enough energy to retaliate.

“Ana, what are you doing?”

“Something stupid,” she responded.

The pink-clad assassin unleashed yet a second enormous attack at the king. As the second slash closed in on the king, Nythana thrust her hand out, and the spell circle in her hand zipped out ahead of the slashing attack. IT activated and became a large barrier that the girl’s magic impacted but couldn’t shatter. There was a stunned moment where everyone stared in disbelief from their places on the ground.

Nythana barely had any life energy left, but if she had made a big enough show of blocking the magic, she could get the attacker’s attention on her. She spread what was left of her life energy across her body just enough to keep her cells from degrading and then used what she could spare to keep her legs from giving out under her. Her vision clouded as she stopped giving her eyes enough energy to maintain their moisture.

Come on, she thought. Attack back.

She saw something move in front of her, and a blast of magic crashed into her. The magic flowed around her and quickly seeped into her body, immediately transforming into life energy. Her vision returned in full, and she saw the pink-clad assassin grit her teeth and prepare another attack.

Nythana transferred some of her life energy into dark magic and gathered it into the palm of her hand. A curse-laden slashing spell streaked at her from her opponent, and Nythana intercepted it with the chaotic glyph that she could use to start the dark magic siphon. The slashing attack dissipated into dark magic energy that spiraled into the palm of her hand, and the chaotic spell gained the spell glyphs of the girl’s spell before sending them back to her. Her body began to uncontrollably convert life energy into dark magic energy.

“What are you—?!” the dark mage in the pink dress demanded. “No! Stop!”

Nythana ignored her. The power and control the girl had demonstrated with her dark magic was something that a person couldn’t achieve on one lifetime’s worth of life energy. She’d undoubtedly sacrificed other people’s life energy to practice her spells. And to master them to the extent she had, the number of people she’d stolen life from was no small number.

“He deserves to die for what he’s done!” the girl said as her life energy was drained. “He’s a monster! He’ll kill us all!”

Nythana rolled her eyes.

“Weren’t you listening?” she demanded. “We’re not even going to get to see his eyes!”

“Stop it! You’ll kill me!”

The dark mage was running out of life energy fast, and she knew it.

“Surely you’d steadied your conviction before you started your attack,” Nythana said. “Then you should have already prepared for the possibility that you could die.”

“Stop! Please!”

“Did you stop when the others begged?” Nythana asked.

She could see in her eyes that she hadn’t, but the girl only responded with a shriek.

“Cease immediately!” an authoritative voice boomed.

Nythana hesitated, but she stopped her spell. It had been the Prime Minister that spoke. His bloodied hands were clutching a casting rod while a large magic circle shimmered at the ground around his feet.

“Hm…” Mycelium commented. “A prefabricated targeted bombardment spell… Considering the extent of his mana reserves, that would be an irritating spell to be hit by."

“How dare dark mages like you come into our country and act like this in the presence of the king,” the Prime Minister snarled.

Dark mages? Nythana thought, glancing around the room. She only saw the one that had been attacking. The once beautiful girl looked more like an old woman now, having had her life forced drained too quickly by the siphon. But she was the only one with the remnants of dark magic on her body. What did he mean by dark mages?

“He’s clearly talking about you,” Mycelium said with a tone of mild disappointment.

“Wait, me?” Nythana asked.

“Who else here was using dark magic but the two of you?” the prime minister spat.

“She was attempting to assassinate your king,” Nythana said. “Why am I the villain for saving him?”

“Silence!”

“It’s because you used dark magic,” Mycelium said. “Did you forget how taboo it is?”

“This is why I stayed away from people for so many years,” Nythana thought.

Nythana glanced over at the Basilisk King where several of his soldiers were gathered around him attempting to heal his bleeding wounds without any success.

“Good luck healing those without our assistance,” Mycelium said. “The sheer amount of raw dark magic in those wounds is probably a sign that she inflicted long-lasting spells.”

“You mean curses?”

“Precisely.”

“Prime Minister,” one of the soldiers said. “Healing magic isn’t working.”

“What?” the Prime Minister demanded. “What do you mean it isn’t working?”

“The wounds won’t heal when we try to cleanse and close them.”

“That can’t be.”

Nythana sighed in exasperation.

“Of course they won’t close,” she said. “She put years’ worth of dark magic energy into those spells. You’ll need enormous amounts of magic energy to counteract even one of those wounds. Not to mention that the curse is going to spread if it isn’t treated... assuming he doesn’t bleed to death first.”

“Tch,” the Prime Minister clicked through gritted teeth.

“I can treat him, you know,” Nythana said.

The prime minister gritted his teeth.

“As if I’d trust—”

“The woman that saved his life thrice in the past two minutes?” Nythana cut in.

“How do you expect to treat him when even our Kingdom’s best healers can’t?”

“By absorbing the dark energy fueling the curse and transforming it into useable energy for myself. Just like I did with her other attacks.”

“Who are you?” the Prime Minister demanded.

“Be polite,” was Mycelium’s two-word command to her.

“Pardon my lack of introduction,” Nythana said with a curtsey, “I am Nythana, but you likely know me better as the Witch of the Northern Wastes.”

Murmurs filled the room.

“Even the walled country knows who we are,” Mycelium said.

“Why have you come to come to our country?”

“Why?” Nythana asked. “To gaze into the eyes of the Basilisk King, of course.”