Pursuit

"Are you ready to two ready to move? Lady Nyvren? Rethys?" Elkieth asked as she enveloped the two apprentices in the golden radiance of her magic.

"I am." Replied Rethys feeling the gold-tinted ether rapidly revolving around him as an almost tangible wind, while Turavar's young assistant, who he now knew was called Nyvren, simply nodded.

"Follow me closely you two. I'll try to not overburden you, but you must do your best. If you can't keep up, make sure to tell me." Elkieth said while using her Creation magic to produce an identical copy of the map they charted on their way, since the original was taken by his Fulgrith and Turavar.

Rethys was mesmerized by the sight of the golden ether leaving her hands and weaving itself into the thick paper of the map, complete with all its details. A completely identical copy.

"Alright then, let's go."

The three immediately started running back through the canyons, tracing their way back to the camp. Only now that they were traveling back and moving so quickly did Rethys noticed the sheer difficulty of navigating through the twisting and winding paths of this place, they could have gotten lost many times over if not for the map in Elkieth's hands. After about ten minutes of running with the occasional loud roar coming from the direction Turavar and Fulgrith headed towards, they were met with an emergency of their own.

"There's a creature ahead!" Rethys yelled, sensing a presence ahead of them.

"Halt! Stay behind me!" Elkieth yelled back.

As they stopped, a large wolf made itself visible through the tall plants, growling at the three of them. Rethys recognized it as a Blisterhound, a large canine capable of breathing fire. And though possessing resistance towards its own power as all magic users do, it wasn't enough to completely protect it and thus the animal earned its name from the blisters around its mouth.

"Where did it even come from, none of our findings showed anything like this..." Muttered Elkieth with an uneasy expression, and Rethys shared her confusion.

These sorts of magical creatures almost always stuck to their territories and were very careful of straying out of them or moving to new ones, even uninhabited territories. This creature, however, displayed none of the wariness wildlands dwelling beasts were known for, and kept slowly moving towards the three, making his intentions clear.

Elkieth was having none of that however as she waited for it to come closer before raising her hand in a grabbing motion. Rethys then watched as the earth underneath the wolf rose and trapped it between spires of stone resembling a hand. She then clenched her fist, causing the spires to tighten their grasp until the beast trapped inside released crunching noises.

'Ugh, that sounded wet.' Rethys cringed at the sight.

"There's more of them ahead! We need to go back and find another way." Elkieth said before erecting walls made of stone spikes ahead of them

The barricades were enough to block movement but not enough to block sight. And as the three turned around to retrace their path backwards, Rethys could see a group of more than five blisterhounds through the openings in the makeshift wall.

The hounds rushed at the interlocking spikes of earth, clawing and spewing fire at them, frustrated over how they couldn't reach their prey on the other side. The damage was minimal however, and Rethys was sure that the wall would last them long enough to redirect themselves through the canyons.

His hopes were demolished however, along with the wall, when a huge blisterhound charged through the earthen wall with its enormous mass, completely shattering it into rubble.

"There's a big one coming!" Rethys yelled.

The larger blisterhound was nearly two meters tall at the withers and possessed an unnaturally bulky body. Its fur was singed all over from its flames, and its claws completely furless and covered in wounds and blisters, this larger variant seemed capable of manifesting its fire from more than just its mouth.

Turning around, Elkieth saw the large blisterhound and without hesitating for a second sent a stone tendril extending towards it at unfathomable speeds, impaling it. The large beast shook and screamed all the while emitting flames from its body as it struggled to free itself. The smaller blisterhounds also stopped to help their leader and free it, clawing and biting at the stone holding it in place. Seeing this, Rethys remembered then that these creatures were also known for their unnatural resilience and wondered if the trapped beast would survive its impalement. His thoughts were interrupted however as the group resumed running.

"Tell me if you sense any more of them around us." Elkieth said.

"Okay." Replied Rethys, doubling his efforts to keep an eye on their surroundings.

Over the next dozen minutes however, every attempt the three made at returning to the camp was foiled by increasingly numerous groups of blisterhounds often led by larger variants.

Elkieth at first tried to slow the beasts down, but after realizing their sheer numbers and the possibility of being completely overrun, she focused instead on reducing their numbers where she could.

As time passed and they kept changing routes, Rethys was almost sure that they were lost, not that they had any choice as more of the fiery beasts kept pouring in like an endless tide.

"Damn it, is there no end to them?!" Elkieth exclaimed, after reaching a safe spot. Seeing that for every beast she killed, two more appeared, and her stores of energy running lower, she feared for the safety of the two following her, as well as her own.

