“Fascinating,” I heard Luna mutter behind me, as I was still trying to see what had spooked me to turn a stretch of forest into a mess of broken branches and uprooted shrubbery. “Something was there, but I couldn’t tell you exactly what that ‘something’ was. Just a presence, natural but not quite, magical but also not really, just, strange,” she continued to speak, her words only making limited sense as she was trying to understand a phenomenon we had minimal information on.
“Want me to try blasting the area again?” I asked, eager to do something to pull away the veil hiding this ‘something’ from us. “Darkness Magic might help, or Death Magic,” I opined, my mind already considering the best way to weave those two together into a nice blend of utterly lethal devastation.
“I doubt Death Magic would do anything, whatever this is, I don’t think it’s alive in the sense we would use the term,” she admitted, “Darkness Magic might do something, if only because it’s fairly fundamental, especially the aspects of Change and Magic,” she added, giving me yet another idea to cause magical devastation to this unidentified entity.
“But I’m fairly certain it’s gone anyway,” she finished, a sentiment I could agree to, as I couldn’t detect anything, again. However, I hadn’t been able to detect anything earlier until the entity struck, demonstrating that my abilities were somewhat lacking in detecting this thing. But the idea that, maybe, Soul Magic would work was a path worth following up on. Weaving together some unholy combination of Darkness and Soul Magic, possibly with a little bit of Death mixed in, just for flavour, would likely work on almost anything.
“Let’s keep going,” Lia tossed in, making us realise that standing here, staring into the moonlight forest, wouldn’t give us the knowledge we sought, though continuing on might do so. Or it would get us out of the area, allowing us to leave this strange entity behind and set up nearby so we could study this phenomenon without getting harassed the entire time.
Turning around, we started walking again, and now, I was using my Wind Magic to keep an eye out for sudden changes in the atmosphere while, at the same time, I was using the ability I had learned from Lady Hecate to detect souls. That method was largely useless, as every living thing had some essence of its own, be it a plant, a small animal or something else entirely, meaning that the entire forest around me was faintly glowing with the ghostly light indicating the different essences contained in everything around us. Most of it was green, with browns and other earth tones mixed in, and the glows were muted, indicating that the essences I could see were largely of the Life and Earth variety, while the muted nature spoke of very little internal magic. Plants, unless innately magical, were like that, making the few brighter spots where animals were trying to hide from the strange creatures passing by their burrows stand out quite strongly. Sadly, the skill also messed with my physical sight, leaving me comparatively blind to anything beyond the range of my skill, my usual dark vision overpowered by the ethereal light of the numerous essences around us.
Suddenly, as we were just walking along, the massive downside of my Soul Sight in these circumstances made itself known. Given the muted nature of the glows all around us, my eyes had adjusted to make the few animals appear bright, just like eyes would adjust to let a person see shapes in all but total darkness, forcing me to consciously look away from my companions as their own souls were glowing brightly enough to blind me in these circumstances. However, when a different entity suddenly appeared within my line of sight, I had no time to prepare, no time to react, nothing to keep the bright light of their soul from blinding me. I couldn’t even make out the actual shape I was looking at before the bright glow it shed shattered my soul sight and made me curse in pain, blinking furiously while mustering what focus I had left to lash out with a vicious combination of Soul and Darkness Magic.
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Sadly, lashing out while mostly blind wasn’t all that conducive to making accurate attacks, leaving me, once again, with some devastated forest. Well, somewhat devastated, the combination of Soul and Darkness Magic wasn’t all that deadly; it was weird. Corruptive might be an appropriate word, or mutating. Whatever word one wanted to choose to describe a wave of power, fundamentally altering the essence of the various plants in almost random ways, as I had little regard for control over the attack. I merely wanted something to disrupt whatever entity we were facing, allowing us to get a better grip on the situation and adapt our response. For that, it wasn’t all that important what happened to the enemy, merely that the enemy couldn’t control what happened to them, either.
For the affected plants, it meant I had just about hit the random button on their magical affinities, as they all lacked the innate power to withstand the strength of my spell, especially as I had lashed out in pain, adding some additional power to it. As so often, randomly switching elemental affinities around was not conducive to survival, especially not for the plants hitting some of the more volatile elements out there, like Crystal, Fire, Wind and similar elements. A few immediately burned up, some with a shower of sparks indicating that lightning was involved, others turned into dust, some of it sparkling, some bland, and I even saw a single shrub that turned translucent, though I had no idea what element might have had that effect on it.
All in all, it was chaos, at least that was the impression I got once I managed to blink away the spots from my eyes and restore my normal sight, allowing me to see the mess I had made.
“Did you see what it was?” Luna asked, her eyes sparkling with curiosity, some of which was directed towards the glimmering, glittering mess I had made in the forest.
“Not really, no,” I shook my head, just slightly annoyed while considering the best way to deal with this particular mess. It almost looked like a bed sheet, a raggedy thing with little to indicate what it actually might be. Best I can do is tell you that it has a lot of Wind Magic, though that shouldn’t be a surprise now, should it?” I explained, looking over to see that Luna was already poking a few of the mutated plants.
“No, not really,” Lia admitted, looking at the mess I had made with a weary look on her face, “Do you think it would be smart to do that to this creature? If it’s powerful enough and has its essence changed to fire or something, wouldn’t it explode?” she asked, just as another of the freshly altered plants burst into a shower of acid, the corrosive liquid starting to eat away some of the plants around it and the soil below.
“Maybe not,” I admitted, somewhat surprised by the sheer chaotic effect my magic had wrought.
“What even was that? It almost looked like some strange fire, but it wasn’t, was it? I felt Darkness Magic, though why it would manifest as these pale, black flames, I have no idea,” Lia prodded, making me pause for a moment, wondering why this particular combination twisted that way had manifested like she described. Sadly, I didn’t have the slightest idea; there could be dozens of factors, maybe even hundreds, and I wouldn’t know where to begin the analysis, unless I repeated this particular feat and started to take careful notes.
When I admitted as much, Lia looked at me with a strange look in her eyes. “I guess it worked this time, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to use something like that regularly,” she remarked, just in time to have another of the affected plants wither, this one turning to dust thanks to the Death Magic it had internalised, overcoming its vitality.
“Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I agree,” I paused, thinking about the way I had woven my spell, “Especially as it won’t even work against most things. There’s only so much power in the spell itself; it can only overpower the elemental alignment of things much weaker than the spellwork. I’m pretty sure any animals in the area have shaken it off, maybe even a few of the taller trees, they look remarkably unaffected.”
“Do you think you managed to hit the thing and it just resisted?” Lia asked the question, making me pause for a moment. It was possible, but I had been in no state to confirm my hit, so I could only shrug; I simply didn’t know. And, somehow, that might be even more annoying than the rest of this situation.
