I felt like I hit a wall out of pure wind. And unlike the last hundredth times, it lead to depression rather than increasing my desire to win this battle.
It was already the last night of our trip back to the academy and Louis, Schwarz and I still struggled against Miss Dove and were never able to lay a hand on her. Sure, we did have our equipment, but that didn’t really help us when her swordplay was vastly out of our league.
But still, during this hellish training we levelled up like crazy and some of us were even given new skills.
Schwarz for example had his sword always in darkness mode … or whatever cringy words he had for the bit of darkness around his sword. Well, it did help in hiding it’s real position somewhat and it also did more damage whenever he hit something, but that was basically all.
Louis on the other hand learned the spell hellfire which was basically a better version of fireball in all regards. It was hotter, faster and had a homing effect, which allowed Louis to attack from Miss Dove’s sides as well.
But even that was not enough to hit this ‘teacher’ in front of us. I didn’t know if the others had the same suspicions, but I highly doubted Miss Dove was a proper teacher at this point. Instead, she was a monster. A monster who could block a flying shield with her free hand, block a hellfire with a wave of her hand and could smash through my normal shields with her head.
We were close to getting her on the way to Atlantis, but that was apparently just because she held back considerably. Once she actually used chants to support her magic, she was basically unstoppable.
And as much as I hated to admit it, we had no chance of winning against her the normal way. The thing was, we also couldn’t figure out any other way to beat her. We already tried underhanded methods, we tried to provoke her, but she saw everything coming from miles away.
As much as I hated to admit it, I would fail the challenge I had with Lucy. We did have the potential to beat Hannah, with our faster growth and the gifts we had, but not at this point.
Helplessly, I could only distance myself from the raging battle and walk towards Lucy sitting on a trunk back to back with Luna. Both had their eyes closed, trying to do … actually, they never told us what they wanted to achieve with their meditation.
Going on my knees in front of Lucy, I waited a little while until she opened her eyes and smiled brightly at me.
“How is it going?” Badly. And must have been very aware of that fact.
“At least Louis isn’t winning … hey, is it even okay for me to give my best so that he doesn’t win?” I asked, doubtful if making Louis lose was even the best decision I had made.
“Why are you asking me?” Lucy asked a bit surprised, even though she should know the answer. Within our whole class, heck even the whole school, there was no one as gentle and thoughtful as she was.
“You are the personification of morality.” I said a bit embarrassed. I didn’t want to admit it, but she really was perfect in that regard.
“Oh … okay. Well, if you really love someone, then you should do your everything that he is happy. The same goes for yourself as well. Make sure you are comfortable with your situation as well and if that means fighting for his love, then I see no issue with that.” She said and scratched her cheek a little.
“And what does that mean?” I asked, nearly hit by an arc of lightning that curved around us, a testimony of how much control Hannah had with her magic.
“It means that there is no moral answer to your question. Just follow what your heart tells you to do.” Lucy said while looking over to the battle still raging on. There was a lot fire at this point, but that was quickly put out by a storm blowing leaves everywhere.
“… you don’t seem to fight for his love at all though. Are you even … you know?”
“In love?” She shook her head slightly and a bit dispirited to be honest. “No … and they both know that. But even then, Schwarz and Louis keep fighting which is admirable. I like them and I see them as my friends, but Hannah and I will move on someday, which makes it hard for me to fall in love with someone. I don’t want to end up heartbroken again …” She admitted quietly and looked away from the three persons still fighting.
“I know you don’t want to talk about your past that much but if there is anything we can do to help … you just need to ask.” I said and smiled a bit to encourage her a little. It did seem a bit as if she had build a shell around herself to protect her from mean people. Well, I guess she was easily exploitable by some because she had quite the tunnel vision on the good side of people, but that also meant some would use her. None of us would do that though, not even Schwarz.
“Thank you.” She said and gave me a bright smile.
“Do you want Louis or Schwarz to win?” I asked out of the blue. Even though she just said she didn’t love either of them, she must have a favourite, especially after that water debacle.
“I want all of you to win.” She said and for some reason, I didn’t doubt her one second. Well, she never lied in the first place, so I didn’t doubt her generally but something in her green eyes just told me that’s what she wanted.
