"Four at three o'clock!" shouted Lilith as she ducked low and aims her pistol to the right.
"Got it!" Margarette answered back.
She raised her rapier straight in front of her and flashes forward, flicking her wrist as she did. The tip of her sword left a trail of burning light in the air and sent a spiral wave of fire towards their approaching enemies.
As she moved forward for close combat, Lilith takes care of the others approaching them, never missing a target.
[Grayson 170 points]
[Gunnar 230 points]
"Did you see where the rest of our team have gone?" Margarette asked her companion.
"I think we left them by the pine forest..." Lilith replied. "Should we go back?"
"No need. They are more than capable of taking care of themselves," said Margarette, "Let's just meet up later, what matters most is to attain as much points as possible."
Meanwhile, Dorin and Johan were no longer in the pine forest. They are currently making their way towards the middle of the woods where Dorin thinks their two companions are. Along the way, they have been fighting off groups that were trying to ambush them.
"I'm at410!"Johan yells as a water mage tried to dump the water from a nearby pond at their direction.
Dorin blew at the water and called the wind. It slowly turned to ice while Johan slashed it down with his blue flame sword.
[Ignasius 430]
"No fair!" complained Dorin, "They keep counting the wind bullets as your kill! They should at least give me half the points!"
"So, where do we go now?" asked Johan. "Seems to me there aren't enough enemies popping up lately?"
"Let's try that way." Dorin pointed at a crop of trees to their west.
As they walked over to the trees, Dorin noticed a hare run flittingly towards their left.
"Lunch!" he said as he lunged towards it. As he did, the ground he was standing on suddenly cracked open and a bundle of vines erupted from beneath it.
"Woah!" yelled Johan who stepped back just in time before the same vines entangled him.
"A plant elemental?" Dorin mumbled as he sent sharp gusts of wind to cut down the vines. "I think they're hiding on top of the canopies."
"Can I burn them?" asked Johan.
"Might as well. It's hard to read the thaum from a natural elemental, might as well get rid of the source."
"Ok to go all out then?" Johan grinned.
"Well, we're far from the barracks so..."
Dorin didn't have to speak twice. Johan braced himself and stomped his feet apart. As he clapped his hands together, the ground beneath them blew up, sending countless pieces of burning roots and vines up to the air. The fire traveled on towards the crop of trees and burned them from the ground up.
"They're up in the canopy." Dorin grinned.
He raised his arms, folded at the elbows, then swiped his forearms towards the sides. There was a kind of sonic boom. The tops of the trees began to fall as they were all cut in half.
"Oi, isn't that a bit too much?" Johan asked from beside him.
"They made me lose our lunch," he mumbled back. "There!"
Dorin pointed at a flitting figure that jumped from one fallen branch to another. It wore clothes of dark green and trailed hair of the same color. Dorin was immediately after it.
He called upon the wind and was soon flying over the cut tree tops, going after the image he just saw.
"Could it be a Dryad?" he asked himself as he saw a glimpse of the person who slipped back into the neighboring woods. "Only a Dryad could have this kind of control over plants, unless it's a plant mage, but then it would be easier to read his attacks with the amount of thaum used in his magic..."
He was still thinking this when his foot was caught by the leaves of a nearby tree. The leaves were wrapping itself around his leg when it suddenly burst into flames.
"Hey, wait up!" he saw Johan through a gap in the leaves, running after him back on the ground. "I can't fly like you, you know!"
Dorin looked back at his foot. The leaves have removed his left boot, together with the band his Aunt Agate had made for him.
"You see a band there somewhere?" he asked Johan as he descended to the forest floor.
"What band?" the other asked, looking around the area.
"Never mind..." he replied. The band was ensorcelled so that only those who knew about it were able to see it, so telling Johan about it now would be a waist of time.
A new wave of vines started towards them, which were quickly burned by Johan's flaming sword.
"This is getting tiresome..." grumbled Johan. "Dorin, can you climb up for a bit? Go look where that person ran off to," he said.
"Got it." Dorin rose in the air once more, higher than before, and saw a dark image flitter towards the south. "To the front!" He called down to Johan
The fire mage slashed his sword down. A wave of fire suddenly burst from the ground, then forward towards their enemy.
Dorin gave a low whistle as trees fell one after the other. A path was cleared before them, and near the end, climbing up into the air, a thick vine erupted from the ground, nearly cut in half by the wave of fire.
Dorin dived from the sky towards the emerging vine, speeding up like a falcon aiming for its prey. He sent another wave of air that cut the already wavering wine, revealing behind it, a pale face surrounded by a halo of dark green hair. Green eyes round as apples stared back at him. Dorin took hold of his target's shoulders and pushed him back into the ground and was about to crack the token on his chest, when the ground suddenly opened into a million writhing roots that took hold of them both and pulled them into the earth itself.
Dorin tried to call the wind, but he was already deep underground and going further down.
He needed to think.
"Once while training, Marcus dropped me in a tunnel and buried me alive," he quickly thought to himself, "my wind and lightning was not much use to me then as well. What I need is to find something that is naturally in the earth... or the earth itself. I must find the bone of the earth.
The vines suddenly stopped.
The loose soil around it had suddenly hardened, stopping it from burrowing any further.
Dorin heard a soft curse in front of him and forced his arm to grab forward. There was some resistance from the vines, but he finally touched soft flesh, and with a jolt, sent a bolt of electricity to that body.
There was a shrill scream. The vines around started quivering like worms then finally opened up like a cocoon, revealing the body of a very annoyed Dryad underneath.
"You pervert!" she yelled and slapped Dorin square in the face! Dorin reddened as he noticed he was holding the woman's left breast!
Dorin quickly pulled back his hand. The Dryad was directly hit by the electricity, but she had channeled it towards the roots around her and into the earth, grounding the effect.
The ground around them was quivering. He placed a shield around his body as an insane amount of roots at thick as his arms rushed towards him.
"Hey, Dorin! You still alive?" Johan called to the lump of earth where Dorin and their target was swallowed by the ground.
He was thinking of digging his friend out when the ground started to shake. Johan was quick enough to evade the thick roots that emerged from beneath him. The roots rose into the air, uncovering a bright bulge in its center. The bulge began to flash as the air around them got heavier and the clouds above gathered and darkened. Johan ran for cover as the lightning arrived.
"What was that?" Lilith said as they heard thunder.
"I think I know where Dorin is..." replied Margarette.