I grinned as I changed the spell at Amon suggestions, weaving in the outer ring segment of the ‘Cleansing Fire’ spell, but using it to contain the spell in ways the original hadn’t, much in the way a lid did on a pressure cooker...
I added in segments of the Firebolt, specifically the targeting, expansion, and heat. I took the sections of ‘Airblade’ that hadn’t been lost, and added them to the lightning spell, forming the containment sphere from hissing, crackling lightning. I wove it all together and began to sink my mana into it, pouring fifty, then a hundred, then a hundred and ninety, stopping only when I hit two hundred mana.
I’d have gone further, such was the righteous fury that filled my mind, but I couldn’t hold the spell anymore. My arms were shaking, and crackling, seething lightning streamers suddenly erupted from the ball of molten hatred I’d created, the light that flashed in the tunnel entrance drawing every eye in the cavern as I stepped out into full view.
“Hadouken!” I screamed at them, slamming both arms forward and locking my wrists together like I was in Streetfighter.
Before they had the time to dodge, my spell flashed across the intervening distance, the sound of its passage a high-pitched whine that hurt the ears.
It slammed into the fire that stood in their midst, and it unfurled, the writhing, twisting mess of lightning suddenly unravelling to form a mesh that flashed out, covering the ground, and surrounding the Drow.
From impact to full extension was less than a full second, then the second phase of the spell went off, and the compressed air that was part of ‘Airblade’ instead formed a dome, a shield that trapped the Drow inside as the spell entered the final phase.
Flames roared to life, turning it into a pressure cooker of flame and lightning, one that shrank by the second. The compressed walls of air drew in quickly and crushed them in, as Lydia chucked my naginata through the air to me.
The spell wasn’t powerful enough to kill them all outright. I was too new to magic, and too inexperienced to craft something that powerful, even after pouring so much mana into it, but it was enough to give all five severe burns, stunned debuffs, and break multiple bones, not to mention causing panic in the ‘oh so superior’ Drow.
When the spell expired twenty seconds later and evaporated, all five of them were hunched around the fire in the center, burnt, stunned, and forced into the flames by the pressure. Once it expired, all they wanted to do was get the hell away from it, and they sure as shit weren’t expecting us.
I had led the charge into the room, Barrett and Lydia on either side of me. Cam and Jian flanked them, Stephanos and Miren following in the middle as they waited for the boss to show itself.
Arrin was in the very center of the group, Magic Missiles flaring to life and hurtling across the intervening space to hammer, one after the other, into the right leg of the torturer.
He screamed, his shock making him miss the chance to deflect or dodge them, and as his knee exploded, the cap hanging from a shredded section of cartilage, he collapsed to the floor.
I’d told Arrin to focus on the main group, but I didn’t mind his change of target, as I saw the state of the group in the middle. One fell toward me, the skin on his face running like candlewax, eyes a milky white that would never know sight again, short of major magical assistance. My naginata flared to life, fire filling it, and a hissing sound erupted as the blood in his heart boiled, the blade piercing through his now crisped and ruined clothes to bisect it. I gave it a twist to be sure, then yanked it back, flipping it over and bringing the metal-clad end down hard onto another Drow’s skull, a loud crack filling the cavern as the bone fractured. A third Drow fell to the floor from where he’d been hunched over, his limbs twitching, the smoldering remnants of the campfire going to work on his dying form.
Barrett was past me in an instant, his greatsword flashing out to chop into his target, dipping and twisting to rise again, blood spraying from a severed artery as the Drow fell back, almost decapitated.
Lydia was past me as I looked up, vaulting over the body of the Drow they’d killed themselves, only to land and smash her wicked flanged mace into the upraised arm of another of the group.
The crack of his forearm was audible, joining the dying echoes of mine’s skull to fill the cavern, overtopping even their screams and shock.
The other sound, slowly rising in the room, past our guttural roars of anger, determination and hatred, and the screams of shock and pain of the Drow, was the cheering of the prisoners. They had been crouched, terrified, three of them left more or less intact as they watched one of their companions being skinned.
Now they saw their hated enemies getting slaughtered, the tables turned in seconds as we tore through them, and they roared their approval. The Drow who had fallen close to their cage was grabbed by two of the captives, pulling him tight against the bars, and holding him as he thrashed.
He’d lost his knife, but the Drow’s superior strength showed itself as he grabbed the bars and tore himself free with a scream of pain and fury, glaring at the lesser beings that had dared to touch him with a look that promised retribution.
The look lasted only a second, as the next barrage of Magic Missiles, guided by Arrin’s will, landed unerringly, one after another, in the back of the Drow’s neck.
Exploding a millisecond apart, they took out the upper layer and fat of his neck first, then fractured his spine, and the final
