Riots

A scream echoed down an ally way and I leapt off Kana's shoulder and rushed into the shadows. Kana was on my heels her blade drawn and her ice blades floating beside her, I took that as a sign and released my armor and a few spears of my own as I rushed ahead. Another scream resounded off the walls as we neared the source, the voice sounded strained and angry. When I turned the corner I froze in place, before us was a woman in a sun dress hunched over the body of a young boy about the age of 16. I thought I remembered the young lady from the market, as one of the first people who Anthony flirted with today. I think he managed to swindle a loaf of bread from her in exchange for some kind of promise.

The girl heard us coming up from behind and she stiffened, she slowly stood and turned in our direction. A piece of flesh was hanging from her mouth which dropped as she noticed us. The boy on the ground lifted up a weak hand towards us but he lost his strength and his hand landed on the floor with a wet thwop as it landed in his pooling blood. The woman let out an ear piercing scream at the top of her lungs and rushed us. The scream dazed me for a moment and I thrust my spear at her, in the direction of the ladies head. "No stop, we need her alive" Kana's shout messed up my aim and my spear flew wide and sunk into the side of one of the buildings. The woman reached me by this time and lunched a kick at my side. Confident in my armor and my cultivation level I tried to take the hit and was preparing a counter strike.

The woman's leg moved at speeds that I couldn't track and I was launched of my feet, the ice on my armor shattering as I smashed through one of the buildings in the allyway. A small family were scattered and many fled screaming. This brought the womens gaze back my direction and away from Kana, a glazed and wild tint in her eyes. Blood dripped down her face, leaking from her eyes as she glared at the fleeing family, even from here I could here her stomach growl as she licked her lips.

A blade slashed through the air where the women's neck was at mere seconds ago. She managed to dodge deftly by tilting her self so far back that her forehead was now touching floor. The sight of it sickened me. Putting her hands to the ground she flipped back onto her feet and managed to kick the blade out from Kana's grip. Kana backed up quickly trying to gain distance from the deranged lady as I climbed out of the rubble. My rib bones were exposed and I was having trouble breathing, I froze the wound shut and decided the armor was just extra baggage in this fight. I summoned more spears and threw them at the woman who dodged all but the last one, she caught it from the air and threw it back at me. I managed to summon a shield in front of me just in time to see both the spear and shield shatter into shards of ice, temporarily blinding me.

The lady turned her gaze towards Kana and screamed again at the top of her lungs. I saw Kana stumble from the sound just as I saw the woman charge at her. I used all my strength and a good portion of my mana to strengthen my hind legs, in a burst of power I rushed at the woman and tackled her into the wall across from the one I was smashed into. My back legs were not in good shape after that and it took all that I had to keep myself from falling over.

Something was clearly wrong with this woman, she was crying blood from her eyes, hungered for human flesh and screamed like she lost her mind. Not to mention her strength was unnatural as I couldn't sense any mana emanating from her that you would expect from powerful enhancements.

The sound of rubble moving caught my attention and I looked over. Blood covered the womans body as she climbed out of the wreckage. Both her arms were shattered and her left leg was destroyed and yet she rushed towards Kana as if she couldn't feel the damage to her body. Her speed was greatly reduced and she couldn't get her left arm to move at all. She lunged at Kana as Kana deftly dodged the attack, I tried to rush to her aid but I fell to the floor in a heap. Blood was pooling underneath me and I looked back down at my ribs, the seal I placed must have broke when I slammed the girl into the building. Usually when enhancing your body it becomes more resistant to damage and yet she was nearly killed by that attack, something was definitely wrong here. I quickly sealed the wound again and tried to stand only to fall to my side. Cursing in my head I focused on firing spear after spear towards the deranged woman. One of my spears struck her in her kidneys but she just yanked it out and used it to fight Kana, I let my hold on the magic go just as she tried to block with the spear. Kana's frozen blade passed through the fading spear and sunk deep into the womans shoulder, a spout of blood gushed out of the wound. The woman let out another scream but this time is was fading fast. She collapsed to the ground her fingers twitching before finally she remained still.

