<Wreign>

Foxy and I had gotten to the Eastern Sanctuary at around 9:75am so that we had some extra time before Redline got there; however we weren't able to sit in a tree under the rising sun for very long as around 10:30 the tree we were resting on was suddenly turned into a giant fireball. A Spell Stone landed at the base of the tree and encircled the entire thing, us included, in a giant cone of blue fire, Freija was able to react fast enough to encircle us in a bubble of her Barrier Magic but even that cracked under the pressure of such a high energy output. 

"Tsk, I was really hoping you wouldn't be fast enough to dodge that." A strangely Young male voice admitted in a disappointed tone. Freija repaired her barrier around the two of us and we made our way out of the small crater of burned dirt and tree ash. "Why can't you make this easy on me?" 

"You just ruined a nice moment," Freija growled next to me, brandishing her Chakram and baring her teeth in anger. 

The person that attacked us, now able to be seen clearly, flinched as if struck, speaking in a mocking tone, "Oh, please forgive me...If you let me kill you faster I wouldn't have had to ruin anything." His head ticked to the side and dodged flawlessly as Freija threw both of her Chakrams, using her barriers to reflect them back at different angles whilst increasing their speed. "My, my. You definitely a rather promising future with that ability...or, well, you had one." 

Freija say that he wasn't treating this like an actual battle and I decided to get out my Identification Crystal as he started speaking again, "Oh my, please forgive me. I forgot to introduce myself," he went into a deep bow, not caring whether we'd attack him or not, "I am Shri'n'thyl, Master Illusionist and an Acolyte of The End." 

"Really? You're in cult? And attacking out in the open, and in the middle of The Human Empire's second strongest Kingdom?" Freija dead-panned and Shri'n'thyl shrugged. 

"I don't get to choose when the Master decides it's time to act, or where..." Shri'n'thyl sighed, stepping to the side as a blade of Hardened Blood Crystals passed by the area his head had been. I growled internally, I'd thought maybe I could get a quick hit on this guy before the actual fighting started, but his perception was just way too advanced to tell what he was and wasn't paying attention to. 

"...As I was saying: I don't get to decide so whoever or whatever I'm told to go after; Whatever needs to be sacrificed for The End, needs to be sacrificed and that's that." Shri'n'thyl shrugged, "Unfortunately for you, The End calls for your sacrifice, so...I'll be needing those heads of yours now." And with that he suddenly exploded into a giant ball of fire, spreading out towards both of us. 

Both me and Freija instinctively lept back as the heat of the flame seared at the ends of out coats. It continued to spread until Freija cut through it with a giant arrow-shaped barrier. The barrier stopped the spread of the flame, but it seemed like whatever it was he was using was eating away at her magic: small holes of flame torches opening up here and there from the pressure and forcing the two of us to take two giant steps backwards again as to not get burned alive.  

"These aren't normal Illusions," Foxy said. The two of us were standing back to back: she was doing her best to reinforce the barrier, or adding another when it failed, and I was watching her back for if anything came by after us.

"Yeah." I growled, "These feel way too real to be simple illusion magic." A whip of flame came from around the edge of her barrier and I used my (Bloody Claws) to slash at the whip and dissipate the magic before it got close enough to hit her. "I thought he wanted our heads? Not to straight up disintigrate us?"

I continued to slash at whips, figures made of flame, and other constructions made of the magic that I momentarily lost my sense of direction. I turned to look back, realizing I'd gone a little farther away than intended, but as soon as I looked back at where Freija was my surroundings warped and changed.

Suddenly, instead of being in a hellish land of fire, I'd been put in the middle of a marsh with giant gnarled, blackened trees without leaves or sunlight and I was knee deep in a mix of muddy water and blood. There was a flutter of noise behind me, I didn't hesitate to whirl around and whip a few knives made with (Blood Crystallization) at the source of the sound. 

"Well that wasn't very nice." Shri'n'thyl growled. I just growled back louder at him. I guess he wasn't expecting that kind of reaction and he flinched back slightly. 

I immediately took that reaction and lept towards him: knives made of blood blocked all routes of escape, my claws outstretched and ready to tear into his smug flesh. But as soon as I got within range he disappeared, causing me to crash into on of the giant, black gnarled trees. The tree itself spontaneously came to life, binding all of my limbs to it's trunk and forcing my mouth closed and facing forwards as the floating punk came closer. 

"Now that you're being a proper listener this time. I wanted to give you at least a slight change of winning this. After all it was a bit of an over-kill for me to be sent after some lower-levels like you, compared to my being around level 230, going after anything below level 200 is just a complete waste of my time." He floated over to the side and faced outward next to me. "Now, I am going to continue battering at your chosen mate with (Realized Magic) while you're here stuck in this...wasteland. So, instead of just killing the two of you immediately I've decided I want to have a little fun: if you manage to get out of my spell, you'll have proved that you're strong enough to accept The End's call and I give the two of you a change to join our cause."

He came over to my front and looked me in the eyes, dragging a hand through his hair and behind his ears, "After all: (Seeing is Believing)" The red-tipped, pointed ear of a Blood-Moons Elf shone in the pseudo-light of this new hell. Then he disappeared, and the chittering started. 

-----------------------------------

<Freija>

All of my focus was on keeping the barriers up: I didn't notice Wreign go too far out of range until the (Barrier Enchantment) Magic I'd put on him was shattered in an instant. I snuck a glance back and saw him trying to make his way back towards me, but the moment he took another step a sort of haze covered the entire area he stood and he froze in place: Mid-run, with a look of desperation and pain stuck on his face. 

