This chapter will have a POV change to a more third person perspective. This will only happen when the chapter is not written from the main character's perspective.
Morning of Ash
Xxx Year X774, Town of Salice xxX
Located in southern Fiore, east of Hargeon, stood the town of Salice, home to just over forty thousand people. Salice bordered a lake, Lake Sirena, and was surrounded by a large forest. On the lake front, stood a large, three story building. The building was painted with a mixture of greens and blues. On top was a mermaid made of stone holding a large flag that depicted a capitol M that had mirrored S' that were stylized to look fish tails going through it. In front was huge a fountain with another mermaid statue. This building was no ordinary building. This building was home to Salice's resident guild, Mermaid Heel.
It was early in the morning, the sun starting to rise over the horizon, and the only thing that was moving at moment was a lone vehicle cruising down the main street. This vehicle was and odd contraption, it had four wheels, a seat in the front with a lever to steer it. Behind the seat was a passenger cabin painted with an aquatic theme of blues and greens with decals that resembled aquatic fauna. Of course this vehicle couldn't drive itself, thus it had a driver sitting in the front seat. The driver of the vehicle wore a green travel cloak.
Looking to the sky, light revealed the face of a woman that looked to be in her mid-thirties with long seafoam green hair and ocean blue eyes. She had high cheek bones, a rounded chin and almond shaped eyes. Underneath the cloak was a slender, voluptuous body wearing a sea green dress with a skirt that was sown to look like fish scales. Just underneath the woman's neck was a pink Mermaid Heel emblem. Coming out of the cloak was a black tube that connected the woman's wrist to the vehicle. The woman's name was Celia Marea, first master of Mermaid Heel.
Celia was heading east to Hargeon to catch the train to Clover Town for the guild masters' regular meeting. As there was no track connecting Hargeon to Salice, one either had to walk or own a magic four wheeler like Celia did.
Despite the weather being near perfect, Celia had an annoyed look on her face.
'I don't why I keep going to these meetings. We rarely talk about important matters, and eventually the men get drunk and pathetically try hit on the few women that are there.' She thought, annoyance building up within her.
'What even worse is that Old Man Makarov, and that lipstick wearing weirdo, Jose Porla, always end up getting into an argument that eventually devolves into a fight. Even a small fight between two wizard saints is a sight to behold. Especially when they are acting like children in a school yard.
I never thought ten years ago, when I founded the guild, that I would be going to these type meetings where grown men actively engage in pointless pissing contests. Thank god I made the guild a female only guild. I don't think I could deal with all the testosterone on daily basis. Hell, I can barely stand it for the couple days that I'm at the meeting' Celia sighed, and looked down at the four wheeler's clock.
'If I continue at my current speed, I should arrive at Hargeon with an hour to spar. I wish I could go faster, but I rather not pass out while driving this thing due to magic depletion. Couldn't they have made vehicle that didn't run off your magic reserves? Or at least a vehicle that didn't use so much? I get that it's faster than walking, but if you're not a mage with decent sized magic reserves, then you can't feasibly use one of these without passing out from magic depletion.' She contemplated with an annoyed expression on her face.
It was currently nine-thirty in the morning and Celia was nearing the edge of the town. 'I wish Lana could have accompanied me to Hargeon, but she's too busy taking care of her kid.' Celia sighed, 'I really need more friends my age, all my other ones either too busy raising families or have left for other purs-CAW!" Celia was snapped out of her thoughts by the sudden noise. She looked up to see a lone crow flying directly above her. 'Well that's not ominous…' She mused, with a deadpan expression.
Twenty minutes later she reached a crossroad where two signs stood. The sign that pointed right read Hargeon, while the one pointed left read Rosemary. Normally, Celia would ignore the left sign, and continue on her way to Hargeon, but this time was an exception.
A plume of smoke was rising from the direction of the village. The plume was large, suggesting an uncontrollable fire. Rosemary was village filled with non-magic users and they would have trouble putting out such a large fire.
'Well that can't be good… I'd better help with that before the whole village is burnt down' A frown formed on her face. Celia manipulated the steering lever and put a little more magic power into the four-wheeler. The vehicle suddenly doubled in speed, and started kicking up dust.
As Celia got closer to the village, the ground and trees got increasingly grayer and grayer. It was the result of an immense amount of Ash. Celia's expression grew increasingly disturbed as she got closer, 'How big is this fire?! The whole village would have to be burning for there to be this much ash!'
