Azad stooped to sit on a rock buried in the dirt. It was buried next to a shrine dedicated to the god of art and magics, the Lady in Red. It was adorned with unique and creative art, all made by the nearby village’s people, likley each created through the signature magics they had been gifted by the goddess. There were gold-laced ribbons, crafty banners, drawings, carved rocks, and more specific things, like a miniature water mill crafted in apparently painstaking detail and set to toil in a nearby stream.

Azad stretched as he took in the nostalgic smell of smoke that had followed him up the hill, scented like calming sage. After cooling down from the surprisingly hectic day, he opened the book he had carried with him, which was about the local flora.

He slowly read through the book’s introduction, appreciating the time its author must have taken to write it all by hand.

‘The village of Smaza, my hometown, is known for the unique flora that inhabits its region. It is that which makes me love living there, as I adore exploring and learning more about them. Hopefully, if you’re reading this, you can appreciate the plants of this region through my knowledge!’

“Short introduction...” Azad commented, chewing on his cheek.

‘The first plant you might see as you journey near Smaza is the konucha tree. It grows much smaller than most other trees on Kinnak and can be identified through its stout stature and two-pronged leaves that look like forks.’

Azad looked around the surrounding forest, taking note of the smallish trees that accounted for most of the plant life. They made for dense cover, especially in the half-moonlit night.

‘The konucha tree typically grows up to seven meters tall, but rarely higher. Despite this, it is actually very well suited for building, as it grows thick and is very stable and strong, so strong that it can withstand powerful magical attacks from monsters. Most buildings you find in Smaza will be made of konucha wood because of that, including our palisades, which are even harder than the stone that’s used in the capital city!

Konucha logs are exported from the region for medicinal purposes, as well as for the smell it makes when burnt. When its bark is used in tea, it helps the digestive system break down tough materials, according to the Man of Indigo. The wood itself can also be burnt to make a refreshing and calming scent. Don’t burn or brew it too dense or hotly, though, as both its taste and smell are very potent!’

Azad sneezed, then rubbed his irritated nose with a finger before closing the book. It was all quite fascinating, but...

He heard hard breathing to his left and quickly stood to confront the approaching person.

“You know, it isn’t like you need to be here,” Azad said matter of factly. “I don’t particularly hate you or anything, so I don’t mind if you leave.”

The woman that followed him up the hill carried a knife in her hand and had a seared, grievous wound in her abdomen that was covered by a layer of thin ice, functioning as a bandage. Around her, a mysterious yellowish circle(which was perhaps better described as a halo) surrounded her like a glass ball.

“I won’t...let you get away with this...” she muttered, barely audible.

Azad rolled his brown eyes and scruffed his black hair in irritation. “No, you definitely will,” he said with the infuriating, mocking, bored attitude that only a young teen like him could imitate. “You’re on death’s door as it is, so I suggest-”

“Fire blanket!” she yelled, causing fire to fall atop Azad from about thirty feet above him, pelting the teen with explosions. Instead of colliding with him, Azad raised his hand, materializing a barrier of white light. The bolts flew straight past it and directly impacted the teen. When the dust cleared, it was as if he hadn’t been struck at all.

“Do you really want to die that badly?” Azad asked, perplexed, as he moved his hand in front of him, the barrier following its movement.

“Stone collapse,” she said, prompting the teen to roll his eyes as a fissure of earth opened beneath him, cutting the shrine in half and sending much of the sentimental art strewn about it falling into its depths.

“Spider Legs.” Azad boredly said as he fell, causing his legs to stick to the fissure’s wall before he was further than a meter down the crevice. Azad stood sideways, defying gravity, yet displayed no emotion besides bored annoyance. “You know, I’ve never seen someone use that spell before. I guess it tends to be pointless when I spend so much time flying.”

“Flame Blanket, Stone Jut.”

“Really?” Azad asked indignantly as he used his barrier to block the falling fire, then said, “Mudscape,” while touching the other side of the fissure with his free hand.

His barrier neutralized the explosions, while all the dirt and stone in a half-mile radius lost its form and turned into soggy mud. When a spike of ‘stone’ jutted towards Azad from deeper in the fissure, all it did was soil his out-of-place black jacket rather than impaling him as intended.

