20 No Time For Caution 3/3 (2/2)
”I love you, Ri...”
”I love you too, brave idiot.” As his hand fell to the ground, Rita stood up.
The first Beast managed to overcome her deathtrap of fire and lightning and rushed towards her. She pushed it and everyone behind it with another Wave of Force before channeling her Mana restoration spell.
She already had her Mana pool back by the time they returned. Rita pondered for a moment an idea of simply pushing them away again and again, but decided against it. The Wave of Force doesn't kill. Instead, it simply pushes away. The Beasts would pile up if she stopped killing them, and the moment she makes any mistake would be her last. So she chose an aggressive approach.
Every four or five spells she pushed them back with another Wave of Force to recover some Mana back. She also downed her last two Mana potions.
Another batch of Wavespawn was pushed back when a spider fell on her from the ceiling. It sunk its fangs into her left shoulder and Rita collapsed to the ground under its weight.
”-Avatar of Fire!-”
Her body was instantly set on fire, burning the spider. It was one of her last-resort defense tricks, for it burned both enemies and friends alike, including herself. She bit her charred lip to not to scream, the remnants of her burnt clothes fell down.
Next thing that happened was both lucky and unlucky for her. She saw a Hellhound took aim at her, prepared to spit out another beam of lava.
”-Avatar of Water!-”
The spell covered her body with a thick layer of water that would partially protect her from fire attacks. The good part about this situation was that aside from protection, Avatar of Water also provided restorative effects, the more Mana used, the better these effects were.
”-Simon's Ice Fortress!-”
She surrounded herself with Ice Walls and began to channel Mana. A moment later she heard a roar, and the frontal wall began to melt. When the Hellhound was out of breath, the wall gave out. Some of the lava made it inside the Fortress and burned Rita's hands, although her Avatar lessened the impact greatly. She also was lucky that her book was still on the ground.
As the wall melted away, few Beasts jumped at her. One of them bit her leg, another tried to push her down with its weight, but her back hit the wall of the Fortress, and she managed to stay on her feet.
”-Avatar of Fire!-”
Her mostly healed skin and barely regrown hair burned out again as she screamed in pain.
”-Lesser Balm!-”
She had no time to pick up her tome, for the Beasts were there again, so she used what she could from her non-Tomecraft arsenal.
”-Gore Festival!-”
It was the spell she hated the most. It was a variation of her Tower of Flesh, but more gruesome and taxing. Dead bodies of the Beasts around her glowed blue and flew towards her. They piled around her, creating a cocoon of flesh. With a sickening sound the bones of their bodies turned into spikes and protruded outwards, creating a spiked mound around Rita. As a finishing touch of the spell, this dreadful mound began to spin around Rita, creating a well-defended slaughterhouse.
She hated her own invention, it sickened her, but it was so effective that she couldn't forgo its usage. Howling and wailing filled the tunnel as the Wavespawn kept rushing her to be slaughtered by the spikes.
While the spell was tremendously effective, it had two flaws. The first was its Mana cost, as its support ate away her Mana pool at a concerning rate. She also couldn't replenish her Mana as the spell required all her four Mana layers to channel it.
The second flaw was even scarier. The bodies of the Beast, while sturdy and durable, were not eternal and unbreakable. Unlike her Tower of Flesh spell, she could not replenish broken parts with new bodies because all her four Mana layers were occupied with the channeling of the spell itself.
It was her last line of defense that could only buy her some time. But it was the dead end. She couldn't cast. She also covered TanYan with this spell, which made her immobile.
Cracks and gaps began to appear here and there in her Gore Festival. Someone's fang broke through and slashed her naked belly before disappearing in a whirlwind of spikes and bones. A spider's leg grazed her cheek from above before meeting the same fate.
Another part of her defense melted away under an acid splash. More gaps appeared all over the place, and more fangs, teeth, paws, claws, and horns struck her.
