Burn

"Fireball!" the mad man screamed at the top of his lungs while a crazed smile appeared on his face.

Just as the fire mage casted the spell to blast Marcus away with his attack, he heard a yell from behind him, coming from that slowpoke detection mage he'd hired earlier.

"Callum get away from that cage now!" The man exclaimed.

However it was too late.

By the time Jerome noticed where Callum was and what he was doing, he casted a spell to not only protect the omen he was trying to kill, but also injure the man who'd dared to attack him.

The stone cage instantly collapsed in on itself as its bars, base, and top of the cage came together to form another armor around the omen trapped inside. The action was smooth and fluid as the earth took a slightly less rigid shape and flowed almost like water.

The spell the fire mage had casted once again failed to kill or even injure the omen before him and only turned a bright red color due to the pure amount of heat the fire spell emitted.

Along with the cage collapsing in on itself, it also severed the fire mage's hand from his body and sickening popping and cracking sounds were heard as the mage's bones were broken. Following this was a sickening ripping sound of flesh from Callum's arm being torn off from the shoulder and down to his hands.

"AAAAAHHHHHHH!!!"

The fire mage screamed in agony as his now poorly disfigured arm flew out of the makeshift armor and was thrown into the air to land on the ground beside him.

The image of his arm was truly grotesque due to it's current condition.

It was bent at an unnatural angle with something white sticking out of the skin at the wrist. The white thing that was poking out of the wrist was actually a piece of bone that had been forced to rip past the skin of the arm and was now poking out. Along with this, his hand was bent in the complete opposite direction of where his wrist was pointing and it seemed to be no longer attached to the rest of his arm.

The part of the arm closer to where his shoulder was located was in even worse condition and resembled less of an arm and looked more like a raisin due to it being crushed so thoroughly. The bones inside the arm were completely broken and only small bone fragments could be seen scattered on the ground beside it.

Callum continued to scream in pain and horror at the loss of his right arm.

There were of course healers and potions that could heal such an injury as grievous as his own, but everything had a cost. And it would cost astronomical amounts of coin to heal a severed limb like this one. Coin mind you, he did not have.

The cheapest potion that could restore a broken arm like his own would cost at least one platinum coin. Marcus's bounty was only worth ten gold coins and a platinum coin was equal to a thousand gold coins. With this information alone, one could see just how enormous the difference was and just how impossible it would be to recover the man's arm.

"I'LL KILL YOU!" Callum screamed as he quickly cauterized the wound on his shoulder and ran directly towards Jerome.

Jerome, who previously had a smug look on his face after seeing the state of Callum, took up a defensive position as he readied himself to defend against the mad man now approaching him.

Callum seemed to lose all reason, if he had any to begin with, as he charged at Jerome with wild abandon. The pain that stemmed from having his arm torn off and crushed nearly made Callum faint then and their, but he was too livid to succumb to such a fate.

He'd been chasing this omen for days and had come too far to be stopped now. He first laid eyes on the cretin after that arguably useless detection mage spotted him with his spell. Callum had failed to hit him that time, and was thoroughly annoyed at having to chase after him again and wished the little rat would stop running and just die already. As he continued to track the mage through the night with the help of the other mage's [Mana Pulse] spell, his detection mage started to slow down.

It seemed running for so long while continuously casting mana pulse to not lose their target had the mage spent and too tired to keep running. Unfortunately for him, Callum didn't seem to understand or care about this.

The way Callum saw it, he'd been running right along with the detection mage the entire time they chased after the omen, and he was tired too but not so tired as to stop running.

Granted, Callum hadn't needed to cast many spells since the omen remained out of his range and was hidden behind the numerous trees that surrounded them. This meant that his mana pool remained pretty full and so he didn't have to worry about the fatigue that came with depleting one's mana pool like the detection mage had to deal with, and even if Callum knew this, he'd still blame the mage for being so incompetent as to not manage his mana pool well enough.

This was all to say that Callum was an a**hole who only focused on his own needs and completely disregarded the needs of others around him, which led to to the current predicament he now found himself in.

Callum had reached within 10 meters of Jerome as he shouted the incantation for [Fireball] and launched it directly towards his opponent and the mage beside him.

Jerome reacted by casting a spell of his own to defend himself and the mage behind him. The spell he casted caused a single large slab of earth to form in front of them to protect against the fire mage's attack.

This caused an explosion to occur on the other side of the wall and it shook as cracks formed from its center. The wall had held but not without suffering damage from the impact and resulting explosion.

Jerome started to sweat profusely due to the residual heat and the amount of mana he had now spent. He was now breathing heavily and trying to catch his breath, but his opponent of course wouldn't allow such a thing to happen.

The stone wall he'd erected suddenly began to glow a bright red and cracks like a spider web began to grow from its center. Eventually, the stone shattered like glass and the image of the crazed arsonist came into view as his bright orange eyes pierced right threw the smoking hole he'd made.

Callum's entire appearance couldn't be seen, but he was without a doubt in a severe state. Even though he was a fire mage, he was only of the intermediate rank and this gave him only a small bit off immunity to fire since he wasn't as advanced in using said mage arts. As a result he suffered numerous burns and bruises from his own [Fireball] and the resulting explosion that it caused.

Jerome was horrified by what he could see of Callum and began to ready himself again to cast what might be the last spell his mana pool would allow, but before he even got the chance, Callum already casted another [Fireball] spell that broke through his defenses and caused Jerome to pull up his arms to shield his eyes and face from the explosion.

Callum couldn't care less about the explosion as he dashed right through the dust cloud at an alarming rate and tackled Jerome to the ground using the only arm he had left.

The wind was instantly knocked out of Jerome's lungs as he was tackled to the ground, and Callum repositioned himself atop Jerome, who was now gasping for breath.

The man found it exceedingly hard to breath due to Callum sitting atop him and all the dust in the air from the resulting explosion.

He hadn't expected his adversary to completely disregard his own safety by using two [Fireballs] point blank and charging into him like that but it hardly mattered now as he struggled to cast a spell to defend himself. Sadly though, most of his mana was now spent from protecting himself, the other mage, and the omen previously, and all he could probably muster at this point was to form a bit of rock armor around his fist to prepare to punch the crazed maniac in the head.

However, before he even got the chance to cast the spell the man sitting on top of him beat him to the punch. With Callum's one good arm, he placed his palm directly on the man's face and stared him directly in the eye.

Jerome's eyes were wide open and full of fear as all the hairs on his body stood on end. He knew what was about to happen and knew there was nothing he could do about it, and in his last moments all he saw was the wicked smile plastered along his soon-to-be killer's face.

The mad man's smile never left his face even as he saw the fear in his prey's eyes, and he only broke this smile to speak a single word.

"Burn."