Familiar Ground (OPEN)

[Sage]

Sage blinked, and then the man called Vitruvian had vanished with little more than a pop of air. The boy quickly caught sight of the man now standing closer to the beast alongside his partner who did not seem to want to stop and wait to hear what he had to say. The boy flinched at that, the Kenku girl flew in without fear or hesitation that he feared would lead her to biting of more than she could chew.

Any hesitation he felt about facing the beast was lost in the single moment he realised that everyone in the town was in danger and that if he did nothing…

Sage took a single step forward as close as he ever would dare to get to a Reaver. He held out his hand, calling forth one of his own spells that ignited into existence with a flourish of black flames in the palm of his hand. The Eldritch Bolt was a thing of deadly beauty, the flames condensed into a perfect black sphere that contained no light and appeared more akin to a singularity.

It was the first offensive spell the boy had ever devised, his dislike of conflict was echoed in what spells he knew, most of them were benign and others were made for seeking out secrets. This spell however had a singular purpose, to impose a single kinetic strike as hard as his mastery of magic would allow.

But Sage froze, and the spell lingered in the palm of his hand with a calming hum. The spell was perfect, it would do exactly what he wanted it to be able to do but there was a singular flaw.

And that would be his aim.

"Please, don't miss" he silently begged of himself.

The Reaver cried in indignation, screeches and clicks quickened as it turned to rid itself of its assailant. It’s scythe like appendage rose up for the cleaving stroke but froze mid-way as the Kenku used a power that rendered it blind. Anger swelled with the madness of the vale and any hesitation or sense of self-preservation was lost long ago, it allowed the Reaver to strike out at where it had last seen the Kenku girl, piercing the ground deeply with its keratin blade.

The Reaver had missed its target completely and while still blind to the world it missed the moment when the blade of the prevalida katana cleaved through the stiletto looking limb like a hot knife through butter. The beast felt a bite of pain and instincts demanded instant retribution as it spun around to swipe its large scythe like limb at where it thought its assailant was yet again. But it stumbled as the limb that was struck parted with the rest of its body causing it to list as it tried to put its weight on a limb that just wasn’t there.

It fell into a tumble, screeching out in disgrace as it flopped and turned onto its back, thrashing around blindly. It stumbled back into its front but crashed sideways into the wooden wall of the town’s inn causing screams to start anew from inside.

Its blind eyes spun around helplessly still unable to see anything before it, but just like Sage, the beast had come from a world where magic was a lot thinner than it was in Althanas. And just like Sage, the presence of magic in artefacts or in people felt like an itch the closer they got.

The sensation would fade the longer they stayed in this world but for now something had gained its attention, like standing close by to a bonfire. And the Reaver was ever so cold, its hunger for the heat drove it to blindly ignore pain and forget everything in favour of filling the void that the Vale had callously taken away.

It struggled to adapt to using only three legs, but instinctively stabbed the ground with the scythe like blade to help balance itself as it made a mad dash towards Vitruvian.

His presence was like a neon sign for an all you can eat buffet for the Reaver, it salivated as it approached stomping loudly though unable to approach the man in a straight line. Sage Ainsworth took aim at the beast’s head, but the wild erratic movement caused the boy to hesitate and doubt that he could even hit such an illusive target at his current range.

“Maybe not the head” he reasoned with himself and adjusted him aim slightly lower.

The Reaver stomped towards Vitruvian with a hissing screech while raising its scythe to pierce its prey. But the blow never came as the black orb of Sage’s Eldritch bolt barrelled into its abdomen where the mantis’ profile was at its thickest. The blow was like a Warhammer had just been swung into its side, cracking the chitin under the tremendous blow and toppled the Reaver back onto its side where it again flailed wildly.

“Only three more times” The young wizard quietly reminded himself and hoped that the Kenku girl, Stare was her name? could put the Reaver out of its misery with the given opportunity.

The boy eyed the Portal wearily, he was unable to tell the extent of the damage the mutated mantis had caused to it when it forced its way through, it showed no signs of deteriorating just yet and he had no doubt that another mutated monstrosity would be able to find its way through in time.

“Right, Standard imperial response then” he reasoned and easily cast a different spell by uttering a simple word. ‘Lux’

A sphere of white light rose from his palm, lazily growing in size until it was no bigger than his head. The boy frowned in annoyance as he reached up to palm the light and pulled at it to unravel the spell into circles of glowing runes and connecting lines.

“I should have learned how to use magic like a sorcerer” Sage lamented as he set to work on locating a key function of the spell that would allow him to change a single aspect.

Memorising a complicated spell like this was surprisingly easy, repetition and familiarity allowed Sage to cast a spell with a pre-programmed function with ease. Spells like his required very little concentration and allowed him to cast and forget certain spells.

A sorcerer however was hard-pressed to keep the concentration for the duration of the spell, but the upside was that they were able to change a spells objective on the fly and repurpose them to fit other needs.

Which all meant that Sage was rewriting a single core aspect of his light spell to just change the colour that it gave off, which was a pain in the rear on its own.

He would not have been able to do the same thing with his other spells, But Lux was his first spell, and he knew how it worked because he had created it all by himself for the single purpose of having a light to be able to read at night.

Sage flicked his finger at one of the runes and redrew a different one in its place. The young wizard then pushed his hand back into the spells floating runes and watched expectantly as they compressed back into a mote of light that now glowed a brilliant bright red.

Satisfied he launched the red light upwards into the sky with a flick of his hand causing the orb to rocket upwards several yards before it came to a stop and began to shine as brightly as possible bathing the town in a faint red hue.

“That should be able to attract anyone’s attention. I just hope they realise the red light means trouble”