Kana immediately rushed to my side and scooped me up, in less then a minute flying swordsmen flew into the alleyway. They saw the damage and the wounded and started to healing the anyone they could find. One of them seeing the uniform came to check on us. I was patched up, both my chest and back legs wrapped in bandages as a healing mage tried to fix the worst of it, only managing to stop the bleeding. Kana only had a strained wrist from when the woman manged to remove her sword from her grasp. I took the brunt of the damage from the fight. The body of the woman was examined with magic and she was found to have an unknown substance running in her veins. The woman was registered as a peddlers daughter that came in every month to sell wares and she didn't have a magic core or at least it wasn't registered. A humans mana core shattered after death compared to mana beasts whose cores remain, so even if she had a core we wouldn't have known.

The boy who had several pieces of flesh ripped from his body, including a liver that was missing had several vials of the unidentified substance that was running in the womens body. The mages in charge of the case told us that this incident was just the effect of a bad drug deal by an unregistered mage. The drug was probably offered and the buyer was either not satisfied or had a bad high. They swept it under the rug as a civil case and handed it down to the common court to examine and deal with.

Kana and I were sent to the med ward to have a check up on our bodies and check for any broken bones and internal bleeding that the field mages would have missed. Kana was given a wrist strap and a small vial of medicine to take every morning for a week or until her wrist healed up. I was given full treatment and the most severe of the damages were fixed up with magic, I was given wraps and medicine like Kana and told the same instructions.

After the incident we ran our usual routes as we were assigned from day one but thankfully we were excluded from training for the next few days. The Professor still made sure to run his lessons by me, he was ecstatic to have me all to himself, even going so far as to say he should arrange a few accidents here and there just so he could have me attend is personal lessons.

After the incident seven more cases of madness struck out around the city. Each event was in a different district. I overheard the instructors talking about it when they thought I wasn't there. Evidently they think this is a new drug some pompous alchemist cooked up in his basement and that these incidents are his field tests. They had an incident about seven years ago that was very similar to the events now. Only difference was that the person who made the illegal drugs is still in prison and that his potions had a much more mild reaction. From what they could tell, the drugs are supposed to increase your cultivation base by extraordinary amounts and is the only potion to allow a non mage to use magic. However a week after that knowledge was leaked to the public the amount of incidents skyrocketed. The risk of madness and rage were seen as a possible side effect and many were willing to risk it for a chance to cultivate. After all only one in thirty people can sense mana and create a mana core. Everyone can cultivate but trying to sense and control mana blind is just a pipe dream to those with out the gift. The seller of these potions essentially advertised that by drinking this potion you would gain the gift to feel the magic in the air. Feeding off their hopes and dreams, the people fell into madness.

Riots started to rise up and many people started to call the potion the berserkers gift, in one of the riots Kana and I were apart of a man walked in front of a crowd of civilians. We were trying to calm down but the man downed a red potion and immediately went into a rage. He began screaming at the top of his lungs, as blood from his eyes ran down his face. He rushed our squad after killing seven citizens in a blink of an eye. Three of us were wounded bad enough to remain in the med ward for the majority of a month. We eventually had to put the man down and the people in the riot were long gone, we guess they ran away in fright. Everyone was on edge and we barley had time to sleep, like clockwork one incident after another appeared in our area and we were called in to handle it. The situation was grim and no one knew what to do.

...

In a forest just out side the now ruined kingdom or Tormok a man in a hooded robe knelt down infront of a man with skin the color of the night sky, his eyes glowed like the coals of a fire and two white horns jutted out from his forehead. The man kneeling spoke up "I have done as you asked my lord, the drug I created has been a success and the people of the neighboring nation have been reduced to chaos. Even as we speak the people are cowering in fear and their fighters are worn out from the attacks" The man standing before the bowing man nodded his head.

"Good, go tell the other saints to prepare their hordes. We need to strike while the Iron in still hot" A deep voice that made the ground shake under its power came from the thin horned man.

The man on the ground just smiled and he stood up to relay the message. As he left he pulled back his hood revealing an elf with an eerie resemblance to prince Rodrick, he clutched a cloth and held it over his mouth as he coughed up a bit of blood but even with the obvious pain he felt the smile never left his face. His eyes glowed with otherworldly light. "It must be done" He muttered repeatedly "My God has spoken" he repeated before coughed up another glob of blood. He clutched his chest tightly as he mad his way out of the forest and towards the large horde of mana beasts just outside the castle walls. All the while grinning with blood covered teeth.