Velora drew forth her mana, the air around her shimmering with power and pushing back the unnatural darkness by merit of sheer power. The fight raged on as the captain powered through the dragon’s bite to plow his backup sword down on the beast. The blade moved with more momentum than should have physically been possible for the smaller blade and could have rent iron, had it hit. The dragon seemed to flow around the blade, the oily shadow making it indistinct and hiding the true position of its body.

The blade tore shadows like paper and crashed into the stone floor of the cavern. The collision created sparks and flying stone chips from the now pitted surface. If the cracks around the scored line were any indication then a large chunk of stone had been fractured away from the floor. This was a true show of martial might.

As she completed the incantation and somatic gesture she felt a truly vast quantity of her mana leave her. Over 70% just up and left her body burning her limbs and mind with the sheer volume that she summoned. The dragon jerked its head up and looked at her before turning to dodge a swing from the captain, the blow being deflected and weekend by the shadows but still made the beast stumble and hiss in pain. It could sense magic and the shadows coiled in turmoil around the room as they prepared to dodge or counter whatever she produced.

Velora wheezed the final incantation and turned her palm towards the dragon -“[Triple]:[Maximised]:[Cone Of Light]”

The brilliant radiance of 3 overlapping cones of radiant light burst from her palm, quickly expanding out to encompass half of the room and engulfing the melee. She mentally commanded the light to avoid the captain feeling yet more mana drain from her to spare the man the searing light. Everyone in the room went blind as the brilliant radiance washed searing salvation over everything.

Fading after a few seconds the seared and glowing walls revealed themselves to the room’s occupants. The captain stood stunned with the only small patch of uncharred stone left under him and in the pattern of his shadow. The rock had turned red and black with patches of cloudy glass dripping from some of the walls. The rock was glowing and dripping from the far wall, having received the direct force of the cone of light. The lines where the cone ended were not glowing but looked more like soft taffy, still hot enough to melt flesh as the stone sagged and flexed.

Even during this tense time, Velora looked upon her work with pride, this being perhaps the most devastating spell she had ever cast. Even as she felt the edges of her vision go black and light-headed fatigue rolled over her mind, she felt satisfaction. Much of her body lost sensation and position as a tingling washed over her. It was the calm before the storm as a burning fire leaped from her heart and rained down her right arm, a searing pain made her body spasm and she keeled over to the left in a crumpled heap. Still conscious but with a mere fraction of her mana left and suffering from mana strain, she would be out of action for a while.

Velora made herself look in the direction of the captain, he was looking around and glancing at her worriedly while sweating and gasping. The superheated air down where he was would not be pleasant to breathe. Even towards the nearly untouched side of the cavern where she was lying the air was drying her skin and lungs.

Velora looked around her breath hitching, there was no sign of the dragon. She doubted an 8-meter long dragon coated in darkness and scales would have been completely vaporized by that spell. Killed most definitely, but there would be smoldering remains. It had either avoided the spell completely or survived and fled before the flash from the spell faded. That it had not come back to finish her off and then deal with the captain leant credence to the second option. In which case they would need to find it before it recovered. But that would not be possible for just the two of them. The men that had been incapacitated by the dragon’s fear were either unconscious or dead. The cone of light had missed all of them, having a relatively small cone near the caster. Despite that, one looked to have choked himself to death and a few others bore injuries that looked self-inflicted. Mind magic was very nasty, especially for the unprepared.

Finally giving up looking around the captain sat down and waited for the surroundings to cool. Stepping into molten rock and glass was a sure way to lose a leg, his vitality and defenses could deal with most of the adverse effects from the hot air, but wading through the glowing rock was not one of them. He would just have to wait for Velora to recover a bit.

After a few agonizing minutes, Velora felt some of the pain and fatigue leave her mind and body. The backlash for using such a huge quantity of her mana had mostly passed and she felt her mana start to regenerate, trickling into her mostly deplete pool.

She got shakily to her feet and flexed her mana, making her headache a bit worse.

“[Ray Of Frost]”

She aimed a hand towards the ground in front of the captain and it darkened, losing its cherry-red glow. Confirming its cooling effect would not somehow explode she cast it with more vigor.

“[Triple]:[Ray Of Frost]”

The blue shimmering rays leaped forth from her hands and sapped the heat from the stone. She then began to repeatedly cast the cantrip slowly chipping away at the huge field of heat to create a solidified stone passage for the captain to walk across. It was taxing, spending more mana than she was getting from her regeneration, her remaining reserves depleted at a slow but steady pace.

After nearly 10 minutes of casting the cantrip, the stone path was close enough to the edge of the effect for the captain to leap the remaining distance. He leaped over the 15 foot just and rushed up to her. He gripped her and sent a questioning glance her way. He was now close enough for her to see the red angry color of his skin, his leg still bled a trickle of blood but seemed to be working at least. Merely a flesh wound for the powerful warrior, likely aided by some form of regeneration. The worst damage appeared to be hidden beneath the surface. The man was wheezing and hadn’t spoken a single word to her yet.

“Captain Vox, can you talk?”

The man shook his head and smiled a pained smile with a little wheeze, this caused his smile to drop and face to scrunch in pain.

Velora looked at his red skin, burned by heated air, the same was probably true for his throat and to a lesser extent his lungs. If he didn’t have so much vitality that exposure would have killed him for sure. The armor would have helped shield the initial wave but acted like a kettle and stored heat afterward.

“Don’t worry too much, nothing a good healer can't fix, we better go gather the men and make our way out for here with haste. Looks like we’re going to disturb my colleges after all.”

Looks like I get to make the Major unhappy, he really doesn’t like the mages guild, but desperate times call for desperate measures. That and small joys in life.

They made their way over to the men, a few of which had begun to gain consciousness. It would be a long trek back up, but hopefully an uneventful one.

They gathered what was left of the broken and bleeding men, now also considerably pink and peeling, and began the arduous journey back to the surface. They made little noise, no jubilant laughter, just the grim wheezing, and fervent hope never to return down here again.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Pain, so much pain. It was all that occupied Noe’s mind as he dragged his seared and melted body down the tunnels, deeper into the earth. The last dregs of his mana forming cooling shadows that tried in vain to soothe his wounds. The shadows were the only reason he was still alive. In the moments before the cursed human had unleased fiery death he had used all of his will to cover and protect himself in their cool embrace. It had saved his life, allowing him to escape, using the shadows to navigate, his eyes roasted into blindness.

He dragged his charred and blistered tail and left hind leg behind him, the two limbs having lost all feeling, and occasionally spasming without his consent. Most of his scales had flaked off, the leathery hide below had burned and charred and the muscle below that had dried cracked and burned. It was worse from his waist down, the part of his body that he had turned to face the spell. This saved his more delicate neck and chest from the direct heat and light. But after the initial rays of light stripped him of his shadows the mere act of walking across the molten stone had nearly finished him. His shadows had tried to protect his feet but even still he had no control over his paws, they felt like painful lumps of coal attached to his limbs.

He would have let out a defiant growl, just to show his will to live and seek vengeance. But the mere act of drawing breath felt like needles running up his throat and created a tightness in his chest. A growl might have had him keel over and pass out.

It was nearly an hour of painful and slow progress before he made it to the deepest section of the mine’s natural caverns. It was a large space with only one entrance, with a small pool of water at the bottom, formed from a slow drip on the ceiling. Hoping to find some respite from the agony Noe entered the water half submerging his body and laid his head on the bank of the pool. He let out a shuddering breath and loosed the tension in his muscles and mind. The pain began to recede as the darkness took his vision. Perhaps it would be the end… well, at least the pain was fading as well.