There are three things that are too amazing for me, four that I do not understand:

The way of a floundering shark on the land,

The way of a wounded wolf on the hunt,

The way of a fearful lion in retreat,

And the love of a kitten for her Master.

- Andanian Chronicles

“Get away from me!” the bleeding king of beasts flailed about as he fled from the hissing kitten racing after him.

The kitten drooled dreamily as she jabbed her stolen scepter at Xerxes, “I like catnip!” she demanded. A massive hedge of gigantic herbs sprouted up from the ground and the horrified emperor plunged straight into the dense greenery. Mirror flicked her staff, and the multitude of vines twisted around the struggling lion and encased him within a solid avocado colored tomb.

“Ugh… Achoo! What is this accursed plant!?” the lion moaned as he rubbed desperately at his body and slobbered uncontrollably.

“Hmm… tuna bones are pokey?” Mirror flicked the staff experimentally at her intoxicated foe, as she recalled the first time she feasted on a fish’s leftovers. The plants vanished and Xerxes was dumped unceremoniously on the ground, then he looked up and howled in horror as thousands of tiny unavoidable needles rained from the cloudless skies and jabbed for his innards. He screamed repeatedly as he convulsed painfully in the dirt, then he staggered back onto his feet as the glowing runes on his body finally delivered him from his torment.

“Many more pokey tuna bones? And what about… some of that brown bitter stuff too!” Mirror mused thoughtfully. And the lion cried out again as he was afflicted with a vicious hail of poisonous cartilage. Then he flopped about helplessly in the dirt as he clutched at his retching stomach. The wide-eyed kitten meowed with surprise as she stared at the staff of Verethragna, “This stick is very EVIL!” she gasped with surprise.

“I’ll kill you… I’ll tear you apart!” the lion wailed plaintively as he struggled to his feet and charged desperately at Mirror.

The kitten frowned, “Cold, wet, and alone!” she exclaimed. The heavens thundered with unmeasurable might and the horrified emperor was consumed within a humongous grating slurry of ice and water. Then an incredible force punched the yelping lion a kilometer beneath the frozen earth’s surface. “Ouch…” Mirror winced sympathetically, “very bad red stick!”

“When I get my hands on you…” Xerxes roared furiously as he clawed his way swiftly upwards.

“How about… sunny day burns?” Mirror whispered. A massive raging fireball hit the lion just as he emerged from the crater and blasted him back into the depths. And Xerxes screamed as the intense heat fused the molten rocks into his ionized flesh. “Who made this wicked witchy stick?” Mirror sighed as she shook her head disapprovingly. Then the kitten shrugged indifferently before turning and beaming at her astounded prince, “Aryan, I saved you!” she purred as she pattered back to him and nuzzled her rosy cheek against his chest. “Pet Mirror please!”

“Aryan… you are alive, I….” Laura interrupted as she staggered towards the cuddling couple.

Mirror snarled hatefully at the approaching princess, “Go away, very bad witch! You ran away and left poor good Aryan to die alone! I saved Aryan, he is mine!”

“I didn’t…” The princess fell miserably to her knees and heaved up a steaming puddle of blood.

“Laura!” Aryan exclaimed with heartfelt worry as he abandoned Mirror and raced up to the severely wounded princess. And sudden tears formed in the jilted kitten’s crystal blue eyes as she bit her lip to hold back a sorrowful cry. Just then, the earth thundered as the Lion of Saadian roared and glared menacingly at his enemies.

“Witches are the worst!” Mirror shrieked with frustration as she jabbed her rod at Xerxes and shoved all her gathered emotion into it. The staff of Verethragna groaned with the extreme overload of power, then it splintered into countless shards that staked into the ground around the dismayed emperor.

