Before the cultists reached them, Saffron pulled up a card named “Ring of Fire”, which she casted as soon as possible. A burning light emitted from her hand before the land surrounding the group erupted into a fiery wall. Behind them, they could hear the giant stone doors scrapping shut, closing off any convenient form of escape.

“Nice cover, almost cooked me medium rare.” Hazel joked.

“You can’t hide forever!” Terra screeched.

“Can we take them all?” Violette asked, doubtful. Already, the fire was dying down and they could see into the mob of cultists. Their eyes all gleamed with the same anger.

“Well,” Shiso said. “It might get tough if one more shows up.”

“That’ll be the one I take care of.” Reva said, placing a hand on Shiso’s shoulder. “I detest having to fight in the dozens, but I’ll do what it takes. You’re all worth protecting.”

Sargent Pepper ran in circles and barked excitingly. His tail wagged back and forth like a hyperactive metronome. The fire started to subdue.

“Let’s go!” Saffron shouted, pulling out a spell right as the flames died away, surprising and blasting away the first wave of cultists with a bolt of lightning, cracking the ground all around them.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Selicy wasted no time beelining straight for Terra, who was sitting motionless and judgemental in her chair. The minions who tried to stop her were deemed as unimportant wastes of time and got subsequently evaded.

Selicy grew long, sharp, thick icicles along the tips of her fingers, converting them from lethal weapons into dangers to the general human race. She used them as emergency brakes, steering, or a warning to cultists who got too close.

“You wasted my day because of a pile of damn rocks! Rocks!” Selicy spat furiously at Terra. “You’re beyond my mercy now.”

“Funny,” Terra said, menacingly rising from her throne. “I was about to say the exact same thing.”

Selicy slashed at Terra, but only scraped the woman’s staff, letting Terra attempt to put space between the two. The speed of Selicy’s masterful skating was matched by Terra’s close gliding across the ground. The cultists were kept back by the pure rage and malice emanating between the two women.

“Rip my clothes, I can buy more.” Selicy started. “Ruin my food, I can find more. Waste me time though? I can’t get that back!”

“Be lucky to stand before me!” Terra shouted, preparing a flaming ball of orange runes. “If you kneel now, you can be a devoted member of my worship!”

From behind her, Terra felt a hard, sharp bite painfully clamp down on her forearm. The spell dropped out of her hand and the runes dissipated like a pile of dust into the air. Sgt. Pepper let go and ran to Selicy’s side before growling at his victim.

Terra shook as she tried to wipe away blood that was seeping out of the wound. In her absent attempt to erase the blood, she stopped floating and gently came to the ground.

“I’m only devoted to myself!” Selicy shouted, pounding her fists into the ground. “Nobody else deserves it.”

Ice from Selicy’s slam crawled across the ground at alarming speeds and wrapped itself around Terra’s legs under her dress. With the cultist leader grounded, Selicy went in for a decisive blow.

A white and gold robed man jumped from behind Selicy, a purple-tipped knife in hand. The ice-cold woman quickly dodged and clenched her frost-clad hands around his neck.

“How much brainwashing do you need to follow a woman like that?” she asked, nodding a head towards Terra. She held her icy claws dangerously close to the man’s eye. “Maybe I can just snap you out of it right n-”

Before Selicy could do anything else, she was launched and carried away by a giant stream of earth that popped out of the ground and hit her square in the chest. Sgt. Pepper barked and frantically chased after Selicy’s airborn body. The flow of earth stopped when Terra got free of Selicy’s icy snare.

“Are you alright?” Terra asked, helping her follower up.

“I think so,” he said, clearly still rattled. “I think I need a second.”

“Stay safe out there.” she said softly. “You’re all precious.” She then glided away, looking for somewhere to rest and regain some mana. Her blood had small mixtures of blue in it.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

“Saff, I need another one over here!” Hazel shouted.

