A bright light ripped through the evening sky. It landed on the splashing waves of the sea and dispersed like dandelion seeds. Next to where the lightning struck, completely unfazed, was the fifty-foot kraken.

Lyn cursed under her breath. The giant squid was moving around too much—how can such a massive thing be so agile?—while the boat was jerking too violently for her to get a proper aim. How was she going to hit this thing and kill it?

This commission was so much harder than she had anticipated.

The boat jolted forward, and Lyn fell flat on her face once again.

"Get it to stop moving!" Irene yelled while attempting to steer them away from the kraken. It was a fruitless effort, however, since the sea monster must have already attached itself to the hull.

"I'm trying!" Lyn yelled back. "But I can't aim!"

She tried to stabilize herself again, only to stare right at a colossal tentacle that was flying towards her.

A thin grey sword slashed through the leg. Cydney had whizzed herself in front of Lyn, bumping the detached squid leg with the entirety of her petite body, pushing it into the seawater. The limb made such an enormous splash that the two of them were completely doused.

"Lyn." Cydney stared at Lyn solemnly. "Strike me instead."

"What?" Lyn blinked.

Another leg crashed towards the other side of the boat, and Cydney ran to slice it off as well. For the past ten minutes, Cydney had been hacking away at these tentacles as they attacked the boat, but they seemed to keep growing back up and appearing.

"Strike my sword!" Cydney repeated. "I'll direct your lightning to it!"

"What? No way! That's too dangerous!"

Cydney either must not have heard her or chose to ignore her. As soon as she saw the chance, she leaped off the boat and onto the kraken.

"No! Cinna, get off it!" Lyn pleaded.

The sea monster thrashed around, with Cydney barely hanging on. Gripping the edges of the kraken's head, Cydney managed to toss her sword up.

"Lyn! Now!"

Lyn wanted to cry. Aiming her powers towards Cydney was the last thing she would ever want to do, but Cydney was already on top of the kraken. Raising her trembling hands to the sky, she focused as hard as she could. Her fingers tingled when she found the connection—and there it was, the charges in the clouds. She slammed her hands downwards.

A blazing streak of lightning zapped towards the sword. With a sharp object so high up in the sky, it was indeed much easier for Lyn to hit.

Cydney lunged upwards. She groaned as she brought the sword right into the monster's head. The giant squid screeched, before freezing from the shock; the sea calmed down, the boat stopped moving, and Lyn was finally able to find her balance again.

"Get away, Cinna!" Lyn ordered. "Raph, boost, now!"

Raph and Millie had been pouring seawater out of the boat throughout the quest. Hearing Lyn's command, the dark-skinned man stopped what he was doing and closed his eyes.

Energy surged through Lyn's body as if she had ingested five cups of coffee at once. From the corner of her eyes, she noticed Cydney collapsing back into the boat. The sea monster was now motionless and Cydney-less—it was time to strike.

Lyn slammed her hands down again. Fourteen different streams of lightning from all over the sky struck the kraken with a loud crackle. The resulting impact was so powerful that Lyn had to look away as the giant squid lit up into a white, blazing ball of light.

She had never summoned so much lightning at once. It seemed that getting Raph to learn this new boosting technique was the best decision ever.

"Millie, now!"

A giant fishing net shot out from Millie's hands. With the help of Raph, they threw the net over the blackened, fried kraken.

"Got it!" Millie cried.

"Alright, let's leave this hellhole!" Irene announced. She jammed the tiller and drove the boat away.

Once they reached the shore, everyone slumped on the ground, panting from the top of their lungs. Raph's face was pale and contorted as if he was about to puke. Millie was lying on the ground next to him, her eyes closed. Her hair was, very miraculously, only a little bit damp and still gorgeously styled.

Irene looked drained as well, but she managed to give Lyn a hard punch on the arm. "Let's never, ever, ever, do a sea quest, ever again."

Lyn chuckled. The fire mage must have been annoyed that her role was relegated to a boat driver in this quest. "Sorry guys, this was a difficult one. But hey, at least we got a free vacation to Portland?"

"Not... worth it..." Raph mumbled. "Sea... sick..."

"Aw Raph, did you not bring any potion for seasickness?" Millie asked as she rubbed his back.

Lyn turned to face Cydney. The petite woman was soaked; her high ponytail was wet and clumpy, while her usually large eyes were droopy and dazed. Leaning over, Lyn wiped away a small seaweed stuck on Cydney's cheeks.

"Cinna, don't ever do that again, okay?" she chided gently. "I would rather die than to aim my lightning at you ever again."

Cydney looked both amused and exasperated. "Don't say that."

"I mean it."

Sighing, Cydney trudged over to their quest loot that was now pulled ashore. Her sword—as charred as the dead monster—was still embedded in the head. She reached for it and pulled it out.

The weapon disintegrated into dust.

"Oh." She stared blankly at her hands. What was left of her sword had either blended into the sand or flown into the sea.

"What in the hell?" Irene blurted.

Lyn jumped up. "What? What happened? Why did it disappear?"

"I- I don't know." Cydney was equally confused. Her eyelashes fluttered as she looked around. "It- It may be the lightning... I've never had other magic strike it like that before..."

Lyn's heart sank. The lightning. This was all her fault. "I'm so, so sorry, Cinna. Is there anything I can do?"

"I don't know..."

Everyone was now huddled next to the kraken. Raph grabbed a handful of sand and asked, "Can you transmute it back? I see some remnants of your sword here."

There was a small pause before Cydney shook her head. "No, I can't control it anymore." Her voice quivered as the realization dawned on her. "It's filled with elemental magic. It's... lost. To me."

