“That did something!” said Amelia as she rushed up to me.
“Yes, but it would take a long time to kill him like that. I think it’s time to try combining our spells.”
Amelia’s Cold tattoo glowed bright as she prepared her Mana to cast an ice spear. Then I lifted my left hand and readied a fireball.
“Now!” I shouted.
We both cast our spells, and the fireball met the ice spear at the exact instant that they both crashed into the giant’s abdomen. With a blinding flash and a boom, they exploded into gouts of flame, freezing fog, and boiling steam.
The giant leaned back and let out a furious roar of pain and anger. He raised both fists in the air and brought them crashing to the ground with so much force that the ground shook, and the steeple of the nearby tavern rocked back and forth. The bell clanged with great force, letting off a sound that shook my very bones. Amelia and I were knocked off our feet. We dropped and rolled, getting up again in time to see Veronica raising her sword to cast another lightning bolt.
The giant still crouched on the ground, both fists on the stone flags. The rain poured over him, little rivulets spouting from the cracks and crevices in his stone skin. The flagstones of the town square were awash with water.
Still holding my flaming sword in my right hand, I crouched, plunging my hand into the rainwater and feeding Mana through my Cold rune. Ice ran from my hand across the surface of the ground, freezing the fallen rain into an icy floor that would be as slippery as oil to walk upon. The ice ran in a thin line away from my hand, expanding outward as it came closer to the crouching giant. It ran up his feet and hands, freezing the water that kept landing on him, building the ice up thicker and thicker around his shoulders and chest.
With a roar, he staggered up, wrenching himself free from the ice sheet.
“Amelia, Veronica, combine your spells!” I shouted.
I felt my Mana depleting and leaped back as the two women combined Ice and Lightning in a devastating blast that struck the giant’s stone-armored ribcage. There was a boom and a sound like stones cracking, and I saw chunks of rock fall from the giant’s chest.
He stumbled back, encumbered by the weight of the ice which stuck to his upper body. Waving his arms, he tried to clear it from himself but could not. He bellowed like an enraged bull, and the stones under my feet shook with the sound.
Now was my chance. He was weakened and dazed, reeling from the impact of our last attack.
I lifted my Elemental sword, and it blazed up with fire as I poured some more Mana into it.
“Once more!” I yelled, sending every last drop of Mana into a huge fireball.
I raised it up, ready to throw. At the same time, Amelia conjured an ice spear, and a blast of lightning crackled around the tip of Veronica’s vector sword. I was about to cast my fireball when something else happened. Green light shone up from between the stones around the giant’s feet.
Was Arcanist Maximillian casting some new, more powerful spell?
Suddenly, the stones beneath his feet cracked and were thrust aside as green tendrils of thick creeping vines burst through the dirt. They flowed up to entangle his huge stone legs. A glance back at the tavern showed me the source of the magic: Mistress Blossom stood tall, her arms stretched out toward us and her new tattoo shining bright.
“Now!” I roared and hurled my massive fireball at the already damaged point in the giant’s chest. Amelia’s spear and Veronica’s lightning bolt streaked through the air beside it, and as Mistress Blossom’s green-lit creeping plants reached the spot, the four elemental spells combined.
A blaze of light washed out over the square, and the thunderous boom of the combined spells was deafening. The giant stumbled to its knees, as chunks of ice, stone, and earth fell off his legs, his chest, and his sides. I ran forward, my blazing sword at my side.
This might be my only chance.
I leaped high into the air, landing on the giant’s shoulders as he vainly tried to haul himself back up. His head was as big as my whole upper body, and his eyes were small and blazed like emerald gemstones deep in his rocky face. A gaping mouth snapped vainly at me as I grabbed the edge of one eye socket and plunged my flaming sword into his eye.
The sword sank into the emerald eye up to the hilt, and the eye went dark. The giant howled in pain, and I did it again, this time into the second eye. He spasmed, bucking like an angry ox, and I yanked my sword out of his eye and leaped backward as bits of stone and earth began to peel off him and crash to the ground. His bellowing dulled as, piece by piece, he lost his shape and became a formless pile of stone and dirt. I lay on the ground, looking up at the collapse of the monster. His great head was the last to go, exploding into a million fragments with a bang like a stone breaking in a fire.
As I staggered to my feet, the vines reached up and gathered the great pile of stone and dirt together, then dragged it down into the bosom of the earth. The flagstones shuffled back into place. Green light shone brightly from between them for a moment, then went out.
I looked around. The rain lessened and stopped as Mistress Blossom, Jacques, Amelia, and Veronica walked toward me, smiling. My head was spinning with the amount of Mana I had consumed, but that would pass in a moment.
The clouds parted, and a shaft of sunlight blazed down, illuminating the rain-washed battlefield as the townsfolk began
