Mad Mage

Now that everyone was finally gone, an eerie silence filled the throne room. The room mere moments ago was fairly lively and now there was nothing. Even the door to the throne room had been left open in the great rush everyone had left the room in. Requa’s bloodstain, which now thoroughly stained the once deep blue carpet, was the only indication that anyone was ever here.

While the stain wasn’t the most obvious, one could notice the darker section of the carpet if they looked hard enough. If not that, they would obviously catch the pool of blood that was not soaked up by the carpet and instead on the floor next to it. However, with the lack of a constant source, it seemed the blood was starting to dry up.

It was taking the rebels quite a while to get up here, but I guess they must have been dealing with the long pathway. Outside the open door I could only see a soft grey colour. It seemed as though an awfully large cloud was blocking any real view that could be provided.

I was starting to get bored of waiting and was thinking of going down there myself to take care of everything. I didn’t want to though. That would mean doing more work for such a simple matter. It wasn’t really worth it to expend the extra effort to go find each of the members after they were coming so graciously to me.

Tip! Tap! I could finally hear the sound of footsteps approaching. I had been waiting so long that I had almost forgotten what I had been waiting for. The noises were able to remind me of just what I had been ever so slightly excited about.

“Prepare to die Superious and Magnifis!” Someone had called out before entering.

A rough looking group of about fifteen men and women came rushing into the throne room. However, when they entered they saw that I was the only one still present in the room. There was a tinge of disappointment on their faces at the sight. This had slightly infuriated me as I had been waiting for them to show this whole time.

“Who the hell are you?” One of the women in the group asked.

“Shouldn’t you introduce yourselves first? After all, you were the ones that barged in here.” I replied to her vulgar tone.

“Ha, we’re the revolution! I suggest you tell us where The King and Queen are if you want to stay alive.”

“Hahahaha! That’s pretty funny of you to say.”

“Hey, what's her deal?” One of the members who had been scared by my laugh asked the girl who was previously speaking.

“I’m not sure.” She replied to him.

“Are you done speaking with one another?” I questioned with a smile.

“This is your last chance.”

“No, this is your last chance.” I replied mockingly.

The mocking of my tone had caused them to prepare to charge. While I could easily freeze them to the floor and take them out one by one, it would be more fun to try some other things. They began charging me in three groups of five.

It seemed they were trying to trap me amongst the three groups, but such a plain strategy would never even come close to beating me. The weapons they had were quite interesting, however. Maybe those were the cause of what had been shooting at us in the carriage. Oh well, it would be far more enjoyable to find out during battle.

Two of the three groups had closed the distance to me from both sides, but this wasn’t much of an issue. Choosing to fly into the sky, I evaded their attacks. The end of their strange weapons had blades which they tried to poke me with. Maybe these weren’t the weapon I was thinking of, but instead just weirder spears.

“She can fly!” One of the men in the group which tried to attack me called out the obvious.

“Damn, she’s a mage then!” The woman who I was talking to before deduced.

“Well done identifying that.” I entered their conversation.

“Damn, who are you?”

“That question again? You should really try thinking of other things.”

“Like what?”

“Like why the people crowding beneath me are about to die.” I answered her question.

With a snap of my fingers, all the people below me turned to ice. It wasn’t that they were simply encased in ice either. It was that they had been physically frozen from the inside out completely. First it began with the liquids in their bodies, then it was the solids. They looked like nothing more than fancy ice sculptures by the end of the process.

“W-what the hell did you do?” The woman leading the last team asked.

“Huh? Isn’t it obvious? I froze them.” I responded.

“Ha, we can solve this by warming them up to get them out of the ice then. You must be pretty dull for a mage.”

“My, how right you are. Please allow me to melt the ice for them.” I replied to her statement with quite a bit of snark.

Raising my hand to the lovely sculptures beneath me, I used fire magic to warm them up. I could’ve just burned them in front of the vulgar woman, but instead I decided it would be better to show her just what her idea entailed. As they began melting, the people weren’t released from their prisons.

The woman had watched as the statues melted into a puddle. Her shock was obvious, but I was happy she wasn’t able to keep such a nice expression from me.

“Where did they go?” She asked another question.

“Why, what do you mean? They’re right there.” I responded, pointing to the puddles.

Her shock was quickly turning to anger. I guess she didn’t like seeing the idea she suggested happening in front of her. Seriously, this was her idea. How could she be mad that I showed her the result of it? Some people just don’t know what they want.

“I’ll kill you!” She cried out in a fit of rage.

“You’re quite welcome to try.” I told her with a condescending tone from above.

Pointing her strange spear towards me, it seemed like she was really aiming. She hadn’t been pulling back any strings to fire anything off, nor was she preparing some magic. Was she planning to shoot air at me?

The thought caused me to start chuckling to myself. It seemed even her team was following in her lead and oddly aiming their spears towards me. I guess all of them were just fools. Some were even tapping the magic crystals on their weapons, but still, at this distance it’s still way too far for a melee weapon to work.

“Fire!” The woman called out.

In a barrage of attacks, weird projectiles came flying towards me. Some of them had wind magic and fire magic associated with them, while some were just speeding towards me. It seemed the ones without magic power were heading towards me faster. Wait, these looked similar to the projectiles which were shot at the carriage.

As I had been lost in thought, it seemed the projectiles had closed the distance too quickly for me to react to them. I attempted to put up an ice shield, but before I could make it thick enough to properly protect me, one of the odd shells was able to pierce the ice and make contact with me, going right through the side of my torso.

The ice shield was able to protect me from any fatal wound, but it was not strong enough to completely protect me either. As the magically powered projectiles made contact together with the shield, they had enough power to shatter the weakened ice sphere I had scrambled to put together.

