The enemy had been quite far away at the start, but they were moving quite fast and the same could be said of the trio, so it took less than a minute for contact to be established.

Said contact came in the form of exploding fire arrows that flew at the group at twice the speed of regular arrow shots. Nina had been taking point and immediately reacted by moving into a defensive stance and blocking the way to Elise. And Nalia coordinated seamlessly by increasing the defensive parameters of her boost spell and mixing it with a shield.

Three arrows came in quick succession, but Nina easily held firm even as they exploded on top of their hasty protection.

‘Tch. We were detected before being able to catch sight of the enemy. That’s annoying.’ Elise complained, talking with both her partners at once.

‘At least their attacks don’t seem to be very effective at this range.’ Nalia noted.

‘I think we should be able to block her hits and move closer.’ Nina said, accidentally continuing the train of thought despite not having heard Nalia’s words.

‘Let’s advance. Nalia should try to intercept some of the arrows and Nina blocks the rest.’ Elise gave her orders.

And so they resumed their movement, Nalia shooting stone bullets and managing to hit and destroy about half of them while Nina blocked the others with swipes of her arms that deflected away most of the explosive power. Five seconds passed, and then ten, before the continuous shooting stopped for a few seconds.

That calm was followed by another attack, one that seemed more like a fire missile than an arrow, evidently the result of their enemy focusing their strength for a bit.

‘Freeze it!’ Elise called out, and Nalia manifested a sphere of freezing cold water which she threw into the approaching missile right when it was about to hit.

With an explosive sound Nalia’s water vaporized in an instant, her hasty counter-attack unable to match the power of the enemy’s attack. But she had done her job, as the missile shrunk down to half of its original size in the process, blunting its power and allowing Nina to block with both hands together, successfully stopping the attack while only being forced to take a single step back.

And in the last moments before stopping to block, the trio had reached far enough that Elise managed to catch sight of their enemy standing on one of the lower branches of a tree. Said enemy was a little elf girl with red hair who was wearing a green and white outfit that wouldn’t look out of place next to what the tribes of the forest wore, and she had a crossbow made of flame floating next to her.

And so Elise’s ability triggered.

‘Elvish Flame-speaker. Among elvish tribes there are sometimes children born with an affinity for magic of a particular element. They usually receive special education to master such abilities, with some reaching enough skill to use their element for any role in combat and earning the title of speakers.’ Such was the information the girl obtained.

‘Careful, she’s the versatile type.’ Elise summed up her findings for the other two.

They replied in acknowledgment, then Nalia started the counter-attack by using a variation of the stone bullet spell that was more like a stone launcher, releasing bigger and heavier stones in an arc that cut through the foliage in their path.

The elf manifested a second flaming crossbow and started shooting down the rocks at the same time as she resumed her offensive with another series of flaming arrows.

The group pushed forth ever closer to the enemy, aided by the way the Stranger’s attacks had lost some of their bite due to the need to split her power to deal with Nalia’s stones, which she kept launching to maintain the pressure. However, every subsequent step was becoming harder and harder to the point where Nina was struggling to keep from being pushed backwards as she blocked the arrows.

‘I was worried about that.’ Nalia spoke mentally ‘The closer we get to her, the more effective her magic becomes because she doesn’t need to spend as much energy in keeping the spell stable over time.’

‘But that means her magic formulas are sloppy.’ Elise pointed out in a confident voice ‘If some distance is enough to have such an impact, then how about we give her a real hindrance? Turn the field against her.’

Nalia understood immediately. She spent a second and a good amount of extra energy in altering her attacking spell to make it keep firing automatically for three seconds, during which Elise had ordered Nina to stop and hold position. And as soon as that was done, the fairy focused her power greatly and used those three seconds of grace to construct another powerful magic.

Being a mage herself the Stranger realized what was happening and focused her power in the same way, significantly increasing the intensity of her attacks without compromising her defenses even a little bit. Shot after shot hit the shield-like barrier on top of Nina’s armored fists, each one delivering an explosion that felt like a falling boulder, but the rabbit strained and forced out every single drop of her magic-enhanced strength to avoid being forced back.

Then the three seconds passed and Nalia unleashed her spell:

“Cold Front!” She shouted. The magic triggered and for a moment everyone present experienced an illusory feeling that the winter had suddenly arrived. Then the moment passed and the wind turned into a cold wave blowing towards the elf. The surrounding temperature quickly dropped into bone-chilling levels and shards of ice began to fly, carried by the wind.

“Gah what-?!” Their enemy let out a noise in surprise.

The powerful flaming arrows she was shooting broke apart into pieces over the course of a second, instantly relieving the pressure on Nina. It could not have been any different, as Nalia had turned the whole battlefield against her like promised. Her magic arrows struggled to keep the heat from dispersing into the environment, and the shards of ice were just big enough to hit those currently unstable spells and cause them to collapse.