Just about done with the woman’s shenanigans, he jumped out of the pit before the Muscape and Spider Legs spells interacted strangely. Azad glanced at the woman, who he supposed had used all of her mana since he had seen her use quite a few powerful spells not long ago. She seemed defeated, falling to her knees with a pitiful expression of sadness.

He shrugged, then walked away, pointing a finger at her. Confident that even if she could still cast magic, he would hear whatever she tried to cast, no matter how quietly she said it behind his back.

“Fire Shroud,” he said.

A firestorm that would make modern napalms look like cheap tricks exploded from his finger and enveloped the hill behind Azad in flame. A fatal heatwave charred the nearby konucha leaves after the explosion settled down but didn’t affect the spell’s caster in the slightest.

Azad imagined himself walking away from the explosion in stylish fashion but was rather aggravated by how the mud forced him to wade through like a dolt. He straightened out his jacket, then said, “Hyper Fly.”

“Thanks for the spell, you devil,” an inaudible voice whispered from behind him.

Before he flew back home, though, he looked back one last time, just to be sure his attack had landed. His opponent, after all, had yet to reveal their signature magic...

The yellow halo that surrounded the woman had changed to a vibrant reddish-orange color. She smiled crazedly as she pointed a hand at Azad, barely standing.

“Fire Shroud.”

Azad’s eyes widened, and he quickly held his white barrier out as a massive explosion enveloped him after a short delay. He stood against the attack, arms held out for a good three seconds, closing his eyes under the brilliant eruption of light.

He rolled his eyes as they flickered open again.

When the dense smoke cleared, he got ready to scold the woman for her impudence. “Fine, if you want to f-AAAH!”

A knife lodged into the side of his leg.

He began to curse in a much different language as he ripped the blade out without hesitation, then threw it into the marsh below.

Furious, he looked at the woman to see her looking aggravatingly satisfied with the arbitrary wound she’d inflicted on him, barely standing in the mud.

This whole thing would be a lot easier if he could still use his psychic barrier...

“Fine, you want to see a wound? I’ll show you a fucking wound, you bitch!”

He flew at her with extreme speed, then drove his uninjured leg into her skull, driving her head into the mud beneath. He grabbed the girl by the hair, then flew her out of the mud, saying, “Hold Movement, Lighten.”

He dragged her high into the sky, only stopping once he had a decent view of the terrain and was above a particular feature. The trees around Azad’s Mudscape spell were slowly sinking further down.

Not far away, thick, grey smoke rose from the decimated, burning village beneath them.

Just for good measure, he kicked the girl in the stomach before she could interrupt his little tangent. “You know, I let you live because I thought that would be nice, but it seems you don’t like to live.” He briefly changed his tone to a mockingly maternal one. “So, I guess I’ll need to teach you a lesson in death. You see your little village down there? Yeah, every goddamned person you know is buried under that rubble, and maybe some are still alive, watching as they’re slowly burned alive, screaming and pleading for death to take them faster.” He pulled the girl’s face right up to his eyes. “Do you think I’ll make you die quicker than them or slower than them?”

Slowly, painfully, the woman smiled as if she was satisfied with dying for spite’s sake alone.

“DON’T GIVE ME THAT FUCKING SMIRK!” Azad screamed into her face, jerking her back and forth by the hair.

“Yell.”

He slammed his fist into the woman’s stomach, cracking the ice that kept her from bleeding out and causing her to cough blood.

“Yell! Wound!”

The woman’s arm fell off, detaching as if it were natural to.

The smirk didn’t go away. “Wound!”

“Wound!”

“Wound!”

One by one, the woman’s remaining limbs slid off her body, falling into the burning village below.

“YELL, DAMNIT!”

The fumes of the smoke had begun to irritate Azad’s nose, as well as his mind. He got ready to say something to protect his pitiful ego from being hurt by the helpless woman’s tiny, dying smirk, but he stopped as he tried to hold back the urge to sneeze or cough.

“ACH!”

Azad froze as blood splattered on his face, coughed up by the woman.

He let go and idly listened to the body splatter on the ground far below.

“Wash,” he said, slowly pointing a hand at his now stony face. A whirl of water soaked off the blood, leaving his skin unstained.

He didn’t bother looking back at the mess he had made but instead flew to the half-buried shrine and dug through a muddy fissure a little to find the book he’d shoved into its wall. He dusted it off with an idle expression, removing dirt and roots, then flew away...

thinking about basically nothing.