Cleo sprinted out of the records building the moment she heard the call from Louisa. She did not know the girl as well as she would have liked, but they were allies and she knew that if Yun was not in real danger, then she would not have called. She knew Louisa had absolute faith in him.
She arrived to see a giant stone man extracting itself from a building near the middle of town. The man dwarfed Yun and Louisa who were both standing in its shadow, seemingly petrified at the creature that loomed before them. Cleo pulled out her Salamandrite knife and immediately began trying to inject her mana into it. The knife flickered several times but for some reason she could not get a firm grasp on her power once it left her body. Finally, after her seventh try in less than three seconds, something stuck. A thin bar of boiling hot flame shot out of the tip of the blade and slammed into the giant in front of them. The statuesque figure shot back into the building and there was a crash as the flame dissipated. Cleo frowned, but did not dwell on the situation and instead ran to check on Louisa and Yun.
“Are you alright? Did the stone soldier hurt you guys?” She said, checking them both for any injuries. Yun was the only one with any wounds, but his were severe. There was already masses of bruises forming on his chest, and it seemed like his right arm had been broken from three separate impacts.
“I'm fine, we need to get Yun to Laurence. He'll be able to help. That stone soldier just popped out of the ground and began attacking us. If Yun had not warned me to stay away it would likely have been both of us injured,” Louisa replied. She stroked Yun’s hair and kissed his forehead before standing up. “But first, we need to sort out that thing”.
The stone soldier smashed through the wall as Louisa spoke, destroying more and more of the building behind them. There was an ominous light flickering behind it, then an explosion and shards of glass were shot out of the building into the back of the soldier and the street proper. Cleo looked shocked as the soldier stumbled and then stood up tall, looking like the marble that it was made of was even more pure and clear. It was getting to the point where whatever material the soldier was actually made of was becoming like white jade.
With the increase in purity of the material it was made of, the strength of the creature seemed to increase as well. Its body was more agile than moments before, and it seemed to recognise Louisa and Cleo as targets now, rather than focussing solely on Yun. Cleo began trying to summon another bar of fire, but the struggle that she was under had only increased in difficulty. It was like trying to put a thread with split ends through the eye of a needle, and with each passing moment the eye of the needle was shrinking. Finally she managed to galvanise her mana through the blade and produced another bar of white hot fire that sped towards the soldier. As the bar sped through the air, the soldier let out a crackling sound and stopped in front of the flame, letting the bar of light and heat hit it. There was a soft squelching sound as the stone that the soldier was made of began to liquefy, but before long the liquefaction stopped and the clarity of the stone that the soldier was made of increased almost to the point that it was past white jade and moving towards being completely clear like diamond.
Cleo’s eyes shot wide open, and she immediately stuck the blade out flat in front of herself before shouting out. “Fenrir!” She screamed at the top of her lungs, and the flames inside the blade immediately galvanised. They sped out of the dagger and shot towards the ground, taking the shape of a giant, grizzly canine with wild hair made of flame and teeth dripping lava-like spit. The beast roared into the sky and a cone of flame blasted out into the stone soldier.
Unlike the flaming bar of light, the stone soldier desperately batted the flames away from it. There was something different about the new flames, but Cleo did not have time to dwell on it as she heard a cry from far above her and a blade comprised of wind smashed into the soldier. There was a screech and an explosion as the soldier was pounded into the ground by the attack. This only seemed to empower the creature further, however, as its skin became clearer and clearer, even as the flames from Fenrir were having the opposite effect.
“No one use attacks that contain mana!” Cleo said into the pointer ring as Winoa swooped down to the ground, her wings that had held her aloft quickly shrinking and transforming into a bird which perched on her shoulder. She skittered to a stop and stood beside Cleo, watching the stone soldier struggle against Fenrir.
“Why? What is wrong with it?” Said Winoa, looking at the spectacle for a moment before letting her bird, Garuda, enter the fray.
“I don't know, but the soldier seems to get stronger every time we use mana based attacks on it. Fenrir seems to ignore the issue by the fact that my spirit seems to keep all its mana in. The only drain I am feeling is keeping Fenrir’s impression upon the world”. Cleo frowned, “Do you reckon we will be able to use our affinity skills for dealing with it?”
“I have literally no idea. What’s the plan?”
“Umm... Okay I will seal its movement, you make it light as a feather and Louisa? You're the strongest of us physically. Bat that thing into the stratosphere. We need to get that away from us”.
Both Winoa and Louisa nodded at Cleo, before focussing on working together. Cleo began focussing on the soldier as it battled Fenrir. Gradually as they exchanged strikes, the soldier became more and more sluggish, before finally it ceased moving all together. Small crystals of ice began to form upon the soldier as it stood still and Fenrir moved its explosive body away. Winoa, seeing the soldier begin to freeze in place, took a wide stance and thrust her hands out, palms forward. There was a vibration that shot out of her and struck the soldier, but other than that there was no change to the world. Finally, Louisa began running at the soldier , quickly shrinking in form as she did, she jumped and shrank to the size of a mouse before slamming her fist into the centre of the stone soldier’s mass. There was cracking and the soldier shot into the sky with a force completely opposed to what you would expect from a girl who looked twelve years old at best.
As Louisa returned to her normal size, she pushed the blue hair out of her eyes and rushed towards Yun, not caring about the stone soldier anymore. Cleo and Winoa, however, watched as the stone soldier shot into the air and ignited, burning up as it flew high into the sky.
“How weak did you make gravity affect it?” Cleo asked, returning Fenrir to her body as she watched the soldier soar and burn up.
“Umm... Around a thirtieth of the strength of normal gravity. It is my current upper limit, so I tried to push that as far as it would go. It's kind of odd how much easier it is to make things lighter than it is to make them heavier. My lower limit is around five times normal gravity now”.
“Then that soldier is going to fly far away. It should not be a problem any longer, huh”.
“Sadly, you're wrong,” said a voice from behind them. They turned and Law was there, kneeling by Yun and looking at his wounds. “That golem is not anywhere near dead. I happened upon the journal of the guy who originally designed the stone soldiers, and he was a master craftsman when it came to arrays, beyond anything I have ever seen before actually. I could grasp some of what the array did, including the reason why it failed. He made the arrays relate to each other intimately, so the more stone soldiers there are, the better their golem hive-mind works. He also made it eat mana, so as to be destructive on a scale that would wipe out a country, but he could never truly get it to work and was going to scrap the concept before the plans for the array got stolen...” Law stopped as he was pressing lightly against one of the bruises on Yun’s chest. He reached into his bag and pulled out three large dried leaves. They looked vaguely like palm leaves and they smelled like medicine, but the moment he placed the palm leaves on Yun’s chest, the pain all across his body visibly lessened. “Augercalm does wonders. Now where was I? Oh yes. What you need to know is one; the creature can only be destroyed if the array is broken. Any damage to its body is effectively superficial, though the damage you do will force it to restore itself. Two; It eats mana and uses that to restore itself. Three; the fact that you tried destroy it means that they know where we are and we should get moving as soon as Yun can walk. This place is no longer safe for us”.
Silence spread over the group as Jim finally caught up with the others. He looked over the group and seemed to be thinking about something, but Cleo did not have time to ponder what. She could not help but wonder whether what they had done was best for the safety of the group or not, especially as the person she considered a braggart was kneeling on the floor and helping his friend. She knew she had a lot of adjusting to do.
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