Worst of all, it had happened so quickly and suddenly the Stranger was unable to immediately adapt, and she seemed to be struggling to even keep her fire crossbows active.

‘Nina, rush her! Nalia, get ready!’ Elise’s order came.

The fairy let all of the extra defensive layers of magic fade from the rabbitkin as she ran at her maximum speed, crossing the space between her and the Stranger at an incredible speed. Then the fire crossbows faded away and the enemy glared at them. Her tree caught fire. Or rather, it exploded. And there was no longer anyone there.

“DIIIIE!!” The Stranger shouted.

There was no longer anyone there because the elf had given herself an explosive burst of speed, using fire like a rocket engine. In the blink of an eye she was almost upon Elise and Nalia, one hand pulled back and manifesting a flaming spear, poised to attack.

“Frost Break!” Nalia shouted, and with a twist of her magic she collapsed her Cold Front.

The magic spread across the area twisted into a funnel, sucking up the cold air into a spot right above the fairy. She added even more magic and violently compressed the air into liquid form, before molding it into a new spell: A multifaceted ice crystal as big as a boulder.

And then she slammed it down.

All of that takes some time to describe, but it actually happened even faster than the blink of an eye because Nalia had already prepared the magical formula and only had to execute it. Just as planned.

Elise had laid a trap. She knew their enemy wasn’t just a ranged expert, but said enemy was unaware of her knowledge. Thus she knew that the elf wouldn't be able to resist doing a surprise attack when Elise seemingly let down her guard by sending the armor forward.

That was the meaning behind her order to ‘get ready’. Nina’s rush had been nothing more than a feint to lure the enemy into the real attack, and Nalia had a lot of magic to spare due to not having to keep the extra protection on the rabbit.

The Stranger undoubtedly realized her mistake at that point. Facing down such a terrifying attack she aborted her move and pushed herself to the limit, throwing every scrap of power she had into a barrier of flame that managed to slow down the crystal for a mere fraction of a second, just long enough to force herself away from the impact area from the recoil.

Truly it was a spectacular save at the very last moment. But the problem for the flame user was that it had taken everything she had in order to do it, while Nalia hadn’t put everything into her own attack. As soon as her spell slowed down, the fairy had begun to cast another magic in parallel: Her stone bullets.

Three shots were fired in a row, but the Stranger still refused to fall. During the short time before being hit, she forcefully went beyond the limits of her body to pull out more magic and blasted herself away from the projectiles’ path. It felt like a flame had been lit inside her torso, her head throbbed in a piercing pain and the corners of her field of view had become blurry, but she succeeded.

Then Nina punched her on the side.

“Gaagk-!” She let out a muffled scream and spat blood, flying away and crashing to the ground.

The armor-clad rabbit had turned around and moved back, then she ran and jumped at the enemy right after that last dodge.

Nina landed back on the ground from her jump and rushed at the enemy again, seeing that she was still conscious. However, the elf had been batted a decent distance away by the punch, so she had enough time to reach into her clothes and take out a spherical object.

‘Nina, halt and block! Nalia, shield her!’ Elise frantically ordered, realizing what that could mean.

Her partners obeyed their orders almost instinctively, Nina stopping her run so suddenly it left a deep mark on the ground, while Nalia used her connection with the boost spell to channel magic through it and create a barrier on top of the beastkin almost instantly.

The Stranger threw the sphere down and it burst into a terrifying maelstrom of lightning that spread in a circle, each bolt twisting around and ripping through the earth and the bottom of the trees nearby, causing them to collapse and adding to the general mayhem.

The lightning stopped spreading before too long, but it kept continuously striking the area, and Nina had been close enough to be completely enveloped by it. Nalia had kept stretching and strengthening the barrier as it went, but she was slowly losing the battle of endurance.

‘Take her underground!’ Elise called out.

Nalia understood instantly. Her barrier had been keeping the ground under Nina intact as a side-effect of protecting her, but she could instead do the opposite and use the ground as a shield.

The fairy strained and cast an earth shaping spell in parallel, using it to essentially dig straight down below Nina. Gravity did its job and pulled the rabbit deeper and deeper, until she was finally out of the danger zone. Nalia sighed in relief before noticing something:

“She escaped…” Her Stranger-locating spell was showing a dot moving away from their position at very high speed.

“Ah…” Elise’s expression became chagrined “I made a mistake. I thought she was trying to take Nina down with her, but that was actually meant to help her flee. She must have something that prevented the lightning from harming her, and she bought the time she needed to regain enough energy to escape. I guess they realized one of their own was captured, so they prepared ways to run away if necessary.”

“That’s annoying, but I guess we still did enough to count as succeeding the mission.” Nalia pointed out.

“Yeah…” Elise agreed, still sounding a bit put out, then told Nina what had happened via their connection.

The rabbit girl was also annoyed at the situation, mostly regarding the fact that she failed to render the enemy unconscious with her attack, but Elise said she would get better as time went on. The lightning maelstrom finally faded away shortly after, allowing Nina to jump out of her hole.