The force of the impact had caused me to go flying backwards, crashing into the stone wall with great force. In my arrogance it seemed my whole body had been covered in ice and rock shards and I was bleeding out. While the ice disappeared at my will, the rocks were still stuck in me.

“Ha, not so high and mighty now, are you!” The woman exclaimed at the prospect of her victory.

“G-go to…...hell.” I was able to bring out the words.

“Haha, you’re the only one who’ll be doing that!”

“I…...wouldn’t..be so….sure.”

In seconds after I had said that, the heads of the other four members in the women's team came off as though they never really belonged. In her surprise I healed my minor wounds in seconds and was once again standing. Compared to the blood loss of losing a limb, this was far simpler to deal with.

Unfortunately, after that attack it seemed the overcoat I was given had been ripped to shreds. I had just been given that and did not have the proper time to appreciate it. This sentiment only made me more annoyed at the remaining person. Tearing the remainder off, I threw it to the side as I knew it would only get in the way now.

Now it was time to deal with her. The woman had dropped to her knees, unsure of what to do to combat the display of power in front of her. She made me quite angry and had gotten the drop on me as well. However, after all that it seemed the only thing she was really able to do was give me information of the weird weapons they had.

“How should I deal with you?” I wondered out loud.

“P-p-please s-ss-spare me.” She stuttered out the words.

“Nope!” I responded with a smile as her arm went flying off her body.

“AAAAAAA!” She began screaming after a momentary silence.

As she cried in pain, I made my way over to the arm and decided I would reattach it. After all, it would be the best thing for this rebel trash to still have her arm. Yes, of course. It would only make sense.

I froze her just enough not to kill her, but to numb her from moving. I pushed her lost arm against the place it had disappeared from. The feeling had caused her to scream even louder than before. I began healing it, not even looking for the correct nerves. In fact I wasn’t even healing the nerves.

“W-w-why are you healing me?” She stammered out the question.

“Oh, I’m not healing you.” I answered her.

As the process was almost complete, I canceled my healing magic, causing her to once again feel the pain of losing the arm. The screams which had restarted played like music to my ears.

“Now you want to tell me about those weapons?” I questioned her.

“O-okay.” She agreed.

As she was about to start talking, a new girl with short amber hair came walking in. It seemed she was here to back up this sorry excuse of a team. But as she entered, she could only see the corpses of the four I had recently taken out and the woman I was currently torturing.

“Well it looks like you were too slow to talk then. Better luck next time!” I told the woman who was begging for her life.

“W-wait please!” She pleaded.

With a gust of wind I sent her past the amber girl and blew off the opening in front of the door to the throne room. The woman who had been launched into the sky had slowly become a mass of crimson. The sun was starting to set. The new girl didn’t even have time to react to what had happened in front of her. Instead she could only watch helplessly as her comrade, or maybe friend, went flying to her death.

“I’m sorry Hue!” The woman cried out as she fell.

“I hope you’ll be able to keep me entertained.” I spoke to the dazed new girl.

“Y-you’re the Mad Mage aren’t you?” She asked an odd question.

“Mad Mage? I’ve never heard that name before.”

“Yo-you monster!”

“That’s quite a rude thing to call someone, wouldn’t you agree?”

“How could you just kill her like that?”

“With a gust of wind.”

“I’ll kill you!”

“Ugh, you really don’t understand how conversations work at all. I am the only one even trying to keep this conversation going, but you keep switching topics.”

“Shut up!” She tried her best to act confident, but I could see her legs shaking.

She pointed her strange weapon towards me, however this time I knew far better than to just do nothing until it hit me. Seeing as there was only one person, this would be far easier to deal with anyways. The amber haired girl tapped her ocean blue crystal. I see, then her projectile would likely be infused with water magic then.

While magic crystals are great and all, they could never compare to the power of a true mage. After all, magic crystals have a maximum limit depending on the mage who made them. But I knew of no mage who was dead or alive who could outdo me.

She shot out her projectile which had begun morphing into a large wave of water. Raising my hand, I used fire magic to create a wall of flames. I had decided to make the intensity of the flames far greater than they normally would be. As the wave of water made contact with the wall, all that was released was steam, and the water couldn’t even make it past the flames.

Dropping the wall, I could see the girl's stunned expression had come back. It seemed like all that the rebels had were these lousy weapons as their hope. However, once you understood the gimmick, it really wasn’t that hard to deal with. The speed was definitely an issue though, especially in this enclosed space.

However, with how big the throne room had been and the fact that infusing the projectile with weapons had caused them to slow down, it did make it far easier. If this was really all these rebels had, they definitely came underprepared for this battle. Unfortunately for them, it was over as soon as they revealed their hand.

“So, do you want to give up already and tell me what I want to know, uh, Hue?” I interrogated the woman whose name I heard to be Hue.

“A monster like you shouldn’t be using my name!” She answered in rage.

“Great, so you want to start talking?”

“I won’t tell you anything about our rifles!”

“Fine, if not about your strange weapons then how about your leader. This so-called ‘demon’.”

“Haha, you want to know about our boss.”

“That’s right.”

“He’ll be here soon. He’ll crush you!”

“And?”

“He’s far stronger than any of us. You won’t even stand a chance.”

“Can you tell me about the ring he has?”

“His ring? Like I’d tell you any more than what I’ve already said!”

“Ugh, so you will be useless to me as well then. I guess you will no longer be necessary then.” I accepted the reality of the situation.

She began freezing over much like the people before her. But unlike them, she froze slower so I could see the agony grow on her face as her situation became more and more helpless. The joy it brought me was immense.

When the ‘demon’ shows up he will get to see this marvelous display. Hopefully he doesn’t take too long for if he does then all this hard work would have been for nothing.