Strength and Power

Chapter 44 - Dark Fire, Sidian

Morgan and Ruin were walking through the Kalid that was nearest to where Isa was supposed to be. He'd wanted to go to the Crystal Lake where Shard had been to on his visit to this place, and Morgan had decided that it'd be fine to let him go off on his own to find it while she did some shopping of her own. She'd wanted some new clothes that were better suited to the environment up here, her old forest clothes were fine for the most part, but they were making her stand out rather badly amongst all the Levians. To remedy this she went and bought her own clothes that were in the traditional style of the Lavian people.

Now she wore a deeply colored indigo long shirt that went down just above her knee and had silver stars embroidered along the bottom hem of it. She bought a band of silver that crossed over her midsection, long fingerless gloves that matched her shirt, and leggings that were nearly black in appearance with dark grey boots. Since it didn't seem many women here wore their hair up, she decided to let her hair hang freely around her shoulders which she knew would make her skin look a bit fairer than usual. Finally she received a complimentary winged amulet with a rather large sapphire in the middle of it that looked like it was being grasped by a set of talons. 

She'd asked Ruin how she looked, not trusting the opinion of the store owner who would've told her anything she wanted to hear in order to get her to buy more things. Ruin though, when asked only stared at her for several seconds before he finally managed to cough out an answer. "You look lovely." He'd told her with the slightest of blushes creeping across his high cheekbones. 

Morgan had given him a strange look for that and paid the owner for the clothes. She'd offered to buy Ruin something but he'd been rather adamant about not wanting her to spend any money on him. So they left the store with Morgan possible looking more Lavian than when she'd entered the store, and of course she began to get several looks. Some people, mostly men were leering at her, something she wasn't totally unused to. But when the women would stop and look at her is when she began to feel rather self conscious about herself though she figured she'd stay in her clothes to see how she herself liked them. 

As she walked Morgan was becoming acutely aware of the number of people beginning to head in the opposite direction that they were heading in. But it wasn't until they'd passed the very edge of this island's market did she see that people were out right running in the other direction. Her mind jumped right to the fact that she knew Isa was here, and worse he was here unsupervised she began to run toward where she was suspecting these people were coming from. When she and Ruin neared the edge of the town she was half expecting to find Isa hiding in a tree or on top of a building but instead she found herself looking at the familiar exoskeletons of the spawn.

Her heart skipped a beat at the sight of the skull-faced creatures holding several people down while thier large left hands enveloped the heads of the people they had pinned. The struggles of the people growing weaker and weaker with each passing moment. Her eyes flashed and before she knew it her arm shot forth and with it the stone of the city streets warped into spear heads that impaled the spawn with a loud screeching sound. 

"Everyone get back!" She screamed as Ruin rushed at the spawn his shadow leaving the ground beneath him to form Shadour who slammed into every spawn that came near the fleeing people. Morgan clapped her hands together, raising them high above her head and spread her arms apart. As she did so a silver veil began to appear all around her, one that began to expand until it formed a large dome-like structure that was beginning to spread until it reached the very edge of the city, forcibly pushing the spawn away while the people of Auria were able to safely pass through it. "Get behind the barrier, they won't be able to-"

Morgan didn't get a chance to finish her sentence when all the spawn being pushed back all raised their left arms up and opened the mouths that lay in the palms of their hands. As one they began to drain the power coming from her barrier, but rather than explode like all the others before her, these spawn instead warped their right arms into swords and began to channel the power they were absorbing into their blades. They're learning, she thought to herself sweeping her arm out in a wide slashing motion, and with that same motion a blade of her own magic shot out from her barrier cutting several dozen in half at the waist. But almost right away one of the spawn turned their body and blocked the blade with their swords, the wavering aura around it beginning to grow rather rapidly as the contact between the two was maintained.