"Wreign!" I screamed, "Wreign snap out of it!" A sudden, searing pain in my side  broke my concentration, and the wall separating us from the fire fell. I hastily put a Barrier over my body and over his as the flame rushed over. It wasn't normal flame: this felt similar to that of a dragon's magic-eating Breath attack magic, but as lesser as it was the effect it had on my barriers was still extremely painful. Every slip or cut that it bled through was enough to allow the outside pressure to sear through my fur and skin, causing pain like that of Pops' third day of Hell week. 

I looked around for wherever that fanatic had gone, so that I could hopefully break his concentration somehow and get Wreign back in the fight, but I couldn't see him through the flames. All I could do was slowly drag myself over to where Wreign was, so that I could be by his side in this at the least. 

"Aww, look at you two" His voice seemed to come from the fire itself, bashing against my barriers to get the sound through, "A fox and a wolf in love...It's a shame you won't be able to get to him." I stepped forward and a giant chasm of darkness opened between me and Wreign. The ground itself turned into nothing as the ground split apart and separated us, widening further and further until it looked like Wreign was several thousand Lengths away. 

"You--" I whirled on the last place I'd heard his voice, sending a multitude of barrier spikes in that general direction. The flames flickered for a moment, just a moment, but it was enough to see I'd hit Shri'n'thyl in the leg with at least on spike before my vision was completely covered in darkness.

I smiled regardless of whether I was blinded or not. Whether this was real of not didn't matter: if I could hit him, I could kill him. 

"You...bitch" The pressure of the flames around me increased several fold, enough to crack my barriers in several places before those mended themselves. I heard the mutterings "Calm down" and "Don't lose focus" in the distance. The pressure lightened slightly, but just enough to let me look up. "You think one little strike is enough?" 

I grinned at him, he was standing just at the edge of the barrier, knowing that I would likely have a harder time doing what I'd done earlier at this pressure. " No, but I do know that Wreign will get out of whatever it is you've done to him, and together we'll rip you to pieces." 

"Oh?" Shri'n'thyl leant forward, staring at my eyes with his own Emerald ones. "You have so much faith he'll be strong enough to get out of a tier two domain spell?" 

My heart sunk, we were fighting someone with a Domain skill? And at the second tier..."Yes. I have faith." I didn't know if it was to convince him, or myself. 

Shri'n'thyl just smiled and hopped backwards into the air to start floating, "Even you have your doubts about that. I'm going to enjoy this." His laughter caused the fire to change colors around me as he floated backwards into the air. 

After ten minutes of being trapped in silence under the weight of my own (Barrier Magic) he spoke up again, "I guess I could pass the time a little with a story." 

I groaned at that. The pressure of the fire increased around me and the flame's color flashed purple. "You will listen. I'm not going to just--" Wreign's sudden screaming from across the chasm cut him off. Shri'n'thyl waved a hand and the screams were suddenly cut off, I looked over at Wreign to see if anything had happened to him, but it seemed Shri'n'thyl just put up a silencing illusion over him for the moment. Wreign's figure was slowly growing redder and taller, slowly letting him stand up and Shri'n'thyl continued speaking. 

I kept an eye on Wreign as Shri'n'thyl continued, "Once again, I've been interrupted. Why can't anyone get any word out nowadays. Didn't we used to wait for a speech to end before going in for the kill?" He sighed heavily and looked at me. "To where I left off I wanted to tell you where the inspiration for my magic came from: Now normally Illusions are just constructs made to trick the imagination into believing something is there when it isn't. And at first, that fascinated me, the idea that I could get someone to see something else and do another thing was a literal life-saver for me. I'd grown up poor, and alone. All that boring backstory crap, but the thing that changed for me was seeing one of those magnificent beauties flying over my clan in the forest.

"A bird taller than any of the trees you see here, with a wingspan that could block out the sky. It was magnificent! The feathers radiated energy themselves, and of course, I wanted a piece of such power. I tried to trick the creature into giving me one of it's feathers, but it saw straight through my Illusions without a problem. And instead of growing angry and turning me to ash that moment it decided to jut give me one!" He reached into his jacket and grabbed a feather longer than his midsection, with colors shifting like that of a rainbow, but the colors seemed much duller than they should've been. "Unfortunately I've been unable to find a way to preserve it's state, but I was able to learn from it. To adapt my Magic and turn it into the perfection you see here: A combination of the power flame and illusion, such perfection is the perfect fit for a being such as myself!" 

I looked at him as he cackled to himself, still floating mid air and holding the feather outstretched as he lost his mind. It was then that I noticed his ears: tipped with a reddish material and longer than a normal humans, ending with a point. Everything clicked: of course this psychopath was an Elf from the Blood-Moons Clan, they were all fanatics obsessed with power and battle. It was actually quite a good fit for a cult obsessed with worshipping the End of the World.

"Ahahahahaha--I'm going to rip...wait, why are you smiling at me like that?" He seemed to come down from his fit, but I couldn't keep the grin off of my face as he looked at me. I lifted a hand in his direction, my middle finger raised and his face crinkled into utter confusion...until he looked slightly to the side and screamed: a giant (Enraged) wolf-kin cutting into his face with a (Bloody Claw). 

Sorry it took me until Tuesday to put something out. I was too tired to update over the weekend and just wasted the entirety of Monday just watching IGP's Poppy playtime videos, along with some of his other horror play-through's. 
Forgot how much entertainment there was just watching a YouTuber Screaming in absolute terror from something on a computer screen XD. 

Anyways I hope you enjoyed this update and I'll be trying to get another out tonight!

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