From the blasted wasteland, rose a dozen grotesque mud dolls, then a hundred, and then a thousand. An endless flood of tittering misshapen witches surrounded the trembling Emperor of Saadian as they brandished a multitude of blood red talismans. “High god Dagon, accept our sacrifice!” they chanted mockingly as one and the very air crackled with materialized magic. Then their spells tore repeatedly into the hapless emperor, his skin was flayed, his heart was gorged out, and his marrow was drained from his bones. His regenerative runes glowed furiously to negate the damage as he stuck out forcefully at the attackers, but the dolls forced him to his knees by sheer weight of numbers.

“I will never be defeated!” the mighty Immortal Lion of Saadian roared with maddened fury. “Dark Ritual! Give me more power!” He arrogated. The runes etched on his body flared brightly as his already immense strength and Talent immediately surged upward, ten percent, thirty percent, and then fifty percent. And the profound magical pressure surrounding Xerxes grew to such an extent that the very laws of physics were stretched to their limits and space and time seemed to warp around him. The dolls screeched in frustration and hurled another wave of attacks at the lion, but their magic slid harmlessly around the natural barrier that shimmered around his body. Xerxes fumed, a single mighty swipe from his bare hand fanned a windstorm that scattered the obstructing dolls in his way, and the earth thundered with each step as he strode out like an unstoppable divine being to mete out judgement on his puny mortal foes.

“Meow!” Mirror squeaked as the incredible pressure forced her backward. The kitten trembled as she fled from the approaching lion and cowered fearfully before Aryan, “We have to leave now!” she hissed urgently. “The big angry lion is coming to eat us!”

“Save yourself Mirror, it is okay. I’ll stay here with Laura till the end.” Aryan directed as he cradled the weakened princess in his arms.

“That’s not okay! Good Aryan will be eaten, poor Mirror doesn’t want to be left alone again!” The kitten wailed as she turned back to glance in horror at the approaching menace before scrabbling at his chest in an attempt to lift up the heavier boy.

“That’s enough…” the wolf croaked as she brushed away from the prince and rose unsteadily to her feet, “Mirror, grab this super idiot and drag him somewhere safe.”

“Witchy wolf is right!” Mirror nodded fanatically with emphatic agreement, “Come with me good Aryan, she will die with the angry lion and buy us time to escape.”

Aryan seethed with fury, “Don’t you dare, I’ll hate you!”

The girls sighed as they pouted at their prince, “Super stupid… Idiot…” they groaned simultaneously. Then they turned and stared calculatingly at the approaching king of beasts.

“That’s it?” Laura wondered with relief as she assessed the approaching emperor, “And I figured out his secret now, I can take him…” The wolf retrieved the single black talisman that she had been saving up.

“You have been holding back sneakily, all this time!” The kitten frowned, “You are letting the lion hurt you on purpose so that good Aryan will cuddle you more!” she accused as she reached out for the vast reservoir of blood magic that she had gathered.

The wolf snorted, “Don’t be stupid, I’m not a masochist like you. It is simply basic strategy to conserve my most costly spells, at least until I’ve figured out all of my enemy’s abilities. My higher magic isn’t like yours, I can’t just waste it away in every encounter. Besides, haven’t you just been playing around all this time?” Laura countered.

The kitten scrunched up her face in disgust, “Ugh… that inedible lion tasted like vomit, good Aryan’s so much better. And isn’t hitting him just a waste of energy? He regenerated from all of Phoebe’s and your attacks, it’s smarter to reserve my magic so that I can flee safely with tasty Aryan.” Mirror drooled excitably as she couldn’t help but glance at the prince behind her.

“You did what to Aryan!?” the princess fumed as she glared furiously at her loudly purring double.

The kitten chortled contentedly, “Good Aryan’s even better than live swimming tuna! Oh, the moist willing warmness of his lips, and that fresh syrupy sweetness coursing down my throat, I’ll treasure it for the rest of my life.”

“What?” Aryan retorted defiantly when the princess glared silently at him, “I had no other choice, you were the one that imprisoned me in my own tent!”

Laura sighed with defeat as she scowled at Mirror, “I’ll deal with you later. Now buy me some time so that I can chant my incantation.”