“Okay. I do have a plan, but I need your permission first.” I said and already hated myself for coming up with what I had in mind.
“Ahh … you want to use her weakness?” Could it be that Lucy had already guessed my plan? That couldn’t be … but she helped her sister in the past and Miss Dove was crazily strong. “Surprise me … but don’t hurt anyone, okay?”
“I’ll make sure of that.” Well, at worst only one person would be hurt by my plan. Nodding towards her, I walked back to the three of them and just witnessed their newest achievement. It was called teamwork.
Schwarz charged straight ahead towards Miss Dove while Louis fired a few hellfire balls at her. Unlike the last times, Miss Dove went in the offensive and conjured a gust of wind to blow out the hellfire and fling Schwarz back to where he started. Well, at least he didn’t tumble through the air like the last four hundred times, but actually managed to land in his feet again.
“I have a plan!” I shouted over to them and waited for the two to approach me. Hannah kept her distance, but still had an eye on us in case one of us was the impostor who laid low for the last few days. “We’ll drench Lucy in water.”
“I don’t want her to die.” Louis said a bit scared. Truth to be told, I didn’t know how far Lucy’s fear of water went and if she could die through a shock or anything in that direction. But it would hurt her, that was for sure.
“And I’m definitely not doing that again.” Schwarz said right after Louis. Seeing a united front with those two on the same side was kind of odd to be honest.
“Last time Miss Dove was faster at the beach than you could look. It wasn’t you who dragged Lucy out of the water, remember? And I am sure Miss Dove will do everything to protect her little sister.” That much was obvious. Even when we were fighting, she still looked over towards Lucy from time to time to check if she was alright. We could have told her that the impostor was probably just targeting reincarnators, but that would mean telling both of them everything which we didn’t want to do for the time being.
“Yeah … and she’ll get angry fast.” Louis said, pointing towards the place where they fought just seconds ago. Everything honestly looked straight out of the apocalypse with burning grass a few metres away, but surprisingly, all of us looked somewhat fine.
“I could have sworn she wanted to kill me that day … and we still have to touch her remember? I’m sure we will get electrocuted that exact moment.” Schwarz admitted and looked towards Lucy before balling his hands to fists. “I’m in. What do I have to do?” Well, that was an impressive one hundred eighty turn in less than a few seconds.
“I’m not going to lose either.” And Schwarz had apparently convinced Louis at the same time with his words.
“Okay, in that case, we will do this …” And so, I explained them what I had in mind. The timing had to be perfect, the execution as well and especially our positioning. Everything had to work out.
After ten minutes of clarifying our roles, we strode back to the battlefield and waited a little before we started off by circling around her until we had the same distance towards each other.
Miss Dove was quite wary in the beginning, but that quickly cleared up as we started barraging her with our spells. Even I shot a few streaks of light at her, but the most these achieved was to blind her a little. Schwarz was back at close combat while Louis stood in between Miss Dove and the onlookers.
The first phase of our plan was thus completed. We had managed to fool her into thinking that she was the target while in reality, she was just the person in our way.
I had intended to use Miss Doves single weakness which wasn’t even close to her. In a split second, Louis turned around and conjured a small ball of water in his hands. Sadly, water magic wasn’t his forte, so it took him too much time which allowed Miss Dove to race for him right away.
Luckily, she didn’t manage to interrupt the casting and thus, a lone water ball sailed straight for Lucy who opened her eyes wide. Maybe she didn’t actually agree to this after all, but she didn’t have to fear anything as Miss Dove caught up to the ball rather quickly and smashed it with the flat side of her sword.
Phase two of our plan was a total disaster. But no plan survived contact with the enemy and thus, we had prepared for a second, more extreme version right away.
This time, we would use Schwarz’s weird magic I never heard about before which would ‘bring out the darkness’ in those who are hit. Well, he also said that they would lose reasoning fast which would allow us to attack Lucy a second time. And afterwards Schwarz just had to cancel his magic and we could jump at Miss Dove while she used her body to stop the water ball.
Well, so much to the plan. The execution on the other hand was the real problem. In my opinion, Miss Dove was already far too close to Lucy and Luna. We didn’t want anyone to be hurt at all, but Schwarz apparently deemed the distance as safe.