Saffron rushed over and used a spell to summon another row of turrets. She had been rushing around while Hazel built things to keep the mob of cultists at bay. Hazel had placed down a couple dozen turrets scattered about and shooting at the nearest moving object.

“I think that’s enough.” Saffron said, counting the structures around the field. “Take a shot from Sidewinder!”

All of Hazel’s turrets started to stutter and give off light mechanical screeching. The cultists took a few steps back from the machines; one poor cultist was on top of a turret, vainly pounding her fists into the metal when Saffron’s surprise attack came out.

A bright, large beam came rocketing out of all the machines, each one personally punching a cultist in the gut and taking them out the nearest window. The ones left backed away from the turrets, which were now smoking and non-operational. Hazel looked devastated at her work immediately dying.

“I thought that was a finisher…” Hazel winned.

“It was.” Saffron said, catching her breath. “It finished them.”

“You know that’s not what I meant.” Hazel pouted, pushing Saffron aside and bashing her wrench into a cultist’s stomach, making humm double over in pain. “I feel like something’s changed between us.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, straight punching another cultist in the face.

“Well, I just don’t think we’ve got that spark like we did before. I just don’t want us to lose the friendship we had.”

“I think you’re crazy.” Saffron said, shoving the idea aside. She cast a spell and an entire cohort of cultists were painfully swept away in a swarm of green energy.

“I’m being serious!” Hazel protested, blindly throwing a bomb into the distance. “It’s like you’re disregarding me whenever you can.”

“No, I’m not.” Saffron insisted. “You’re just not my only friend anymore. Our time in college has been over for a while.” Hazel fell silent.

“Yeah, I’m a bit different since the last time you saw me,” Saff continued, firing a spell in the direction of a cultist cluster. Golden sparkles rained down from the sky and painfully hit them like golden stones. “Sorry Zel, but it sounds like you’ve just gotta get over that things are different now.”

“Don’t be like that, Saff…'' Saffron threw down a barrier spell, which left plenty of men and women pounding on the green bubble around them and casting miniscule amounts of miscellaneous magic.

“Listen, say it now.” Saffron said urgently. “Whatever you don’t want to say, just say it.”

“I just don’t want you to leave me when this is all done.”

“Why’d you think that?!” Saff asked aggressively. She suddenly looked a bit bashful. “If anything, you’d leave me.”

“Why do you think I’d leave you?”

“Because I’m the worst of us all…” she mumbled.

“No you’re not!” Hazel protested. “At least you can make actual plans.”

“At least you can make something with your bare hands.” Saffron countered.

“At least everyone actually likes you.”

“At least you make useful things!” Hazel yelled.

“At least you can make things without fainting!”

“At least you didn’t run away from everyone when the world ended!”

“At least you didn’t cause the end of the Earth!!!” the scientist shrieked.

Saffron and Hazel were breathing heavily and staring each other in the eyes. They fell silent after their shouting session, listening to the vain attempts from the cultists to reach them.

“You know that wasn’t your fault.” Hazel whispered.

“If I never created them, they wouldn’t have-”

“NO!” Hazel interjected with a shout. “It’s not your fault! All you did was make the spells; they’re the ones who killed the world with them!”

“If you made the weapon, you killed all victims of it… that’s how it works…”

“Cut the bullshit! That’s stupid!” Hazel looked fuming at Saffron’s assertions. “Saff, you’re the kindest, most compassionate person who has ever been on this planet! You wanted to make magic to help people and that’s what you did. You didn’t destroy the world, they did! If you can’t see that, then get a prescription!” Without realizing it, Hazel had shoved Saffron over. The engineer was now looking down at her friend.

“You really think that?” she asked.

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Hazel said, shaking her head. “Because it’s the objective facts. It’s just my job as your best friend to tell ‘em to you.”

“That’s silly.” Saffron chuckled.

“Hey, you’re my friend. Machines are easy to fix, but fixin’ a person’s a lot harder. I wanna make sure you don’t break.” Hazel held a hand out to help Saffron up. She smiled and took it, keeping the hand held even after she was up.