It was like Rita was in a small cage, surrounded by a horde of hungry lions. They reached in with their paws, they slashed and grabbed, pulled everything they could touch.
She was all bruised, bleeding heavily, and on top of that, her body hadn't been healed after the Avatar of Fire, so she was also scorched and burnt. Her Mana pool was almost empty, too.
Her already feeble defense began to crumble apart. She was horrified.
She was not scared of death, for she already died once.
It was unfair, she studied so hard, she practiced so much, and it was still not enough. Inability to find the right answer to the problem scared her.
She was afraid of her powerlessness.
She was scared of her own shortcomings.
”-Ultrasonic Arrow!-”
”-Intimidating Roar!-”
”-Greater Chain Lightning!-”
Rita was woken up from her stupor by the sudden rush of magic. She saw people rushing to her side.
”Rita! They are almost ready! C'mon, run!” The warrior with a two-handed axe stood in front of her, protecting from the Wavespawn.
She looked at him, confused. The last three minutes were so intense that she forgot why she was here in the first place.
Somebody's hands pulled her up, and now she was standing on her feet again.
”We need to leave, now!” A girl said to her in a tense voice.
”Wait! Take TanYan, too!” Rita almost yelled, remembering what was most important to her.
The warrior turned around after smashing another Beast:
”Where is he?”
”Right here, I was healing his-” As Rita looked down, she saw an empty, bare stone, only splashes of blood and the sword. ”No! He was here just a moment ago! I'm sure he is somewhere here under the Beasts!”
The warrior held her shoulders while both magician and archer were pushing back the Wavespawn:
”Rita, he is not here. I can feel the life force, and it's only the four of us.”
”No! I'm sure he is somewhere here! He is hurt!” She tried to run, but the warrior held her tight. ”Let me go! Let me!”
”Rita, we are leaving. We are out of time.” He said in a distressed tone.
She tried to kick him in the knee to run away.
”I'm not leaving him! I can't lose him, too!” She screamed with all her strength.
”Sorry, Rita, I am so sorry...” The warrior said before punching her in the gut. She bent forward from immense pain, and he grabbed her naked, bloodied and charred body and ran to the harbor.
---
AN:
This concludes Rita's story. I hope it was a worthwhile departure from the main storyline, and you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Thank you for reading.
I will try to briefly mention a few things I decided to cut down from this part (or they just begged to be explained):
1. Rita is strong. She has lots of unique spells crafted by her. But she uses her tome anyway because it gives her a variety of spells, and also access to a calamity tier magic. It also takes a lot of time and effort to progress them from a lesser- to a greater- and calamity- tier.
2. A strength of different tiers of spells:
Lesser tier - a gunshot.
Major tier - a grenade.
Greater tier - RPG/tank shot
Calamity tier - heavy rocket missile
Although, effects vary from spell to spell, and they also usually well concentrated for better effectiveness. I.e., firebird spell that Rita used to kill spiders, it is more about the heat and potency to burn through resistance, than it is about the rough scale of the explosion.
3. Why wasn't Rita so cool when she fought the wolf with Orisa? Because she left the Military nine years ago and never fought again.
Now, to a spell section (not all spells will be listed here, of course):
Infinite Regeneration - constantly heals wounds (without disinfecting them). Lasts around two minutes, for a healing spell, it is an insanely long time, thus the name.
Empower - unique to the vas Kavenfenn bloodline spell that empowers any following spell. At its peak (depending on the user's power) it doubles the effects.
Living Legend - self-buff that increases all owner's stats, the more powerful the owner, the bigger is the increase. Main focus of the spell, however, is Vitality/Toughness/Stamina. It greatly helped TanYan survives the spikes.
Dueling Ground - area spell that automatically taunts the Wavespawn to attack the user.
Balm - painkiller spell.
Shillen Elder - an improved, Sealcasting variant of the common Mana transfer spell. Normal Mana transfer is tremendously ineffective, it loses around 80% of the Mana transferred. Rita managed to lower this number to a measly 10-20%.