From the tip of his index finger, he shot out a cloud of darkness travelling at a relaxed pace towards Miss Dove who was already a bit angry at us.
“Louis! Water!” I shouted as he stood around there a little bit stunned while already ran towards our opponent. She obviously tried to deflect the cloud of darkness with her sword, but it surprisingly passed right through her sword. As she was already focusing on the ball of water at this point, she had very little time to react to this surprising development and probably chose to rely on her superior stats to deal with it. From the palm of her hand, an air bullet appeared, disintegrating the ball of water in an instant.
But then, she was hit by the cloud of darkness and stopped moving for a split second. Her eyes jumped from one place to another all of a sudden and she let go of her sword, gripping the clothing above her heart violently. Before I or anyone else could reach her, I already knew proceeding wasn’t a wise idea.
“Schwarz! Stop it!” I could remember the rhino very well and how little he cared about his teammates despite being undead. I couldn’t even imagine what would happen to Miss Dove if her dark emotions consumed her.
And thus, I stopped five metres in front of her, right as she lost the battle against the darkness within her heart. We … or rather I had made a very bad decision in using Schwarz’s strange magic. It was obvious he didn’t have that much control over it as he seemed rather frantic by my side for a split second before hell broke out on the spot.
She mumbled a single magic and was instantly enveloped in red lightning, tearing apart the ground around her within an instant. Around ten arks shot out from her cocoon right away, one aiming for Schwarz and Louis and the others going straight for Lucy, or rather Luna sitting beside her. Strangely enough I wasn’t targeted at all but I had very little time to think about it.
“Barrier.” As fast as I could, I created barrier after barrier in each of the lightning strikes paths, but they were all pierced through in an instant.
“Hannah!” Lucy shouted behind Hannah, grabbing Luna by her clothing and standing bravely in front of her. I didn’t even know she could move that fast, but apparently it did wonders. At least for a little bit.
The red arc of electricity curved around Lucy, and threatened to hit Luna while I channelled my mana to create another, infinite barrier in its path using my gift. But even this one was blasted into pieces within a split second.
But then, my attention was directed away from her as my gaze turned to Louis who couldn’t defend against his own red lightning either. He could merely slow it down by creating a few earth walls in front of him, but they proved to be no opponent either.
“Barrier.” One last time, I funnelled all my remaining mana into a single normal barrier, and tried to make it as thick and strong as I could. Closing my eyes, I could merely hope for the best as I didn’t want to see the result and then …
Silence. The creaking ground beneath us finally settled down, the air didn’t crack anymore and even the wind settles down within an instant.
Feeling strangely heavy all of a sudden, I opened my eyes and could see a completely devastated scene in front of me. The ground had cracks, a whole lot of trees were on fire but most importantly, Louis was completely unhurt.
And then, mere seconds after the disaster ended, I could hear screaming behind me. Turning around, I could see Miss Dove kneeling on the ground, still gripping her heart in pain.
“Hannah … it’s alright.” Lucy said and ran towards her quite fast.
“Wait! That’s dangerous!” Schwarz shouted, but she didn’t seem to care and knelt down in front of Hannah right away.
“Hannah … focus on me. Okay?” Lucy said and placed both of her hands on Miss Dove’s shoulders in an attempt to calm Miss Dove’s heart, but also pointed to the shocked Luna behind her. The message was clear.
Slowly, I walked past both of them while shooting Schwarz a deathly glare to get his magic under control and positioned myself in front of Luna.
“Hannah, it’s alright. I’m here and I will be forever.” These were the last words Lucy spoke before Hannah made an slow air bullet with her right hand and shot it towards me.
“Barrier.” Nothing happened. Literally nothing. Freaking out a little, I focused on my gift and activated it in the exact right moment, stopping the attack shortly before my chest.
“Schwarz, stop your fucking magic!” Louis shouted out angrily and also a bit frightened.
“It’s not reacting! I don’t know what happened!” Schwarz replied frantically.
“Just cancel the mana supply!” Louis screamed at him.
“There is no mana supply!”
“Shut up! Get the fuck away from here!” I have never seen Lucy that angry before. I probably have never seen her angry at all before, so the difference between the usual Lucy I knew and this person that glared at me with outright hostility over Hannah’s shoulder was even more striking.