The trio started heading back to the previous battlefield, and on the way there Elise asked Nalia something:

‘Why were you declaring your spells out loud earlier?’

‘I’m not sure… It just felt right somehow. Is that bad?’

‘Not really. And I think I know what that’s about, but I’ll need some time to make sure. Just keep going as normal.’ Elise reassured her.

By the time they joined back with the alliance forces, things were pretty much already done. The earlier reinforcements had been too little, too late, and soon enough the remaining enemy beastkin had started to surrender or flee. The trio didn’t need to do anything else special in that battle.

+0+

Things were pretty busy for the following days, however. The alliance offensive would not stop after merely conquering one village so the trio had no lack of work to do, going here and there while supporting their military operations. There were attacks to expand the area they controlled (including a heavy push that was eventually successful in linking them with another village that had been holding out by itself until that point), there were multiple times where they were called to reinforce areas suffering counter-attacks and there were even more reconnaissance missions.

They did not meet any other Strangers during that time, but the reason for that was obvious: The method for detecting them that Nalia supplied had been disseminated around the alliance forces, and so any of them that tried to attack found themselves facing large mobilizations of warriors and decided to abort.

However, since their version of the spell was shorter range the alliance had only been able to create a proper detection network by making use of a large amount of non-combatants, mostly children, which received a crash course in magic and were taught only that one spell.

They didn’t have to actually fight, but putting children in potentially dangerous situations was still something that the alliance did not do lightly. Those children actually had soldiers specifically dedicated to protecting them, which mostly meant taking them away from the area if an enemy managed to get through the normal troops.

Nalia asked Elise how she felt about that, given their situation as essentially ‘child soldiers’.

‘I think it’s alright. These children deserve to be able to remain innocent. Our situation is different: You’re from a species that naturally matures early, I specifically chose to become mature of my own will… And Nina was forced to mature early because of the situation of her village.’ Was what she had to say.

The trio actually ended up meeting a few of those children when they went to take a break at a camp. One of them (a girl from the squirrel tribe) even ended up on a long discussion about magic with Nalia, because it turned out the fairy had become the girl’s idol due to being the creator of that ‘beautiful spell’.

Another notable development was Nina finally managing to reach a state of full awareness of her entire body. It only lasted one moment, but the sheer pain and exhaustion she felt afterwards were proof of how hard she had worked in order to do it. And after giving her a moment to bask in her accomplishment, Elise spoke to her:

‘Good. Step one is complete.’

There were several seconds of mental silence as Nina struggled to comprehend what had been said. Then she finally replied ‘There’s… More steps after this?’

‘Yes. Step two is maintaining full awareness for longer periods of time. Step three is keeping it while you’re doing other things. And step four is making it as natural as breathing.’

Nina’s brain almost short-circuited after hearing that, but once more she told herself that this was all for the sake of becoming stronger.

That had happened about two days after the fight against the flame wielder. Nina had started on step two and kept on pushing forward in her training even as they were constantly being called to work. She made good progress, but was still in step two a week later when there were major changes to the overall situation.

The alliance forces met a quickly escalating level of resistance as a large mobilization of troops from traitor tribes, eventually grinding down their advance to a halt and resulting in the conflict winding down into a relatively calm period, though everyone knew such calm would be short-lived.

Regardless, that meant Elise and her partners had a rare moment of calm and peace, so the girl decided to check something.

“Nina, let’s test your strength.” She said while they were resting by themselves.

“What do I need to do?” She replied.

“First, Nalia needs to remove your armor and disable her boost magic on you.”

The fairy quickly did so, and Elise nodded and pointed to one of the trees nearby:

“Break it down.” She said simply.

Nina hesitated “You want me to break that tree with a punch?”

Elise shook her head “Of course not. I want you to do it with a finger poke.”

“That… I…” She tried to think of something to say, but nothing really felt right, so eventually she simply sighed and walked up to the tree. Then she winced in anticipation and shoved her right index finger forward.

Which pierced into the tree like a knife on bread, causing several cracks to form around the point of impact.

“Wha-?” Nina was stunned.

“Wrong!” Elise scolded her “No hesitation! Attack like you mean it! Try it on that other tree.”

Swallowing hard, Nina pulled her finger out of the tree and walked to the other one, then she set her face into a fierce expression and thrust her finger with all the strength she could muster.

The impact was like a cannonball had hit the tree instead of a finger, the bark was crushed explosively as an entire section of the trunk was destroyed, causing the tree to fall.

Nina looked at the tree, then at her finger. A silent moment passed, and then she turned to look back at Elise. Her expression looked like she could barely contain her feelings, but Nalia could see that the way she looked at her contractor had changed. Before, she had merely believed that Elise could make her strong, now she knew it. There was no longer any trace of doubt in her eyes.

Elise nodded “You’re developing well.” She smiled at her two partners “From now on, we’re gonna start truly showing our enemies just how strong we are.”