Lyn stared at Cydney. Was her sword special because it was somehow void of any elemental magic? Was it no longer working because Lyn filled it with her magic? Guilt crawled inside her, and she reached her hand out to squeeze Cydney in the arm.

"Where can we get more of this material? I'll go with you to get them. I'll go anywhere. I'll... We'll cancel all commissions until we get you a new one."

Cydney forced a smile. "It's okay, Lyn. I have more."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, don't worry about it."

Lyn was still filled with unease, but a group of people approached them, stopping the conversation with their jubilant cheers. They were the fishermen and other folks from the city that hired them for the commission. One by one, they came and shook Lyn's and the team's hands with fervor.

"You really did it!"

"Thank you so, so much for getting rid of the monster. We can finally go fishing again!"

"Yeah, I haven't earned a single cent this week because of that monster!"

"You saved our city, really."

Ted, the mayor of the city, was also among the group. He approached Lyn with a wide, cheerful grin. "You must be the team leader, Lyn. Thank you so much for taking on this quest and killing the kraken for us. The guild that our city is associated with was not able to deal with it, so we would have been in big trouble if you didn't accept our request."

"No problem, feel free to reach out if you have any other requests," Lyn said, out of habit. A sudden sharp pain shot through her back and she had to stop herself from wincing—Irene had heard her and had reached forward to pinch her.

Ted did not notice Lyn's predicament at all and continued his relieved rant. "Oh thank you so much yet again! We will definitely reach out. Those big guilds are charging so much these days, and it's so hard to find an independent team with credentials like yours." He gestured towards a restaurant by the waterfront. "Please, come join us for dinner! We can't wait for you to try our famous Maine lobsters."

"Thank you! Will do!" Lyn said through gritted teeth.

The moment Ted walked out of earshot, Irene leaned into her ears and whispered, "You want to take on more requests from this city, Lyn? This is Portland! Every commission request from this place is going to be sea-based!"

"I was just being polite. We'll reject them when the time comes." Seeing Irene's continued scowl, Lyn added, "Come on, we still need to build up a rep. We've only been in the market for a month. Just pretend a little."

"Yeah, yeah. Fine."

Turning around, Lyn noticed that Cydney was standing away from the crowd, silent and sullen. "Are you okay, Cinna? Shall we get some food to cheer you up?"

Cydney nodded, giving Lyn a weak smile.

"Yeah, let's go eat."

ϟ☁ϟ☁ϟ

The restaurant was lavishly decorated, and filled with people from the city who were all eager to greet the team. Trays of seafood lined the buffet tables: lobsters, prawns, scallops, five different styles of cooked sea bass and salmon, and many more. The variety was as amazing as the amount of food provided.

While everyone rushed for the food, Raph approached the mayor. "Erm, do you have any vegetarian food on the menu?"

Ted blinked at the request. "We have potato salad, it's probably vegetari—" He paused when he noticed bits of bacon in the salad. "Oh, you know what? There's a really good Indian restaurant down the road. I bet you can find what you need there."

"Ah, it's... it's okay then."

"They have some grilled cheese sandwiches at the back," Millie offered. "Here, I took some for you."

With that said, she conjured a heap of sandwiches out of thin air, while Raph, suddenly overwhelmed, struggled to catch everything on his plate.

Next to them, Lyn, Cydney, and Irene filled their plate at the buffet tables, with Irene building a miniature mountain of food.

"I see you're enjoying this," Lyn teased. "Is this commission finally worth it now?"

"If they'd gotten us a better hotel and a teleportation port, maybe."

"You're seriously impossible to satisfy."

As they sat down to enjoy their meal, people kept approaching Lyn to talk to her. Wanting to eat her dinner, she tried her best to cut each conversation short as courteously as possible, until, of course, a really pretty woman appeared.

Tall and slender, with long, dirty blonde hair, the woman fidgeted as she handed Lyn a plate of orange bundt cake. "H- Hi, my name is Pam. Thank you for all that you've done for the city. I... made this and I hope you'll like it..."

Lyn could not help but give her an endearing grin. "Thank you, Pam. You're a baker?"

Pam nodded. "My parents own a bakery downtown."

"That's awesome. You know, my parents are bakers too."

"Really?" Pam's eyes widened, while her face flushed a slight pink. "Your parents weren't questers? That's- That's so cool that you made it as a quester now."

Lyn shrugged as she took a bite of the cake. "Yeah, well, I did get pretty lucky with my magic."

"I- I saw the lightning. It's... really cool. I wish... I wish I was better at magic." The more Pam spoke, the redder her face became.

"Why? Your baking skills are already so magical, Pumpkin." Lyn winked. "This cake is super good, it might even be better than my parents'."

"You think so? I- I can make more tonight and give them to you tomorrow before you leave."

Lyn's eyes lit up. "You'd do that? Pumpkin, you're as sweet as your cakes."

When Pam left, Lyn spun around excitedly, only to see Irene munching on the rest of the cake. Raph and Millie were sitting somewhere else, chatting with another group of people. Cydney was nowhere in sight.

"Whoa, this is really, really good!" Irene exclaimed.

"Yes, but this isn't for you." Lyn yanked the plate of cake away from her. "Where's Cinna? I want to let her try some."

"Cyd? Oh, she left."

"What? She was literally right here." Lyn frowned as she scanned the room.

Irene rolled her eyes. "She left while you were flirting with that girl, idiot."

"What? I wasn't—" Lyn stopped dead in her sentence as a pang of guilt hit her. Oh shit, did she get too carried away in her conversation? Cursing inwardly, she stood up.

"Don't eat the cake, Irene, it's for Cinna," she ordered one last time before bolting out of the restaurant.

Irene watched her friend leave and proceeded to eat the cake anyway.