But she was right in being furious about us. Swiftly, I took Luna’s hand and pulled her up and away from the two sisters.
“But I want to help.” Luna said, looking backwards at Lucy and Miss Dove.
“There is no way we can help them right now.” I said and dragged her into the bushes towards Schwarz. “Louis, I’ll need your help here!” I shouted, took the shield off my arm and held it high above my head. “Don’t even dare to resist.” I said, and hammered Schwarz head with the shield once. At least, I tried to. But at the last second, he blocked my attack with the underside of his right arm. I had hoped to stop his out of control magic by rendering him unconscious, but I was apparently too late for that.
“HANNAH!” Lucy screamed loudly behind us, just as I was blasted to the side violently. Crashing against a nearby tree, I could see Miss Dove standing, her black curved sword in hand. With a trembling hand, she prepared to strike at Schwarz who stood there a little confused about how Miss Dove got there so fast. A mere millisecond later, she was already striking at Schwarz with full speed, at least that’s what I thought.
Instead, she aimed at her own leg at the last second and hurt herself in the process.
“Fuck!” She shouted out, gripped the handle of the sword tightly and rammed the sword into the ground. “Fuck you and your … fuck, fuck, FUCK!” She shouted out once more, now hopping on one foot and gripping her leg tightly.
“Hannah?” Lucy asked, storming through the trees to my right.
“I’m fine.” Hannah said, even though the wound on herself was quite deep. “You are not. Ellie, get me a stick. Louis, rip your shirt apart and make a bandage. Hurry.” Lucy growled, which seemed to drag Louis out of his shock. As fast as he could, he used his shirt and Miss Dove’s sword to create a makeshift bandage which he directly handed over to Lucy who then used it and the stick I found to do a compression bandage around Miss Dove’s leg.
“Schwarz’s, help me pick her up.” Lucy said, her shoulder already under Miss Dove’s arm. Right away, he did the same on the wounded other side and proceeded to help the limping Miss Dove back into camp in silence. “Louis, get Miss Lavendel here.”
Lucy said as soon as we were back at the main camp. He ran ahead, talked to the first teacher he could find and directly scooted further into the encampment.
A mere minute later, Miss Dove laid on a makeshift bench and was treated by healing magic.
“Were you attacked?” She asked as soon as she was half finished with her treatment.
“No …” Hannah said, shaking her head in agony.
“How did she get that wound?” Miss Lavendel asked, staring at all us one by one. Only Lucy withstood her gaze and didn’t look away, but she also remained silent. For some reason, none of them wanted to sell Schwarz out, even though they had all the reason to.
“It was … it was me, mam. I hit her with a magic that makes others incredibly angry and … other stuff. She hurt herself to dispel that magic.” Schwarz admitted, his head hanging low.
“You did what?” The healer shouted at him furiously. She probably had the only sane response of all of us.
“Paula … let it be.” Miss Dove said, gripping Miss Lavendel’s arm tightly.
“No, this is beyond the acceptable. He attacked you with a spell he apparently cannot control. It doesn’t matter what you think about this. He is constantly fighting with his classmates, the girls complain about him all the time and now this? I will personally see to it that he will be disciplined as soon as we are back tomorrow.” She said, stood up to look at her work one last time and stomped away from us furiously.
“I’m sorry.” Schwarz said, still looking at the ground depressed.
“Excuse me?” Miss Dove said, clearly more than a bit enraged by his behaviour.
“I …” He muttered quietly, but lacked any drive to say anything else.
“Do you even know what you did?” Miss Dove asked, slowly sitting upwards with Lucy’s help.
Schwarz breathed in loudly, apparently to get the time he needed for formulating an answer. “I attacked you without being in control of my magic.”
“You guys have really no idea how close you were to death …” Miss Dove muttered, shaking her head in disappointment.
“Hannah …” Lucy said, gently touching her sister’s arm.
“No, Lucy. I know they are your friends, but I will not protect them tomorrow. Schwarz needs to feel the consequences of his actions. All of you will be on different carts tomorrow and if I’ll catch anyone talking with each other, I will make sure they are thrown out of the academy right away. Is that clear?”
“Yes, mam.” All of us said, a bit depressed and insanely worried what may come the day afterwards.