In the palm of their hands, a blue glow burst and shined. Saffron and Hazel felt themselves get light headed as the glowing subsided. Hazel was surprised and scared to see the veins on her forearm glow a dull blue; Saffron took her hand back. In her hand was a spell card, shiny and gleaming. Hazel held one as well.

Saffron’s had a pinkish purple border and depicted a red-hot fiery wrench on it. Across the top, it read Resonate. Hazel’s was a blue-bordered card that had a wrench that was blue with fire. It’s name read as Salvage. They stared at them for a while and Saffron smiled.

“Well, I don’t think we’ve got much time left.” she said, pointing at the fading barrier. “I think we’d better finish our thing here quickly.”

“Well, I-” Just as Hazel was about to speak, the green bubble popped. Saffron lunged forward and put her arms around Hazel’s neck into a hug, taking aim and blasting an ember spell at the cultist who ran to stab her in the back.

“I’ve got ya.” Saffron winked.

“Same here.”

“I think I wanna wrap this up.” Saffron said with a yawn, holding up her Resonate card. Suddenly, the smoking turrets that were lost in the cultists began smoking and glowing white-hot.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Gunner rolled to the side, giving a small laugh before blasting another cultist in the stomach with some mana beams. It rarely killed people on the first shot, but he felt the surge of energy as mana drained from the cultist and into his body. The woman dropped from exhaustion.

Only a few feet away, most of the cultists locked in battle with Reva were trying to stay outside of the warrior woman’s range, not wanting to fall victim to either Tyrfang nor Ragnarøkkr. Deflecting and slicing right through all of their magic, Reva tried her best to only injure them; killing wasn’t one thing she liked.

Reva hooked Gunner by the back of his clothing and scooped him out of danger right as a woman threw a frosted spear. The boy was scooped into the air and laughed as he took a shot mid-decent. He hit the ground with a hard Thud before popping back up with vigor.

“I wanna do that again!” he exclaimed.

“Battle isn’t for such enjoyment.” Reva said sternly, arcing an attack that wiped a whole row of cultists away. “Just focus on what’s in front of you.”

“Just the one?” Gunner whined.

“As many as you need.”

Gunner frowned as he went back to shooting everything in sight (which included an unappreciated stray shot at Shiso). He quickly aimed a shot over his shoulder, which didn’t quite work out as intended. As the mana beam bolted for Reva, she quickly put her blades up and it simply bounded off of them, hitting a cultist and throwing her back out.

“Hey, that was pretty cool.” Gunner said, impressed. He fired another shot at Reva, who angrily swiped it aside with a sword, redirecting it into a man.

“Stop that!” Reva commanded. Gunner ignored her, preferring to have fun.

“This way’s more fun.” Gunner said, solidifying his decision.

And so, Gunner fired as many shots from his gun that he could get, which Reva deflected into the direction of a cultist; that was on top of her already swiping at the people who got too close. If the cultists weren’t afraid before, many of them were deterred from approaching the pair. A handful of them put their hands up in surrender.

“Give up and you will be spared!” Reva shouted to the group. At the sound of that, several dozen more put their hands up.

“Pssh. No you won’t.” Gunner laughed, holding up his gun. Reva knocked it out of his hand in a flash. “Fine,” Gunner sighed. “You will. Giant buzzkill…”

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

“On your right!” Shiso warned. Violette took a small leap to the left, letting Shiso’s bullet fly into a guy’s chest. Violette painfully sliced through an opponent’s skin and tendons with each sharp strum of her strings.

“Excellent shot, love!” Violette complimented. The bow in her hand already only had a few strings left. She took another twirl as she wacked a cultist on the head, knocking him out and breaking the rest of the bow. She pulled another one out from seemingly nowhere.

“Where do you keep those things?” Shiso asked, rolling and shooting people in the knees. Violette put a finger over her lips.

