Chapter 4 Part 1

Heading towards the villain's camp, we find the kidnapper sitting on floor. Writing in what seems to be a little notebook. Let's lean in a bit closer to see what the contents are shall we?

It seems to be a diary. The last entry says "lord, please forgive my sins, give me the strength to climb the chain of command within your church and fix the corruption within it. I will be doing as I am for now and kidnap these kids. I promise I will find all I have kidnapped and take them back to their families when I am your disciple once again. Amen"

(narrator) hmm. She isn't a bad person after all then? We can't be truly sure just yet. We shall keep an eye on her. I hope we get to learn her name soon.

It's been about two minutes, and Heddwyn finally comes upon the camp and hides in the bushes just out of sight. This villain strikes Heddwyn as odd, her aura is sweet and soothing but also quite unstable at the same time. As if she were to be provoked, she would lose all control and kill.

Heddwyn watches the villain's movements for a while and quite literally nothing happens, she is still sitting on the floor in front of the campfire barely moving to itch, until an hour later she gets up and goes into her tent through the tarp. Without being able to see her movements, Heddwyn starts to sweat. She could be doing anything. For all Heddwyn knew, she was resetting her detection field.

She comes out of the tent with a jacket that seems to have a name written on it. Harddick?

(narrator) ugh it's too far away to see, give me a sec.

The name on the jacket says Ben Hardwick. A brother? Father maybe? Or even boyfriend? Fuck it, can't be bothered to find out right now.

Anyway, the lady drapes the jacket over her shoulders and smiles as if reliving fond memories. It was at this moment Heddwyn comes out from the bush he was in and confronts the woman.

"hay!" Heddwyn shouts. This puts the kidnapper on edge, springing up on her feet dropping the jacket on the floor.

"look I don't want to fight you, but if you plan no stopping me from doing my job, I will have no choice" The woman states with a shakiness in her voice.

"well. I guess we are fighting then" Heddwyn replies with confidence and earnest.

"but before we do may we exchange names?" Heddwyn follows, taking a stance ready for an attack.

"my name is Cleo Hardwick" she states also taking a fighting stance.

"the name is Heddwyn Longstaff. Pleasure is mine" he bows.

With pleasantries exchanged, silence fills the air with only the occasional gust of wind blowing on some fallen leaves from the ground. It was one of these gusts that signals the dual start.

Cleo starts with equipping herself a staff with a magi core gem to amplify her attack spells. Meanwhile Heddwyn syphons magic into his black spear to counter projectile spells. At the same time Cleo is preparing a spell along her amplifier. The spell consists of two rune circles and 40 runes with a red hue. Heddwyn is just standing there waiting for some reason. Cleo finalises the spell and out comes a large fire ball no bigger than a basketball. She yells "fire!" and the large fire ball speeds towards Heddwyn.

As she yells, Heddwyn points his staff towards Cleo's fireball "shit, I can't unravel that, the weak point moves too much" he trickles his mana into his spear and produces a blue spell containing 3 rune circles and 50 runes. "this is going to be loud" he utters. As his spell finishes forming a sphere of water he yells "fire" both the fire and water spell hurdle towards one another and impact causing a loud and huge explosion, hurting the two mages as well as damaging the hard iron-like trees surrounding them.

The explosion knocked both the mages off their feet, an outcome neither of them expected. Both swiftly get back on their feet and Cleo tries her hand in casting a holy spell. This spell is white in colour and is 4 rune circle's and 80 runes in size. "this will take up about 20% of my mana, but at least he won't be able to dodge or block this spell" she utters.

Seeing the size of her next spell, Heddwyn starts preparing to use darkness magic of the same magnitude and obviously its black in colour. Both these spells are huge, so it takes them both a long time to cast. While casting his darkness spell Heddwyn attempts to cast a defence status effect with his free hand. "this spell can't fully block her spell, but at least I won't take as much damage as her" Heddwyn muttered. Splitting his focus between two spells is putting some serous strain on his focus. His status effect spell is gold in colour consisting of 2 rune circles and 26 runes.

Both mages look like they are struggling a bit, but Cleo must have snapped during this because her face expresses nothing but malice towards Heddwyn with the creepiest smile I've ever seen on a human female. Finishing his status spell, he looks up to see her malice and this almost breaks his composure.

"status effect magic defence up" he said with fear in his gut and throat. Cleo's eyes widen as her spell finishes casting. Not even a second later so does Heddwyn's. At the release of both the spells, a dark shroud encompasses the area around Cleo and a holy shroud around Heddwyn.