I felt like I hit a wall out of pure wind. And unlike the last hundredth times, it lead to depression rather than increasing my desire to win this battle.
It was already the last night of our trip back to the academy and Louis, Schwarz and I still struggled against Miss Dove and were never able to lay a hand on her. Sure, we did have our equipment, but that didn’t really help us when her swordplay was vastly out of our league.
But still, during this hellish training we levelled up like crazy and some of us were even given new skills.
Schwarz for example had his sword always in darkness mode … or whatever cringy words he had for the bit of darkness around his sword. Well, it did help in hiding it’s real position somewhat and it also did more damage whenever he hit something, but that was basically all.
Louis on the other hand learned the spell hellfire which was basically a better version of fireball in all regards. It was hotter, faster and had a homing effect, which allowed Louis to attack from Miss Dove’s sides as well.
But even that was not enough to hit this ‘teacher’ in front of us. I didn’t know if the others had the same suspicions, but I highly doubted Miss Dove was a proper teacher at this point. Instead, she was a monster. A monster who could block a flying shield with her free hand, block a hellfire with a wave of her hand and could smash through my normal shields with her head.
We were close to getting her on the way to Atlantis, but that was apparently just because she held back considerably. Once she actually used chants to support her magic, she was basically unstoppable.
And as much as I hated to admit it, we had no chance of winning against her the normal way. The thing was, we also couldn’t figure out any other way to beat her. We already tried underhanded methods, we tried to provoke her, but she saw everything coming from miles away.
As much as I hated to admit it, I would fail the challenge I had with Lucy. We did have the potential to beat Hannah, with our faster growth and the gifts we had, but not at this point.
Helplessly, I could only distance myself from the raging battle and walk towards Lucy sitting on a trunk back to back with Luna. Both had their eyes closed, trying to do … actually, they never told us what they wanted to achieve with their meditation.
Going on my knees in front of Lucy, I waited a little while until she opened her eyes and smiled brightly at me.
“How is it going?” Badly. And must have been very aware of that fact.
“At least Louis isn’t winning … hey, is it even okay for me to give my best so that he doesn’t win?” I asked, doubtful if making Louis lose was even the best decision I had made.
“Why are you asking me?” Lucy asked a bit surprised, even though she should know the answer. Within our whole class, heck even the whole school, there was no one as gentle and thoughtful as she was.
“You are the personification of morality.” I said a bit embarrassed. I didn’t want to admit it, but she really was perfect in that regard.
“Oh … okay. Well, if you really love someone, then you should do your everything that he is happy. The same goes for yourself as well. Make sure you are comfortable with your situation as well and if that means fighting for his love, then I see no issue with that.” She said and scratched her cheek a little.
“And what does that mean?” I asked, nearly hit by an arc of lightning that curved around us, a testimony of how much control Hannah had with her magic.
“It means that there is no moral answer to your question. Just follow what your heart tells you to do.” Lucy said while looking over to the battle still raging on. There was a lot fire at this point, but that was quickly put out by a storm blowing leaves everywhere.
“… you don’t seem to fight for his love at all though. Are you even … you know?”
“In love?” She shook her head slightly and a bit dispirited to be honest. “No … and they both know that. But even then, Schwarz and Louis keep fighting which is admirable. I like them and I see them as my friends, but Hannah and I will move on someday, which makes it hard for me to fall in love with someone. I don’t want to end up heartbroken again …” She admitted quietly and looked away from the three persons still fighting.
“I know you don’t want to talk about your past that much but if there is anything we can do to help … you just need to ask.” I said and smiled a bit to encourage her a little. It did seem a bit as if she had build a shell around herself to protect her from mean people. Well, I guess she was easily exploitable by some because she had quite the tunnel vision on the good side of people, but that also meant some would use her. None of us would do that though, not even Schwarz.
“Thank you.” She said and gave me a bright smile.
“Do you want Louis or Schwarz to win?” I asked out of the blue. Even though she just said she didn’t love either of them, she must have a favourite, especially after that water debacle.
“I want all of you to win.” She said and for some reason, I didn’t doubt her one second. Well, she never lied in the first place, so I didn’t doubt her generally but something in her green eyes just told me that’s what she wanted.