“It’s a secret.” she giggled.

The crowd of cultists was thinning around them. Less and less came after them; a good lot of the unscathed ones were trying to help out the ones that were injured and helpless.

“I think that we’re just about done here.” Shiso sighed. He popped his neck and stretched for a minute.

“I do hope so.” Violette said, looking around.

She gently reached over and grabbed Shiso’s hand, bringing it up and covering it with hers. From a few yards away, a stray blue beam of mana hit true at Shiso’s back, sending him toppling on top of the songstress. He quickly scrambled off of her, but her violin bow got caught in his left arm. Violette plucked the bow from his arm while Shiso pulled his cowl further up to try and hide his red face.

“Sorry about that.” he coughed.

“No problem here.” she blushed with a smile.

“Hey, you guys!” Saffron shouted, waving over with Hazel. Gunner, Reva, Selicy, and Sgt. Pepper made their way over as well.

“Where’d the party go?” Gunner asked.

That was quite a good question, as every member of Terra’s cult, including Terra herself, was completely gone. The stone throne room lay dormant and vacant, leaving the wind to sweep away pebbles, stone shards, and singed cloth.

“That was quite the ordeal.” Reva said, wiping away sweat. “How did she get so many people to join her cause?”

“I dunno.” Hazel shrugged, throwing Sgt. Pepper a mechanical bone that threw itself. “Probably the same way they got so many people to be Christian.”

“How?” Vio asked.

“Make it the dominant belief in a collapsing world.” she grumbled.

“Their leader ran off with them.” Selicy reported, catching her breath. “Where do you think they went?”

“I think they scattered like rats in a basement.” Shiso grumbled, checking to make sure both of his guns were fully loaded. “Let’s just smoke them out.”

“I can do that in a literal sense.” Saffron said, pulling out a purple card with the image of a jackal printed on the front.

“I’m fine with that.” Shiso said with a shoulder shrug. Everyone else cynically agreed, wanting to just get this over with and get on with their lives.

Under their feet, the castle’s floor rumbled and trembled. The ceilings shook and dust and pebbles tumbled down. Just in the next room, Saffron saw the stone walls move to block the door.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Are you alright?” Terra asked, propping a woman against the wall. Her follower had blood trailing down her chest and dripping a red trail onto the ground. Many others were left in the same condition as her.

“I-I don’t know.” the woman staggered. Terra had led them all away from the attackers and jumbled the interior of the fortress to keep them away. Terra held a hand on top of the woman’s wound and it closed up slightly, although not enough to stop bleeding. One of the others came over and escorted her away to a group with dozens of other injured people.

The leader knew that she had to get the intruders out, no matter what. She rolled up her sleeves and marched through the crowd. The blood on her arm was now showing a more prominent blue hue.

Waving her golden scepter, Terra savored one last gaze at her people as she erected a wall between them and her. With her will reinforced, she shifted a wall and marched towards the seven interlopers.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“I hate this stupid place!” Shiso complained, jumping back from another rock gollum around the corner. He kicked the animated rock pile into the wall corner, causing its body to be strewn all along the hallway. The castle had been changing its paths to lead them in circles for a few dozen minutes.

“The interior design is a bit drab.” Violette commented, running her hand along the brown and gray stone walls. Sgt. Pepper was firm in her other arm.

“As savage as it sounds, can we not just break the walls down?” Reva asked, carrying Gunner on her shoulders.

“Sounds like a good way to bring the whole place down on us.” Hazel said with a heavy eye roll. “The choice is yours.”

“Maybe if I had my shield with me.” the knight sighed.

“I think there’s an end to the hallway up ahead.” Saffron pointed out.

“If it’s that damn throne room again, I’m gonna do something.” Selicy growled.

“What will you do?” Hazel asked curiously.

