Heroes to Hunted

A dozen rock spears shot diagonally outward. They surrounded Lilia with her as the acting midpoint. Each spike traveled with whirlwind-high speed and pinpoint precision.

"You're pitiful!" Lilia scoffed while she made a vast leap backward.

The impaling spikes shattered into one another as she zipped through the air. They crumbled into large chunks of stone and dust.

"You think such a thing would defea-" Lilia started with confidence, but her inexperience would be her downfall. Though she was undoubtedly a formidable opponent, her naive arrogance and failure to plan ahead left her vulnerable to consecutive strikes.

When she landed, I'd already hoisted my shield upward on a rock pedestal, and its runes activated.

A flurry of stone shards ejected from the shield while it drew replacement stone in from the earth. What looked like a gray mist of razor-sharp rock filled the space between Lilia and me.

Many projectiles cracked and faded to dust upon impact with Lilia's flames, but some broke through. They collided with Lilia's body with the sound of fleshy thuds and burrowed deep into her skin like splinters.

Meanwhile, I had buried both hands into the ground. I expended some of my stockpiled mana and raised a fortified cage to obstruct Lilia's movements. The side facing me had a dozen slits, allowing my shield's stone bullets to pierce the interior.

The sizzling and snapping of stone on Lilia's fiery aura accompanied her taunts. "Your tricks won't work!" she scoffed as she attempted to leap out. However, the ceiling's maw closed with a loud crash. 

Lilia's escape was foiled as she slammed into the shut roof.

The confines of the fortified hollowed cube's interior entrapped Lilia like a rat in a trap. The motion also kicked up a thick mud spray from the ground, stifling her flames to darkness.

Lilia's taunting laughs silenced, following the dying out of her flames.

Though I could no longer see her, I could feel Lilia's position using the vibrations of seismic energy. Every step, every breath, every pained grunt; I could tell where she was just by how the earth reacted to her actions.

My cage was complete, so Lilia was at the mercy of my shield's infinite stone volley. Yet, even in spite of her flame aura being momentarily stopped, my efforts still weren't enough.

'More!' I generated hundreds of stone spears from the structure's interior walls and ejected them. They crashed into each other with force; the crumbling of stone resounded within the cage.

'MORE!' My mana output increased, and a bed of spikes formed within the cage. They launched upward to skewer anything inside. 

'MORE!!!' Finally, I willed the very walls to move, forcing them into one another as if the very tectonic plates below had shifted. They crushed into each other, causing the jagged edges lining each wall to clamp down like a massive earthly jaw of death.

After that, the air became deathly still with silence. Other than the roaring and swirling of flames in the background, there was nothing.

No laughter, no taunts, no screams, nothing; Lilia had gone utterly silent.

Chunks of stone stripped off the walls as they cracked from the impact. The clattering of my shield's projectiles drowned out my exhausted hyperventilations.

'Did... Did I get her? Is it over?' I pushed myself upward, then deactivated the shield's runes beside me - the inscribed symbols dulled from brightness like an extinguished lamp.

I picked up my shield and mumbled, "That had to have done something..." while fishing through my pockets. The smooth sensation of glass brushed past my skin as I retrieved the red potion.

I flicked the cap off with my thumb, then consumed the vial's contents.

"Ugh..." I tossed the emptied container away and retrieved my flail. "Now, let's see about her."

I approached the cage with caution, taking each step carefully. 

Normally, I would have been celebrating my victory by now, but instead, I felt a growing sense of uncertainty. I had unleashed a devastating attack that should have left nothing alive inside.

But that wasn't the case.

As I drew closer to the cage, the stone walls began to rumble and glow with intense heat. The very ground beneath me shook with fear and apprehension.

"Damn...it wasn't enough," I thought to myself as a massive explosion erupted from the cage, shattering it into dozens of glowing red pieces. The force of the blast was like that of the largest volcanoes in all of Primordia, and the reverb sailed far across the sky.

Lilia stood amongst the rain of carnage, glowering back at me with an expression mixed with fury and haughty satisfaction. "Did you think you had bested me? Your ignorance is only humorous for so long, you know. It's becoming an eyesore."

"There's no way an attack so wretched could end me," Lilia bared her fangs in a sneer. 

Despite her haughty superiority, Lilia's clothes now had numerous pierce marks and blackened stains from where my spikes had stabbed her. Her flesh was renewed to perfection, but my attack had definitely wounded her multiple times.

"Yeah... I'm starting to see that," I sighed in reply, then inwardly thanked my decision to consume my health tonic. My wounds were already, for the most part, healed over and ready for round two.

I hoisted my shield and started swinging my flail in small, circular rotations to build momentum. Which I quickly lost when Lilia threw up her arms in a pout.

"You know... It's not really fair," she groaned. "You have unfettered access to your strength while I'm limited."

"That's war; nothing is ever fair," I retorted with a grin but had a nervous nagging feeling tug at the back of my mind. 'She's limited? She's yet to harness her true power?!'

A small, uneasy chuckle left my lips as a creeping shadow covered me from overhead. I briefly averted my gaze upward to see the smoke from the burning wheat fields blotted out the blue sky's vibrancy and Sun to darkness.

The shade, slowly crawling across the ground, eventually enveloped Lilia too. She grinned widely as her eyes regained their ominous cindery hue.

"I suppose you're right..." A dozen coils of black blood burst free from Lilia's back. They towered around her like a swarm of midnight-colored serpents. 

Flames grew and spiraled around each tendril, creating the image of gargantuan, burning blood whips.

"I won't feel any sympathy for you, then..."