“Okay. I do have a plan, but I need your permission first.” I said and already hated myself for coming up with what I had in mind.
“Ahh … you want to use her weakness?” Could it be that Lucy had already guessed my plan? That couldn’t be … but she helped her sister in the past and Miss Dove was crazily strong. “Surprise me … but don’t hurt anyone, okay?”
“I’ll make sure of that.” Well, at worst only one person would be hurt by my plan. Nodding towards her, I walked back to the three of them and just witnessed their newest achievement. It was called teamwork.
Schwarz charged straight ahead towards Miss Dove while Louis fired a few hellfire balls at her. Unlike the last times, Miss Dove went in the offensive and conjured a gust of wind to blow out the hellfire and fling Schwarz back to where he started. Well, at least he didn’t tumble through the air like the last four hundred times, but actually managed to land in his feet again.
“I have a plan!” I shouted over to them and waited for the two to approach me. Hannah kept her distance, but still had an eye on us in case one of us was the impostor who laid low for the last few days. “We’ll drench Lucy in water.”
“I don’t want her to die.” Louis said a bit scared. Truth to be told, I didn’t know how far Lucy’s fear of water went and if she could die through a shock or anything in that direction. But it would hurt her, that was for sure.
“And I’m definitely not doing that again.” Schwarz said right after Louis. Seeing a united front with those two on the same side was kind of odd to be honest.
“Last time Miss Dove was faster at the beach than you could look. It wasn’t you who dragged Lucy out of the water, remember? And I am sure Miss Dove will do everything to protect her little sister.” That much was obvious. Even when we were fighting, she still looked over towards Lucy from time to time to check if she was alright. We could have told her that the impostor was probably just targeting reincarnators, but that would mean telling both of them everything which we didn’t want to do for the time being.
“Yeah … and she’ll get angry fast.” Louis said, pointing towards the place where they fought just seconds ago. Everything honestly looked straight out of the apocalypse with burning grass a few metres away, but surprisingly, all of us looked somewhat fine.
“I could have sworn she wanted to kill me that day … and we still have to touch her remember? I’m sure we will get electrocuted that exact moment.” Schwarz admitted and looked towards Lucy before balling his hands to fists. “I’m in. What do I have to do?” Well, that was an impressive one hundred eighty turn in less than a few seconds.
“I’m not going to lose either.” And Schwarz had apparently convinced Louis at the same time with his words.
“Okay, in that case, we will do this …” And so, I explained them what I had in mind. The timing had to be perfect, the execution as well and especially our positioning. Everything had to work out.
After ten minutes of clarifying our roles, we strode back to the battlefield and waited a little before we started off by circling around her until we had the same distance towards each other.
Miss Dove was quite wary in the beginning, but that quickly cleared up as we started barraging her with our spells. Even I shot a few streaks of light at her, but the most these achieved was to blind her a little. Schwarz was back at close combat while Louis stood in between Miss Dove and the onlookers.
The first phase of our plan was thus completed. We had managed to fool her into thinking that she was the target while in reality, she was just the person in our way.
I had intended to use Miss Doves single weakness which wasn’t even close to her. In a split second, Louis turned around and conjured a small ball of water in his hands. Sadly, water magic wasn’t his forte, so it took him too much time which allowed Miss Dove to race for him right away.
Luckily, she didn’t manage to interrupt the casting and thus, a lone water ball sailed straight for Lucy who opened her eyes wide. Maybe she didn’t actually agree to this after all, but she didn’t have to fear anything as Miss Dove caught up to the ball rather quickly and smashed it with the flat side of her sword.
Phase two of our plan was a total disaster. But no plan survived contact with the enemy and thus, we had prepared for a second, more extreme version right away.
This time, we would use Schwarz’s weird magic I never heard about before which would ‘bring out the darkness’ in those who are hit. Well, he also said that they would lose reasoning fast which would allow us to attack Lucy a second time. And afterwards Schwarz just had to cancel his magic and we could jump at Miss Dove while she used her body to stop the water ball.
Well, so much to the plan. The execution on the other hand was the real problem. In my opinion, Miss Dove was already far too close to Lucy and Luna. We didn’t want anyone to be hurt at all, but Schwarz apparently deemed the distance as safe.
