The Wizard of Teles

13. The End of Ignis the Grey

"These bastards are toying with us!", Michaíl yelled out in frustration, as the wizard crushed the head of the second segador sent after him by slamming the skull of the first one into it, which he had detached seconds before.

"...what gave it away?", Ignis asked in genuine confusion, causing Ophelia to stifle a giggle with a snort, as she kept evading and parrying the blade of Maya's scythe, seemingly effortlessly.

"So much for your plan, Mr. 'I've fought many spellcasters before, let's just drag it out!'. If the hag of the tower didn't demand their bodies in as good a shape as possible, they'd be dead already!", Maya growled.

"Enough of this child's play!", the scarlet lykan yelled out, before jumping back and raising her scythe above her head. The blood of which the blade of the scythe was made started to detach, and now formed multiple daggers in the air, all of which were pointing at Ophelia.

"Tch, going against direct orders, as usual. She just won't listen... Very well, if you can't beat em, join em. Alright, human, let's kick it up a notch, shall we?", Michaíl remarked, as he made use of his own magic. The air around him began to cool down, and ice started to grow on his arms, slowly forming 2 large blades, which extend to about one sword length over his claws.

"Oh...ice-weapons? How fun!", the wizard stated in anticipation of ending the fight even quicker than he had thought. However, after a blink of his eyes, he noticed that the lykan before him had vanished.

"Hm?", was all Ignis could utter, before he heard his barrier start to crack behind him.

"Too fast for you, geezer?", Michaíl growled at him, as the cracks of the barrier around his swords started to spread.

"...eh, I've seen faster. In fact, let me show you!", Ignis answered unphased and lightly tapped the floor beneath him with his staff, causing him to vanish in similar fashion, together with his barrier.

Unlike Michaíl, who had to use one of his blades to stabilize himself as to not fall face first into the snow before him, Ignis was not hindered by a barrier as he appeared behind the lykan, thus whacking the back of Michaíl's skull with his staff, causing him to stumble forward even further.

"How the...", he asked while turning around, where he was greeted by a very smug wizard, who was now twirling his staff, causing it to rotate like a wagon wheel.

He interrupted his twirling and extended both arms, before uttering: "Magic!", and vanishing again.

Ophelia, on the other hand, had started to struggle in her fight, as the daggers, which kept swarming her like bees hindered her from getting closer to Maya. She had always preferred close-quarter combat, in which she thought herself near invincible, as she could just rush a ranged foe and rip them apart long before their attack even reached her.

This time, however, she was facing off against someone, who seemed all too familiar with that type of fighter, as Maya seemed to deliberately time her attacks to throw Ophelia out of her rhythm. The fact that even just one cut of a blood-elemental weapon could poison their target and thus prove fatal did not help either.

"Ah...much better, don't you think, you old hag?", Maya mocked her, as she guided the flying daggers idly with one of her claws while leaning on her pole, which she had driven into the ground.

"Tch...I'll show ya what this old hag is capable of." , Ophelia grunted as she kept dodging the blades.

Ophelia had observed Maya's attack patterns carefully, and noticed a small gap between attacks, as conducting 5 daggers with just one finger seemed to not to be the intended way of going about it, which Ophelia attributed to Maya trying to pay her back for toying with her earlier. She patiently awaited the next opening and went for it. She increased the heat in her claws as high as she could and charged Maya.