Taking out her communication talisman, she abandoned her goal of reaching the camp, figuring that the numerous detours put them too far away at this point, and instead opted to reach any nearby help. The small, engraved disc hummed in her hands for a while before she put it back in her pocket, the device seemingly having done its job.

"It's pointless to try and head back to the camp now, we'll be heading towards the rest of the mages. Can you two keep going?" Elkieth asked as she reinforced the spell surrounding the two apprentices, its golden radiance becoming thicker to the point that Rethys could tangibly feel the vapor-like ether surrounding him.

The two nodded, Rethys had since become used to the ether density and could move more easily, even as his mentor's strength enhancing spell began to wear off. Nyvren on the other hand simply nodded silently, whether she was scared stiff or completely composed, Rethys could not tell.

*****

'This doesn't make sense.' Rethys pondered as he was running away from yet another pack of hounds.

As the group moved, avoiding packs of blisterhounds and scaring off others, Rethys could see a strange pattern emerging. The magical beasts behaved strangely, especially the larger ones. Some had many opportunities where they could attack but instead were driven off relatively easily by Elkieth's magic, either wounding them or blocking their path with stone walls they could clearly break.

Some attacked with reckless abandon and needed to be driven off, while others simply remained stationary, blocking paths and not bothering to charge. If Rethys didn't know any better he'd guess that the hounds were herding the three of them.

If that wasn't enough to confuse him, he could detect a presence in the sky above them moving slowly and lazily but still easily keeping up with them since it was unimpeded by the canyons' tricky terrain. Elkieth too seemed to sense whatever this creature was, as Rethys saw her occasionally glance upwards a few times with a worried expression.

Suddenly the beasts chasing them moved faster, growls and shrieks coming from them as the largest of them began moving so fast as to shatter the earth beneath them. As one of the large blisterhounds leaped at Elkieth, its maw and claws flaming, the golden aura around her coalesced, surging towards the giant beast and coalescing around it, flinging it backwards. As it fell towards its smaller peers, crushing them beneath its weight, two other equally large beasts charged ahead.

Elkieth channeled her magic and trapped the two in prisons of rock, but while she managed to stop one, the other plowed through and lunged at her. Before its claws could connect, however, a spire of stone ran through its body, plunging through its torso and exiting through its head in a shower of flaming blood.

Meanwhile a smaller hound rushed to attack Rethys but was effortlessly repelled by the protective golden radiance before being skewered by a stone needle while still hanging in the air.

"Don't stop moving!" She yelled while the golden barrier around her regained its glow after dimming from blocking an attack.

As they moved further towards help, the hounds chasing them continued to grow more frenzied, their timid behavior gone as they now went for the throat.

Eventually, Nyvren with her lacking height couldn't keep up, as fatigue began to show and Fulgrith's spell faded, and needed to be carried by Elkieth who still had a mage's naturally stronger body. Rethys himself was not faring much better, being barely able to keep up, tired as he was.

Eventually, however, help arrived, or rather they reached it. As Rethys and Elkieth were running for their lives, they could see a large silhouette ahead approaching at extreme speeds, the former recognized it as his master's.

In just a few leaps, Fulgrith was right in front of them before another jump propelled him towards the pursuing blisterhounds, already wrapped in Elkieth's protective golden barrier. When Rethys turned around, he saw his mentor's fists catapulting the larger hounds into the walls of the canyons while reducing the lesser hounds into showers of gore and flame.

Rethys watched in awe as the two mages worked. With Fulgrith fighting and Elkieth supporting him, the huge crowd of beasts was quickly taken care of.

As the dust settled, the group could finally catch a break after running for so long. While Rethys sat down to rest a little, he inspected the other three. Elkieth was sitting on the ground, panting from tiredness in between drinks of water. Keeping the three of them safe was a monumental task for someone like her completely unspecialized in combat, and though she fought hard, it left her almost completely drained. Turavar's assistant Nyvren on the other hand retained her expressionless demeanor.

Finally looking at his mentor, Rethys noticed that many things must have happened since they separated. Fulgrith wasn't wearing either his coat or mage mantle, his burnt shirt being the only thing covering his chest and doing a poor job at it, showing the old mage's impressive physique and rippling muscles. His hands also showed signs of slight burns, nothing his augmented physique couldn't resist but still serving as evidence of his extensive fights against the fiery blisterhounds.

As the group was recovering, Fulgrith finally broke the silence.

"We need to regroup with the others, it's not safe here." He stated.