Celia's questions were soon answered when she reached the entrance of the village. The four-wheeler stopped in its tracks. Her eyes widened and her mouth opened in shock. In front of her was not the peaceful village that she remembered coming to occasionally. In front of her was a wasteland of smoldering ruins. The whole village was gone, just smoldering piles of used to be buildings. Some were not completely burned, thus were still on fire, filling the air with smoke.
However, this was not the most horrifying sight. Piles of charred skeletons littered the streets, giving off an awful smell. It almost overpowered Celia, but she used her cloak as a temporary face mask.
"W-What the hell happen here?!" she exclaimed before she started coughing from smell of the burning corpse piles. It seems not even her cloak could fully protect her from the smell. Composing herself, she jumped off her vehicle and started investigating the ruins.
The ground had a grey layer of ashes that almost felt like snow. Walking around, foot prints being left in the ashes, Celia started coming up with theories.
'There is no way this fire was an accident, and unless the villagers had a mass suicide ritual, this was an attack. An attack by wizards, most likely a dark guild' Celia's expression grew cold, her lips forming a grimace, and her eyes narrowing in anger. 'Whoever did this is going to pay… I promise it'
Suddenly, she whipped her head around as she felt a huge spike of magical energy from the other side of the village. 'Are they still here?! I'm going to make them pay for what they do-'Her thoughts were cut as a bright flash and boom as loud as a thunderclap assaulted her senses. Celia, almost flinched, but she managed to stay composed.
She immediately broke out into a sprint towards the epicenter of the chaos. She started charging up her magic as she ran through the ruins and she jumped over a burnt stone wall that used to be a house, and immediately stopped at what she saw. In front of her were two children, under the age of ten by her estimate, around five or six. They were both girls from what she could tell.
One had a white dress on with black pants and had long, dark purple hair with a white ribbon in it. She was currently yelling something incoherently in a panicked sob over the other girl. Said girl was on the ground, light blue dress that was dirty and slightly singed. She had shoulder length crimson red hair and wasn't moving much.
"Shit!" Celia whispered to herself, eyes widening.
She started rushing over to the two children, but before she could get close to them, the purple haired one saw her and a panicked fear over took the child's face.
"N-NO! Stay away!" the child screamed in terror.
Before Celia could respond, and overwhelming force out of nowhere caused her to trip and fall. She would have fell on her face if she didn't catch herself with her arms. She tried to get up, but she was finding it difficult as she felt suddenly heavier.
'Gravity magic?! Where did this come from!?' Celia looked up to find the answer to her question. The girl was still staring at her with tears in her eyes and on the verge of hyper ventilating.
'I don't what happened to elicit such a reaction, but if she doesn't calm down, she might kill herself from magic depletion.'
"I-I'm not here to hurt you, kid. I just got here, and saw you and your friend here. I'm here to help." Celia looked the girl straight in the eyes, trying to seem as non-threatening as possible. Internally she was wishing she was better with kids.
The girl didn't look convinced. "Y-You're lying, you're one of them! Y-You're gonna take us too!" The girl yelled with terror.
"Look kid, if you don't calm down, you're going to kill yourself! I don't think you want that! I'm here to help, I can get your friend there help too, but only if you calm down first, okay?" Celia pointed to said girl.
"Please, let me help you." Celia said with a concern filled voice.
The crying girl seemed to believe her, because the sudden pressure was lifted and Celia let out a relived breathe. She got up slowly and walked over to the two girls. She crouched down to inspect the injured girl. Her hands were twitching slightly and her eyes were closing.
Celia put her fingers to the girl's neck and felt a weak, but steady pulse. She then inspected the girl's injuries. Severe first degree burns on the arms and legs, bruises forming on the back of her arms. Celia then noticed a little blood pooling underneath the back the girl's head. Inwardly cursing, she lifted the girl's and her hand glowed blue. Ignoring the surprised gasp from her side, she conjured water to her hand and started to wash the back of the injured girl's head.
'This is going to need bandages. Bandages that I don't have.' She inwardly cursed. Looking around for something to use, until finally she finally looked at her cloak. 'Darn, I really liked this cloak too.' She sighed and turned her head to the other girl.
"I'm going to need you to hold her head for a second, can you do that?" Celia asked.
The other girl looked at her and then to other girl, bloody water flowing on the ground underneath her, and nodded quickly. She put her hands under the girls head, and Celia stood up and took of her cloak reveling her long, free flowing, green hair. She immediately started ripping her cloak into bandage sized strips. She took the injured girls head and started wrapping it with her former cloak. After thoroughly wrapping the girls head, she turned her attention to purple haired girl.