From the tip of his index finger, he shot out a cloud of darkness travelling at a relaxed pace towards Miss Dove who was already a bit angry at us.
“Louis! Water!” I shouted as he stood around there a little bit stunned while already ran towards our opponent. She obviously tried to deflect the cloud of darkness with her sword, but it surprisingly passed right through her sword. As she was already focusing on the ball of water at this point, she had very little time to react to this surprising development and probably chose to rely on her superior stats to deal with it. From the palm of her hand, an air bullet appeared, disintegrating the ball of water in an instant.
But then, she was hit by the cloud of darkness and stopped moving for a split second. Her eyes jumped from one place to another all of a sudden and she let go of her sword, gripping the clothing above her heart violently. Before I or anyone else could reach her, I already knew proceeding wasn’t a wise idea.
“Schwarz! Stop it!” I could remember the rhino very well and how little he cared about his teammates despite being undead. I couldn’t even imagine what would happen to Miss Dove if her dark emotions consumed her.
And thus, I stopped five metres in front of her, right as she lost the battle against the darkness within her heart. We … or rather I had made a very bad decision in using Schwarz’s strange magic. It was obvious he didn’t have that much control over it as he seemed rather frantic by my side for a split second before hell broke out on the spot.
She mumbled a single magic and was instantly enveloped in red lightning, tearing apart the ground around her within an instant. Around ten arks shot out from her cocoon right away, one aiming for Schwarz and Louis and the others going straight for Lucy, or rather Luna sitting beside her. Strangely enough I wasn’t targeted at all but I had very little time to think about it.
“Barrier.” As fast as I could, I created barrier after barrier in each of the lightning strikes paths, but they were all pierced through in an instant.
“Hannah!” Lucy shouted behind Hannah, grabbing Luna by her clothing and standing bravely in front of her. I didn’t even know she could move that fast, but apparently it did wonders. At least for a little bit.
The red arc of electricity curved around Lucy, and threatened to hit Luna while I channelled my mana to create another, infinite barrier in its path using my gift. But even this one was blasted into pieces within a split second.
But then, my attention was directed away from her as my gaze turned to Louis who couldn’t defend against his own red lightning either. He could merely slow it down by creating a few earth walls in front of him, but they proved to be no opponent either.
“Barrier.” One last time, I funnelled all my remaining mana into a single normal barrier, and tried to make it as thick and strong as I could. Closing my eyes, I could merely hope for the best as I didn’t want to see the result and then …
Silence. The creaking ground beneath us finally settled down, the air didn’t crack anymore and even the wind settles down within an instant.
Feeling strangely heavy all of a sudden, I opened my eyes and could see a completely devastated scene in front of me. The ground had cracks, a whole lot of trees were on fire but most importantly, Louis was completely unhurt.
And then, mere seconds after the disaster ended, I could hear screaming behind me. Turning around, I could see Miss Dove kneeling on the ground, still gripping her heart in pain.
“Hannah … it’s alright.” Lucy said and ran towards her quite fast.
“Wait! That’s dangerous!” Schwarz shouted, but she didn’t seem to care and knelt down in front of Hannah right away.
“Hannah … focus on me. Okay?” Lucy said and placed both of her hands on Miss Dove’s shoulders in an attempt to calm Miss Dove’s heart, but also pointed to the shocked Luna behind her. The message was clear.
Slowly, I walked past both of them while shooting Schwarz a deathly glare to get his magic under control and positioned myself in front of Luna.
“Hannah, it’s alright. I’m here and I will be forever.” These were the last words Lucy spoke before Hannah made an slow air bullet with her right hand and shot it towards me.
“Barrier.” Nothing happened. Literally nothing. Freaking out a little, I focused on my gift and activated it in the exact right moment, stopping the attack shortly before my chest.
“Schwarz, stop your fucking magic!” Louis shouted out angrily and also a bit frightened.
“It’s not reacting! I don’t know what happened!” Schwarz replied frantically.
“Just cancel the mana supply!” Louis screamed at him.
“There is no mana supply!”
“Shut up! Get the fuck away from here!” I have never seen Lucy that angry before. I probably have never seen her angry at all before, so the difference between the usual Lucy I knew and this person that glared at me with outright hostility over Hannah’s shoulder was even more striking.