As the spells start chipping away their life essence's both mages let out a blood curdling scream. A few seconds later both spells stop causing them both damage, Cleo collapses to the ground while Heddwyn to one knee.

Heddwyn sits down on the floor, thinking the battle is won. But Cleo slowly starts weakly climbing to her feet, holding onto a tree while she catches her breath. Heddwyn springs back up ready to fight.

Surprisingly Cleo spins back towards Heddwyn and points her staff in his direction. Her head twitches ferociously as she casts a spell frozen blue in colour. This spell consists of 3 rune circles and 52 runes.

(narrator) blink bitch! blink!

Heddwyn hesitates as his fear grows from her expression but after a few moments he catches his nerves and starts weaving a new spell "I got to put up a shield spell before she kills me with that spell" Heddwyn cries. His shield spell is a light green with a hint of yellow in it, it is also 3 rune circles and 45 runes in size.

As he is weaving his spell, Cleo's spell finalises and she mutters "icicle shotgun" with an even more crazed and fear educing facial expression.

The spell that Cleo just cast produces dozens of lances like ice that launch at an enemy. the spell consumes mana each time it is shot and reloaded. "fire!" she screeches.

Even more fearful than before Heddwyn starts screaming himself "oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. Fucking finish casting damn it! Ye-!" his shield spell activates creating a hexagonal shield directly in front of him. However, one of the icicles passed by the barrier before it had a chance to form, hitting Heddwyn directly in the shoulder joint. Heddwyn looks at the icicle stuck in his left shoulder, not fully registering what happened yet. As he collapses onto both knees, he lets out another chilling scream.

With the shield defending off the icicle onslaught, he pulls out the icicle inside him with a grunt and reaches inside his bag to grab a high-grade magic healing potion he had been saving. He opens the cap and starts chugging the whole bottle, a golden glow appears around Heddwyn's injury as the wound slowly starts to close itself.

After Heddwyn's wound fully heals, he starts weaving a second shield spell for a little bit of extra protection.

"oh no you don't, you're my prey Heddwyn" Cleo obsesses.

She pumps more into the Icicle shotgun spell to reduce the time between the attacks. She infuses so much mana into the already active spell, that the shotgun spell becomes more like a machine gun.

The shield that Heddwyn erected started cracking under the new torrent of attacks. "shit, shit, shit! The shield won't hold on long enough for me to enable a second one" Heddwyn decides to rush his spell, pumping 20% of his mana into the second shield. This new shield would not create a second shield, but will now replace the current one.

The spell flashes, signalling that its ready to cast. Just as the previous shield broke, he activated the new one. Before he could get it up, dozens of icicles whiz past him while one tore through his thigh leaving a giant hole in his leg. Heddwyn once again lets out a scream, but this time he keeps his composure and focuses his remaining mana on closing the open gash in his leg.

The torrent of icicles continues to rail into the shield for several more minutes before finally, Cleo passes out from mana fatigue and fever. The menacing aura was replaced with one of a calm disposition. This seems to be a personality trait of hers.

Meanwhile Heddwyn is still healing the hole in his thigh, the hole has gotten smaller, but it will take a few minutes of healing to full patch a hole, time Heddwyn doesn't have. Heddwyn grits his teeth and pulls 2 low quality magic potions from his bag and drinks them both to finally heal the wound. Heddwyn breathes a big sigh of relief, thankful this unexpectedly intense battle finally ended.

"ugh damn it, I went into symptom levels, this headache came out of nowhere" Heddwyn says, expressing his discomfort.

The Nekojin walks over to the exhausted Cleo and pulls out a blanket to cover her up. "there. Hopefully she will keep warm while she recovers. For now, I got to go find those kids. Where could she have hidden them." Heddwyn looks around and spots the carriage. "well, that will be the most obvious place to put them" he says to himself.

He slowly walks over to the back of the carriage and pulls open the tarp covering the back. "ah there we are, hello kiddos. I'm here to take you back home to the church where you belong"

The twins are wide awake while Christopher is still passed out from the sleeping spell. The eyes of the twins beam with relief while Heddwyn removes the rope and linin cloth from the three sprites.

Heddwyn helps Haider and Heather out of the carriage and carries Christopher on his shoulders. "alright then you two follow me, ok?" Heddwyn instructs. The kids both nod and of they go back to the church.