The kitten shook her head vigorously, “Witchy wolf is tricky wolf. I won’t listen to you, ever again! You will probably run off with my good Aryan while I’m eaten by the angry lion!”

“I won’t abandon you and run off with Laura,” Aryan reassured, “will you please buy her some time? I’ll pet you all you want later if we survive!”

Mirror sighed as she gazed at the approaching lion with trepidation, “Two pets! And you must cuddle me too.” She demanded as she glanced suspiciously at the princess next to her. Then she snarled at the oncoming emperor and drew on the blood magic that she had gathered, and her tripled power surged past the wolf’s to match sixty percent of her approaching foe’s ability. “I am Magic Mirror!” the kitten bristled boldly as she stalked forward to intercept Xerxes, “And I will bite you many, many times!”

…

The quintet of Saadian archmages licked their wounds as they raced swiftly towards the stationary wolf and her prince, but they paled as yet another immense power source flared up towards the heavens. “Methuselah!” number thirty-five complained to the Mage General, “Monsters! They are all a bunch of Talent horrors. How do you plan to take them on?”

Methuselah signaled to his colleagues and they paused for a strategic discussion, one kilometer from the closest combatants. Even at that significant distance, the five powerful mages bore strained expressions as the immense crushing pressure sapped away at their energy. “How much blood magic have you gathered?” The general demanded, “We must hit that wolf with everything we have, if we hope to come out of this alive!”

The reluctant archmages each retrieved a glowing blood gem from beneath their cloaks and displayed the amount of higher magic that they had reserved. “Blood magic won’t be enough to overcome that wolf, the gulf between our innate abilities are just too vast!” Number seventy-five muttered.

“Good,” Methuselah concluded as he assessed their crystals, “I have already summoned the Hundred Archmages. Our mission is to disable the wolf while she’s occupied with her incantation, disrupt her higher spell, and buy as much time as possible. We will be able to regain the initiative once the other archmages arrive, our total base Talent is still more than double the current power of three Vaishyan enchantresses combined, and they have already resorted to higher magic.”

“I feel like a rat in a cage,” number forty-nine groaned as he drew liberally on his blood gem to diminish his discomfort, “this tremendous gulf in raw ability, it reminds me of the first day I stepped into class as a novice.”

Methuselah shrugged, “It’s still not as bad as facing Emperor Xerxes, and we have managed to suppress even Him during the several times when He lost control of His powers. Their massive amount of Talent works to our advantage, the wolf hasn’t noticed us in the chaos, and we might be able to catch her off guard with a surprise attack.” The five archmages conferred brusquely before breaking up and scuttling towards the chanting wolf.

…

“One, two, three, four, five,” Phoebe’s eyes narrowed as she stared into the distance. “Amir, use your medallion and call for Zinnridi. A pack of nasty Saadian rats are closing in on our position.” The divine enchantress sat down and buried her face tiredly between her knees as she finally managed to mitigate the worst of the princes’ injuries. The crown prince retrieved his medal and snapped it hurriedly in two, a single seed fell from the broken medallion and sprouted into a twisting magical vine, and the Archdiviner stepped out gingerly.

“You lost?” Archdiviner Zinnridi stammered in horror as he glanced at the exhausted divine enchantress, “But who’s fighting Xerxes then?” the ancient man cowered as a massive surge of Talent, accompanied by yet another powerful shockwave rattled the battlefield.

“I didn’t lose!” Phoebe protested irritably. “And I’m not yet expired…” she muttered bitterly to herself. The goddess gestured at the five significant specks scampering swiftly towards them, “Intercept and eliminate those rats, you can manage that much at least, can’t you?”

“Archmages of Saadian, and already boosted with blood magic.” Zinnridi assessed the approaching enemies thoughtfully as he retrieved a shrunken glowing device acquired from Ali’s Andanian Supplies. Then the weasel licked its lips, “I’ll deal with it,” he nodded and his Talent soared as he ferreted quietly towards his unguarded opponents.