The flames roared from my hands, ten jets of bright flame which hit the flagstones in front of the soldiers and poured over the ground toward them. I tightly controlled the flow of Mana through my tattoo to the spell as I began to walk slowly forward.
The soldiers fell back in disarray. The discipline of their formation broke apart, and they stumbled away from me. From behind me, I heard a voice cry, “Ink Mage! Ink Mage!” Other voices took up the call, and I saw the elite soldiers’ eyes widen in surprise and fear. As I pulled my Mana back from the spell, I thought with a smile about how quickly gossip travels in a small town. The rumor of the tattoos must have spread quickly after our fight the day before, and it seemed that the legend of the Ink Mage was known in the town of Brightwater.
Well, we’d give them a show.
My Mana was depleted and would take a few seconds to replenish, so I drew my shortsword. Veronica and Amelia ran up beside me, and we charged into the midst of the disordered soldiers. As we closed with them, they dropped their pikes and drew their swords, but they had bunched up close together and got in each other’s way. I struck one with a ringing blow on the side of the head with my shortsword, knocking his helmet off, while Amelia came in low to hamstring another.
There came a shout from the other side of the square. It was the Arcanist. “Leave the Mages to me!” he shouted. “Attack the civilians!”
The soldiers tried to obey him, and four of them grabbed their pikes from the ground and charged full tilt at the crowded townsfolk. I began to run after them, but then I saw Veronica. She stood between the soldiers and the townsfolk, and lightning flickered around her back and shoulders as she faced down the four armored men.
She raised her sword to the heavens, and there was a sudden boom of thunder. The soldiers hesitated for a moment, and everyone looked up. Clouds had appeared out of nowhere in the blue sky above, and lightning flickered. The sky darkened suddenly, and with a rush, rain began to pelt down from above.
“Charge! Charge!” shouted the Captain. The four soldiers aimed their spears at Veronica’s chest and charged.
It was the last thing any of them would do. Lightning arced from Veronica’s back tattoo, catching the soldiers’ pikes and running up the shafts to their hands. The four men were blasted backward with incredible force. Forks of lightning crackled around their bodies as they flew through the air, trailing smoke and the reek of singed hair and burned flesh.
Veronica thrust her vector sword into the air again, and lightning flashed down once from the clouds to meet it. The rain poured down, and the last remaining soldiers drew back in terror away from us. The crowd of townsfolk watched in awe as Amelia, Veronica, Jacques, and I lined up and turned to face the Arcanist.
Maximilian took a few steps forward and stopped.
“You think you have power?” he roared, and his voice was like grating stones. “You think you can defy me and get away with it? I’ll crush you, and this town! I’ll crush you like bugs under my boot, you upstarts! Ink Mage? You will die here, by my hand!”
Suddenly, he pushed a gloved hand forward in our direction. Rippling waves of green energy burst from his hands and became five thorny vines that flew toward me and my companions.
Amelia summoned her ice spear and flung it at one of them, and the two spells exploded into harmless fragments as they met in mid-air.
Veronica lashed out with her sword, and a blast of lighting smashed another of the vines with a loud bang and a flash which made the townsfolk cry out in wonder and amazement.
The final three vines were coming straight at me.
With both hands in the air, I blasted Mana through my Cold tattoo, charging in to meet the approaching projectiles. Freezing mist poured in a cloud from the palms of my hands and solidified around the vines. They moved a lot slower but did not vanish. Instead, I felt control of the Arcanist’s spell pass to me and realized instinctively that I could now control the three deadly vines. They hung in mid-air for a moment, and I saw that my ice spell had transformed them into levitating ropes of thorny spikes.
I didn’t pause to think but flung them with all the force of my projectile ice spell back at the Arcanist. They hurtled back toward him. He managed to duck two, and they shattered against a wall behind him, but the third slammed into his side. He cried out with a roar of pain as the vine’s spiked tip pierced his flesh, and I saw blue ice freeze his left side.
The remaining two soldiers and the Captain stood watching a little way off. They didn’t seem inclined to get involved.
The sudden downpour was turning the whole square into a sodden mess as the Arcanist stood to his full height again and extended his arms out to either side. We braced for his next attack, but he didn’t move. Instead, I saw his face begin to grow red as if from exertion. I heard his bones make a cracking sound, and he started to grow larger. He cast his gaudy red robes aside as he kept on growing.
“What’s he doing?” I shouted to Veronica through the rattle of the rain.
“I don’t know,” she called back. “I’ve never seen anything like this before!”
He kept on growing, and his face kept getting redder. No, his face was becoming gray, like granite. His whole body was turning gray. He was naked now, but his flesh didn’t look human anymore. It looked more like ... stone. Was this some kind of Nature magic?
The townsfolk were staring up at this giant in fear. Even
