The bathysphere was sealed tight.
Water slid off the spherical submarine and dripped from the bottom into the water below it. The bathy itself had just been raised from the depths, unopened since being found in a frozen lake in Greenland.
Stiyl Magnus stood before it, arms crossed, examining it carefully for any sign of danger. He'd been called on this assignment due to a shortage of hands, and figured maybe it would give him a break from all of the recent conflict, so he'd accepted it and traveled all the way out here to this facility in an undisclosed location, simply so he could possibly get some rest. The appearance of the bathysphere, and his own assignment that basically summed up to "Open this metal ball and make sure nothing inside it is gonna try to kill anyone", made him believe otherwise. Perhaps this wouldn't be so easy.
With moderate amounts of caution, the flame magician stepped up onto the platform and approached the door of the 'sphere. All he could see inside was ice. It was surprising that the bathysphere itself had held together from the ice expanding inside of it, but even the glass window in the door was merely cracked, making Stiyl wonder just how well built these things were. It was made in 1958, after all.
Stiyl reached out and attempted to grasp the door's emergency exit handle, but he hissed and recoiled upon coming in contact with the freezing surface. Shaking his hand off, Stiyl muttered a near-silent, one-word incantation, and a small flame with about the power of a torch lighter appeared on his fingertip. He only wanted to melt the ice, after all; welding the door shut would only be problematic.
After five minutes of careful melting, his work was done. Stiyl put out the flame, grasped the handle, and gave a hard tug. It took some effort, but the door opened, revealing the ice-filled chamber within.
"Now what?" He asked himself. Should he try to melt the ice? Surely nothing could survive that, but there was always the chance he'd find something. However, he'd barely had time to relight the flame before the ice began to crack.
Stiyl stepped back from the ice-filled bathy, watching it carefully while passively setting up defenses in case of an attack. It was a well-advised move; a bright flare came up from inside the ice, followed by a bright flash of light. Stiyl was hurled backwards off the platform, but got back up mostly unharmed.
A man stood in the entrance to the bathysphere. He wore a tattered sweater vest that may once have resembled the color yellow, but now was faded to a mere gray. Tattoos of chains wrapped around his wrists, and the man's veins stood out from his skin, bulging, glowing, changing colors between bright purple and blood red. His face was the only thing about him that appeared human, and he may once have been a working man in his prime.
The man grinned. He could only think about killing. Defeat the enemies and escape. That was his task. That was what he'd been told to do. Kill. Escape. Kill. Escape. Stiyl appeared as nothing but an obstacle to the man in the vest.
Stiyl moved first. A blade of flame shot out from his hand and hit the man across his gut, but the man didn't so much as flinch. He'd taken far harder hits before, and at this point, it wasn't certain that he could even die.
The objects around the man began to rise. Stiyl recognized this as the equivalent of putting up a telekinetic field. Desks and chair swirled around the man, cups of coffee flew about, the contents pouring out and joining the artificial tornado. Stiyl couldn't decide what this man was. A magician? An esper? No, something different. Something entirely different from both of those, something nobody on the surface had yet seen.
The smaller objects attacked first. Stiyl rose a field of flame in front of himself, as silverware, mugs and pencils came flying towards him, colliding with the firewall and burning into ash. Stiyl was near-certain he could win this. If he kept his defenses up, and played his cards right–
But no. The man in the vest had a counter for his every move. A huge wave of water flooded the room from nowhere, and the flame wall was washed away in an instant. Stiyl was enveloped by the flood, and came back up after a moment coughing and sputtering on the ground.
A knife stabbed into his arm, causing Stiyl to yelp. Moving fast, he broke off the handle and most of the blade, leaving only the end to slow the bleeding, and got back up.
He could try to cast his firewall again, but he would only be taken down once more. He could use spells other than that of flame, but they weren't his specialty, and he was sure the vested man had a counter for that too.
The only move was to retreat, he decided.
A bolt of electricity shot from the vested man, which struck the ground where Stiyl had been. He had used a movement spell to dodge the attack, but again, it wasn't his specialty; he couldn't use it too much, and not for everything. His first priority was to run away, and he eyed the door from which he'd come in, all the way across the room from himself.
Several sharp icicles shot off from the vested man's hand, assaulting Stiyl in a violent barrage. Stiyl conjured a smaller flame-wall, and the icicles melted before they reached him. However, the mage barely had time to breath a sigh of relief before he suddenly found himself launched into the air by a sudden current of intense wind. He floated there for a moment, processing what had just happened, and then a desk flew from the artificial tornado and struck Stiyl in the chin. The injured mage flew across the room, over the platform to land on a metal railing near the exit door. That attack had injured him severely; leaving now would be his only chance of survival.
The vested man was preparing an attack. He had to move fast. His hand dove into his robe, and reappeared holding a marble with what looked like paper and bits of metal crammed inside. He muttered a single word and tossed the marble into the air, which exploded at the top of its ascent. Several runed papers shot off attached to the bits of metal that acted as darts, and stabbed into the ground around Stiyl. He had to use his best attack.
"Innocentius!"
A flash of light. An explosion. A beast of flame stood before Stiyl, ready to conform to his commands.
"Innocentius, defend me!" The beast spread its arms before the mage, growing and increasing its surface area. With that done, the mage muttered a few words, and the movement spell he'd used earlier allowed him to stand, reach the door, open it, and escape into the cold air outside.
The facility exploded.
Two hours passed. Stiyl was sitting on a park bench, using basic healing spells to tend to his fractured chin, his stab wound, and his damaged spine. While doing this, he pulled a cell phone from his pocket. The phone was off, but the keychain attached was all he needed. He attempted to contact Kanzaki to have her request a pickup.
"Hello? Kanzaki?" He asked. There was no response. Stiyl began to panic, and started trying to contact every mage he knew, to no avail. There was no response from anyone, anywhere.
"What the hell is going on!" Stiyl shouted into the air. Not even that conjured a response. For the first time, Stiyl noticed that the town he was in was empty.
Suddenly, the keychain began to vibrate. Stiyl heard voices. Someone who could use magic was accidentally tapping into the line and delivering a signal to the keychain, like a cell phone interfering with communication in an airplane.
"Hmm... yes... you're very interesting..." Stiyl heard. Then he recognized a garbled sound that almost resembled a human voice. He recognized that; the vested man he had fought earlier made those sounds.
"You'll do well for this experiment. Why don't you come with me?" More garbled sounds followed, and then the line cut off.
Stiyl stared at the blank phone screen, processing the information. Experiment? What experiment?
"What the hell is going ON here!"