But she was right in being furious about us. Swiftly, I took Luna’s hand and pulled her up and away from the two sisters.
“But I want to help.” Luna said, looking backwards at Lucy and Miss Dove.
“There is no way we can help them right now.” I said and dragged her into the bushes towards Schwarz. “Louis, I’ll need your help here!” I shouted, took the shield off my arm and held it high above my head. “Don’t even dare to resist.” I said, and hammered Schwarz head with the shield once. At least, I tried to. But at the last second, he blocked my attack with the underside of his right arm. I had hoped to stop his out of control magic by rendering him unconscious, but I was apparently too late for that.
“HANNAH!” Lucy screamed loudly behind us, just as I was blasted to the side violently. Crashing against a nearby tree, I could see Miss Dove standing, her black curved sword in hand. With a trembling hand, she prepared to strike at Schwarz who stood there a little confused about how Miss Dove got there so fast. A mere millisecond later, she was already striking at Schwarz with full speed, at least that’s what I thought.
Instead, she aimed at her own leg at the last second and hurt herself in the process.
“Fuck!” She shouted out, gripped the handle of the sword tightly and rammed the sword into the ground. “Fuck you and your … fuck, fuck, FUCK!” She shouted out once more, now hopping on one foot and gripping her leg tightly.
“Hannah?” Lucy asked, storming through the trees to my right.
“I’m fine.” Hannah said, even though the wound on herself was quite deep. “You are not. Ellie, get me a stick. Louis, rip your shirt apart and make a bandage. Hurry.” Lucy growled, which seemed to drag Louis out of his shock. As fast as he could, he used his shirt and Miss Dove’s sword to create a makeshift bandage which he directly handed over to Lucy who then used it and the stick I found to do a compression bandage around Miss Dove’s leg.
“Schwarz’s, help me pick her up.” Lucy said, her shoulder already under Miss Dove’s arm. Right away, he did the same on the wounded other side and proceeded to help the limping Miss Dove back into camp in silence. “Louis, get Miss Lavendel here.”
Lucy said as soon as we were back at the main camp. He ran ahead, talked to the first teacher he could find and directly scooted further into the encampment.
A mere minute later, Miss Dove laid on a makeshift bench and was treated by healing magic.
“Were you attacked?” She asked as soon as she was half finished with her treatment.
“No …” Hannah said, shaking her head in agony.
“How did she get that wound?” Miss Lavendel asked, staring at all us one by one. Only Lucy withstood her gaze and didn’t look away, but she also remained silent. For some reason, none of them wanted to sell Schwarz out, even though they had all the reason to.
“It was … it was me, mam. I hit her with a magic that makes others incredibly angry and … other stuff. She hurt herself to dispel that magic.” Schwarz admitted, his head hanging low.
“You did what?” The healer shouted at him furiously. She probably had the only sane response of all of us.
“Paula … let it be.” Miss Dove said, gripping Miss Lavendel’s arm tightly.
“No, this is beyond the acceptable. He attacked you with a spell he apparently cannot control. It doesn’t matter what you think about this. He is constantly fighting with his classmates, the girls complain about him all the time and now this? I will personally see to it that he will be disciplined as soon as we are back tomorrow.” She said, stood up to look at her work one last time and stomped away from us furiously.
“I’m sorry.” Schwarz said, still looking at the ground depressed.
“Excuse me?” Miss Dove said, clearly more than a bit enraged by his behaviour.
“I …” He muttered quietly, but lacked any drive to say anything else.
“Do you even know what you did?” Miss Dove asked, slowly sitting upwards with Lucy’s help.
Schwarz breathed in loudly, apparently to get the time he needed for formulating an answer. “I attacked you without being in control of my magic.”
“You guys have really no idea how close you were to death …” Miss Dove muttered, shaking her head in disappointment.
“Hannah …” Lucy said, gently touching her sister’s arm.
“No, Lucy. I know they are your friends, but I will not protect them tomorrow. Schwarz needs to feel the consequences of his actions. All of you will be on different carts tomorrow and if I’ll catch anyone talking with each other, I will make sure they are thrown out of the academy right away. Is that clear?”
“Yes, mam.” All of us said, a bit depressed and insanely worried what may come the day afterwards.
