14 Fire (1/2)
Back at the north side of Frontier Town, Cruel Rose was tearing her hair out.
”Somebody! Anybody!” She shrieked, holding up the book of Basic Fire Magic. ”Tell me what this word means!!”
Her wisest gang members were trying to make sense of it. Most of them couldn't read, but the few who could did their best to figure out the overly long word. ”In… inside something…? Invincible…? In syllable? In scribble?”
”It's a something 'tion'.” A younger 'reader' gangster exclaimed.
”I think it has something to do with the magic Sigil…” somebody else said.
”Forget it!” Rose roared. ”Give it here!”
Ignoring the words on the page entirely, she pressed her hand against the magic sigil and activated it the way she activated the magic scrolls used for slave-bonds…
BOOM! An explosion lit up the Cruel Rose Headquarters.
One youngster gangster ran around screaming. ”My hair is on fire! My hair is on fire! My hair is on fire!!”
”Put it out! Put it out!” someone else yelled.
A third person tried to blow on it, only to get bowled over by the panicked burning man as he dashed for the kitchens. More shrieks erupted and there were a lot of crashes.
Meanwhile, everyone else tried to put out the flames in the main hall.
”Quick! Stamp it out!”
”Aargh! My foot! MY FOOT!!!”
”Water! We need water!”
”In the kitchen!”
”Where's the water! Where's the water barrels?”
”He broke them! He rushed straight into them with his hair on fire, and broke them both!”
”Water! We need water! Somebody get some water!”
”Oww! Hot, hot, hot…!”
”It's getting bigger! What do we do? What do we DO?!”
”Run! Every man for himself!”
Screaming, yelling, fighting each other, the members of the glorious Cruel Rose gang fled from their headquarters as it began to burn.
***
Meanwhile, Remian had ten new scrolls Inscribed before he ran out of Tier 1 magic ink.
Six were basic Fire Bolt spells. Each would shoot out a fist size ball of fire at the speeds one might use to throw a rock. Two were Smoke spells, which didn't really burn much, but provided a lot of dense, choking smoke. One was a Torch spell, which stuck a fist-sized flame onto a certain point of an object, typically wooden sticks.
The last one was a Bonfire spell. While it, too, was learned from the book of Basic Fire Magic, this was not actually one of the 'basic' spells. It was actually there just to show off to new students how powerful fire magic can be. Someone had put an Inscription of it right at the front of the book filled with warnings and cautions on how to use it and to keep anything flammable away from the direction you were facing.
When Remian tried it, he had carefully directed it against the barbecue pit, and had thought to conveniently roast some raw meat while he was at it.
As for the result… both the barbecue pit and the meat were so badly burned, Markus hired Tim to do the cooking from then on.
Remian idly smiled to himself as he pictured Cruel Rose reading the book of fire magic and testing out the first Inscription in the secrecy and privacy of her treasure vault…
That would be the end of her treasures!
Back where the book came from, at a high level city like Ecclesia or Black Dragon city or Ceres, mages would be everywhere and a small wild fire bursting out unexpectedly at a kitchen stove or a sand pit would be little more than a child's prank. There should easily be enough high-level mages around to deal with it promptly and effortlessly. Any random person on the street should have a scroll or two in hand that could do as much damage or more. Heck, any random carriage driver could do more damage driving his carriage recklessly.
But out here in the Frontier, there weren't all that many people capable of dealing with magical slips and spills. Maybe Ye'Tuo or one of the other Slayers, but certainly not the average gang thug. In fact, those guys were more likely to set themselves on fire.
Sure enough, Remian thought he could hear screaming in the distance. Over from the north side of town, there appeared a sudden column of black smoke.
”I'm gonna have to get that book back soon, before they burn the whole town down.” Remian sighed. ”Charlie's going to be so mad.”