“I’ll- you’ll- I’ll… I’ll… do SOMETHING!” Selicy roared in the anger of not being able to find neither words nor an exit. They stepped out of the hallway and into the throne room. “AAAAAAAH!” Selicy screamed, nearly ripping her hair out.

“It’s alright, Sel.” Violette comforted, giving Selicy a hug and patting her on the back and letting Pepper down.

“You’ve trespassed on these sacred grounds for long enough.” boomed a familiar female voice from the throne of the room.

“Sacred grounds?” Hazel asked, lifting her shoe and looking beneath it. “You mean this is holy dirt?”

“DON’T MOCK ME!” Terra shouted, bolting up from her throne. “I AM A GOD!” Pepper let out a deep growl and Shiso laughed.

“Unlikely.” Shiso grunted. “I would hope gods aren’t this whiny. Besides,” he looked over at Violette. “I would hope a goddess would at least be as beautiful as the prettiest human.”

“FOOLISH MORTAL! YOUR HUMRIS-” Terra stopped shouting for a second, stuttering on her words, trying to find the correct one. “YOUR HUBRAS- humtras… hibrus…”

“Hubris?” Saffron asked.

“Oh, yes.” Terra thanked. “YOUR HUBRIS WILL BE YOUR FINAL ACT!”

Terra began to hover far off of the ground, swirling waves of purple runes around her. The golden pieces on her head and neck began to bend and warp. Her staff began to detach into several small golden pieces as well.

The veins on Terra’s arms began to glow a blue so bright that it actually illuminated the ceiling of the wide room. The blue began to crawl up her arm and slithered up her neck until the group was staring at the glowing image of the cult leader’s cardiovascular system, even outlining her heart.

“What’s she doing?!” Reva asked.

“Stop it!” Saffron shouted. Sharp winds were ripping through the air, tossing their hair up every which way. “You’re gonna kill yourself!”

“DO NOT TELL ME MY LIMITS!” Terra shouted, a purple light rippling through her iris.

The runes around her began to bind themselves to her flesh, but all at once they disappeared. The runes faded, the wind instantly died down, Terra’s clothing and accessories returned to their respective shapes. Terra looked as though she couldn’t breathe as she fell to the ground, motionless.

“Come on,” Saffron urged, rushing over to Terra. She had a blue liquid leaking from her mouth, foaming slightly. “We need to give her mana!” Saffron urged, looking around.

“We don’t exactly have a transfusing kit.” Hazel soothed.

“Does anyone have anything?” Saffron urgently asked again. Reva stared two bullet-shaped holes into Gunner’s head.

“What?!” he finally asked.

“Give them up.” Reva commanded.

“No!” Gunner pouted.

“Look at her!” Reva shouted, pointing to Terra. The woman on the ground gave a small moan and pitifully turned over onto her face.

“Ugh, fine…” Gunner gave in, looking quite unhappy. He took the Mana Bites™ out of his pocket and begrudgingly tossed them to Saffron, who forced a few of them down Terra’s throat.

“Psst, Saff.” Hazel whispered. “Let’s beat it before the angry mob arrives for their leader.”

“You’re right.” Saffron wearily agreed. “Reva, carry Terra.” she commanded. “Gunner, you’ll have to just walk on foot.”

“This blows…” Gunner mumbled.

“Why are we taking this one?” Shiso asked, as if Terra was a stray dog. At that point, Sgt. Pepper was sniffing Terra’s unconscious body. “She’s absolutely wicked.”

“Because she’s hurt and needs our help?” Saffron asked nicely. Shiso narrowed his eyes.

“Because she’ll be a bigger pain in the ass later if we leave her here.” Selicy retorted as she passed by.

“Yeah.” Saffron agreed.

“Whatever,” Shiso sighed, turning away. “Just break down the doors, will you?”

In one quick motion, Reva drew both of her swords, rushed forward, and broke down the stonework doors in a flash. She then put the blades back and grabbed Terra.

“Shiso is right, that woman is wicked.” Violette said quietly. “Absolutely terrible.”