The projectile was only an arm length away, Fire could feel it emitting massive amounts of energy. He knew what kind of spell this was, it absorbed energy from its target until its own energy was depleted. It was mostly used by mages against weaker targets, it was useless against other mages since their life force was too high for the projectile to have much of an effect. Fire didn't have all that much life force. The projectile was now only a few centimeters away from his chest, at the corner of his eye he could see the others, practically frozen by his slow vision. A thought started forming in Fire's mind, maybe he could…
Then suddenly, Fire disappeared and so did the projectile. freeZe, Ambigious, Unchosen and TehLulz stood there with their mouths open, their friend had just been disintegrated by a skeletal mage.
"Why did this have to happen?" Unchosen asked, voice filled with despair.
"I don't know…" freeZe said, she sounded sad, then she spoke again, this time with anger in her voice: "But this pile of rotting bones will pay for it!"
Everyone else stared at her, partly confused by her reaction, partly agreeing.
Ambigious was the first one to speak: "You are right, sister, let's show this thing who is boss!"
"Just let me handle this… just me." freeZe said.
Ambigious had never heard her so cold and determined. He instinctively backed off.
freeZe's eyes started glowing, not their normal lightless neon green glow, it was a deadly, brighter glow, a stare that could kill.
"I have no good feeling about this." Ambigious whispered to Unchosen "I have never seen her this angry."
freeZe took a deep breath and slowly started walking towards the skeletal mage, as she stared at it she noticed the runes carved into its bones and skull. She felt the anger inside her but besides the anger was another feeling, it was weak but it was there. The skeletal mage noticed her walking towards it, charged up another sphere. freeZe didn't even attempt to dodge it, it hit her right in the chest but she only felt a slight tingle.
The skeletal mage noticed that its attack was useless and instead whispered a few more unheard words, pieces of dirt were ripped out of the ground and formed a battleaxe made from bound magic. It grabbed the axe that was floating in front of it and moved in to attack, not very quickly, it was a skeleton and therefore not very strong. freeZe looked directly at the skeletal mage, her eyes were as brighter than ever before and even emitted light. Lightning was arcing between her fingers, the skeletal mage stopped for a second, reconsidering its attack but then continued moving.
freeZe couldn't think a clear thought, everything was blocked by one thing. Revenge. She had stopped moving on her own, her rage was guiding her but there was also this other feeling, which had become much stronger now. The lighting between her fingers became more frequent and more powerful, then suddenly, she jerked her hands upwards and let out a terrifying scream. A storm of fine lightning bolts, came out of her fingertips, searching for the skeletal mage. The mage noticed what was going on and had already built up a blue semitransparent barrier.
One of the fine lightning bolts found the shield, freeZe's mouth formed a devilish grin, a lightning bolt shot out of her left hand, making the barrier shatter into thousands of blue drops. freeZe put her hands together in front of her and an even larger lightning bolt hit the skeleton directly. The skeleton had its hands in a defensive position, which was more an instinctive reaction than real protection. Its bones shattered to dust, thunder echoed through the whole valley. The mage's robe, which seemed not to have taken any damage slowly floated down to the ground. In the middle of the dust cloud stood freeZe, her eyes were glowing and she was laughing a demonic laughter.
Suddenly, the light in her eyes disappeared, freeZe broke down. Ambigious was totally perplexed.
"What the hell did just happen? What the hell?" He muttered and ran over to freeZe and asked: "What the he…" Then he noticed that freeZe was crying.
"No… Fire… Why…?" She sobbed.
Ambigious knelt down next to her and put his arm around her shoulders, he didn't say anything because he knew it would be pointless. Unchosen and TehLulz were running over to them, both not less surprised than Ambigious but not nearly as overtly sad as freeZe.
"That is it then." TehLulz sighed. "The world is doomed."
"Shut up!" freeZe shouted while tears were running down her face.
"TehLulz is right, without Fire we don't have a chance of saving the server or the world by extension." Ambigious agreed, only Unchosen remained silent, apparently thinking about something.
Some minutes of silence later, occasionally interrupted by freeZe's sobbing, Unchosen spoke, his voice was sad but it had something to it that made them listen.
He said: "I know that it is hard for you but we need to move on, we just can't give this up, we just can't. Remember when Fire said that it doesn't save the world when we just sit around? We need to get to the end of this valley, or graveyard. If we die, we die. We will be in the quarry again, there is nothing we can do against that. But if we survive and make it to Fire's base, his sister can maybe help us get him out of the quarry."
"That makes sense." Ambigious said.
freeZe stood up, wiping some tears from her face.
"Okay, we can be sad later, we need to keep moving." She said.
Ambigious raised an eyebrow towards Unchosen and TehLulz, surprised by the sudden change of emotion freeZe had undergone, but he didn't say anything.
freeZe apparently decided to take the lead, still occasionally sniffling but dedicated to get out of the graveyard. As she came past where the skeletal mage had been, she picked up its robe. As soon as she touched it, a shiver went through her whole body, she heard ancient voices speaking words of wisdom, or was it complete nonsense?
freeZe dropped the robe.
Ambigious looked at her and asked: "What?"
"There are voices… in the robe." freeZe said toneless.
"What do you mean?" Ambigious asked, a little confused.
"I touched the robe and there were voices talking to me."
Unchosen scratched his chin. "That is not surprising, it is the robe of an undead mage after all."
freeZe said: "We shouldn't get caught up in trying to listen to voices in a robe, we need to keep moving. We need to reach Fire's base as quickly as possible. Through the swamp and in the jungle somewhere."
With those words freeZe picked the robe back up. Just as the voices started talking again, she packed the robe into her inventory, immediately silencing them.