"What happened? How did she get injured?" As soon as the question left Celia's mouth, the girl burst into tears.
"S-Some b-bad men came a-and, and…" she didn't finish her sentence before she broke out in sobs.
Celia was internally panicking of what to do with the crying child. 'Crap! Now what do I do?!' Without knowing what to really do in this situation, she had to improvise.
"Shush, shush, it's okay… they're gone now and won't hurt you anymore, okay?" she said in a soft voice she didn't know she had. That seemed to do the trick and the girl calmed down a little. Celia did her best reassuring smile she could make, and looked at the girl.
"Can you tell how what happened to her?" She said pointing to the red head in her arm. "Was is because of that explosion? Do you know what caused it?"
The purple-nette didn't answer at first, she was trying to control her sobs. And then started talking at a rapid pace
"S-She woke up and climbed out of the box we were hiding in, behind that house over there." The girl pointed to what looked like the least burnt house in the village. "S-She ran off somewhere and left me alone. I-I didn't want to be alone, so I climbed out too. I turn the corner to find her on the ground. I was about to run her, but s-she started glowing… all the sudden s-she hits the ground and b-boom! I-I couldn't see for a little bit and then I see a big hole and her far away, not moving… a-and I didn't know what to do… I-Is she g-gonna d-die?!" She looks at Celia with sad and distressed eyes.
Said woman took a moment to process the information. She looked around and notice a small crater several feet away, and looked back at the girl. "She will be alright, but only if we get her medical attention. My guild has a good infirmary, so we need to take her there as soon as possible, okay?" The girl nodded, and Celia picked up the red head with both arms, and stood up.
"We are headed to Salice, ok? I have a vehicle so it won't take too long. After that, you can tell me all you know about what happened. Let's head out." The girl seemed a little reluctant, but nodded again. Celia turned to the direction of her four-wheeler and started walking, and the girl followed.
"By the way, what's yours and this one's name?" Celia asked, looking over shoulder.
"My name is Kagura Mikazuchi, and-"Kagura's faced flushed "I don't know her name, we met last night."
"Well, I guess we have to ask her when she wakes up then. My name is Celia, Celia Marea" That was last thing the two said while walking to the four wheeler. Celia was processing today's events.
'A group just slaughtered a whole village of civilians, and seemed to kidnap others as well. Whoever did this will pay, I'll make sure of it.' She looked at the unconscious face of the girl she was carrying, and at the now named Kagura, who was now walking next to her, while the girl was silently sniffling. 'These two both managed to unlock their magic at such a young age… This Kagura has shown to have large magic reserves, and going by that explosion earlier, so has the red head. Given proper guidance, they would become exceptional mages. And if they so choose, Mermaid Heel would be proud to have them.' Celia was brought out of her thoughts when her four-wheeler came into sight.
Arriving at the four wheeler, she opened up the door the rear cab and set the girl on the rear seat. She then proceeded to strap her in with the seat belts. She then turned her head to Kagura, "Have you ever been in one of these?" Kagura shook her head.
"Well, this called a magic four-wheeler powered by, well it's in the name… Any way I need you to sit in here and watch her, to make sure nothing happens, alright?" The girl nodded and Celia helped her in the vehicle, hooking her up with seat belts as well. She then pointed to the window behind Kagura
"If anything happens, knock on the window… Oh! Before I forget, I would hold on to something, because we are about to go really fast" The girl nodded once again and Celia smiled. Closing the door, she then hoped on the driver seat and hooked up the SE-plug. She started the magic flow to the vehicle and it came to life. She turned the vehicle around and then smirked. She pumped a tremendous amount of magical power into the four-wheeler and it took off at break-neck speeds.
She could hear the muffled screams of terror from the girl in the back, and in a small section in the back of her head, she felt a little guilty for doing this to a little girl who just lost everything. 'She'll get over it, besides, I got an injured girl to save'.
Kagura never got over it, and for many years in the future, she would continually bring this incident up whenever she got in a four-wheeler with Celia, much to Celia's amusement.
Salice - Is Italian for Willow, to go with Fiore's theme of naming cities after plants and flowers.
Sirena - Is Italian for Siren which mermaids can be.
Marea - Is Italian for Tide.
I tried to write the dialogue as best I could and hope I got it realistic enough. There isn't much info about Mermaid Heel, so I have a lot of creative freedom to work with.