Chapter 4: The Gytrash, the Dark Cave and The Three Teenagers
The clouds above grew into an overcast white then grey, shielding away every ounce of blue that was large into smaller spots. Sky of blue, white and dark grey mixing into a dark forest scenery, and three teenagers were traveling through the forgotten path.
"52 bottles of age-appropriate beverage on the wall. 52 bottles of age-appropriate on the wall. Take one down, pass it around. 51 bottles of—"
Katrina's left ear twitched as she listened to Luz and Jett sing the 99 Bottles of Age-Appropriate Beverage song.
Well, after the first hour of walking in this forest, she made 'em do something other than asking "are we there yet?" or playing "I Spy with My Little Eye".
But after hearing them singing the Monster Slayer Academia theme song, Dragon Claw Z theme song and now this song... she's starting to miss the "are we there yet?" question.
She count to five and checked the map in her hand for the location of them.
"Hush! And shush you two!" Katrina said, squinting through the trees. "It should be right ahead."
Sure enough, the trees thinned out, revealing the steep mountain face in front of them. A huge hole was hollowed out of the rock, the vines and lichen cascading over the entrance.
The mountain has cast a shadow over this place, creating a creepy atmosphere.
Jett whistled slowly, studying the tunnel for a moment. "I must admit. I'm impressed. Dark, ghastly, creppy. The only thing missing is a sign that says: 'Abandon hope all ye who enter here'."
"Are you sure this is the right cave?" Luz asked, looking at the tunnel herself. A slightly thread of apprehension wormed its way into her gut as she looked at the dark abyss of the cave. She didn't like the dark. She never had.
"Yes. Falllis Subterrane." Katrina couldn't hold back a shiver as she recalled an old folk song she'd heard long ago about this particular cave.
Stories of people who never made it out, of the whispers of voices from the other world, of ever-changing tunnels and living shadows.
Jett heard the same story when he was a kid, too. However, he wasn't worried about imagined or real threats waiting in darkness.
"All right, I'll go first." He ran forwards, only to be yanked back by Katrina's hand on his collar.
"Not so fast, Birdbrain."
"I am not afraid. I will go first. I want to go first."
"I'm not questioning your bravery. I'm questionining your inteligence." Katrina continued, adopting what her cousin had long since called her "lecturing tone". "You can't just run into the underground labyrinth where the gytrash is hiding out. We have to develop a strategy to make the best use of Dawn Crystals. We need a plan."
"I have a plan."
"Let's just go wherever the monster is, and hope for the best" isn't plan."
"Well, that's just your opinion." Jett said with a smirk, "So what's the plan, cousin?"
"We need to find large space inside, some place we can set a trap and then lure gytrash there. Fortunately, thanks to your smell this will be easy, Luz."
Noticing Luz lifted her pit and took a whiff, spent a few seconds judging the smell following her explanation, Katrina added, "The smell of humans is quite different from the smell of witches. And the gytrash is sensitive to the smell from the human realm."
"And what do we do if the gytrash finds us first?" Luz asked, still remembering their last meeting with monsterous canine.
"We will seal gytrash." Katrina replied, "But we'll have to weaken it with its greatest weakness first."
"And precisely?" Jett asked.
The red head girl did not immediately respond, making a periwinkle purple circle of light materialize with a motion of her finger. With this a dark pink sphere with a electric aura, white-violet-pink bolts crackle around it appear in her hand.
"Light and lightning." Katrina said, her lips turning up at the corners.
"Well, then this may a very useful thing." Jett handed Luz the witch version of road flare. No one has asked him why does he carry around these things.
Then Katrina turned to the entrance, "All right, you guys ready?"
"To Adventure!" Saying this, Jett pointed to the Falllis Subterrane.
"Onward!" Luz felt the spirit of quest filling her with adrenalin and daring, urging her to enter the cave. After all, according to all books that she have read the ancient caves are filled with greatest treasure, mysterious text and spiders that when they bite you, you get superpowers.
"Let's go." Katrina nodded.
So down the cave they went.
AAs the minutes went by, the trio continued to moving deeper into the cave.
The cave walls slowly turned from lichen-covered clay to rough rock as they ventured deeper and deeper into the tunnel.
The only sources of light now came from two spheres of light conjured up by Jett and Katrina.
"How deep those caves are?" Luz asked, using a light shone from her phone to illuminate the stalactites.
"No one really knows. But some say that its deeper than the underground kingdom of Nidavellir." Katrina approached the fork in the cave's tunnels first, and decisively chose to go to the right fork first. She seemed to feel strangely comfortable with wandering underground.
Eventually they came to second fork, this time with three branching paths, presented itself. Katrina allow Luz to choose. After a moment's thought, the human girl chose the right path.
Thirty minutes later they hit another fork. Jett flipped a coin and chose to go to the left fork, baffling maze-solvers the world over.
They all keep their eyes on the path forward. They walked together in silence, the sound of their feet pattering against the ground echoing off the stone walls.
The first unexpected sound they heard was a loud crunch as Luz stepped on what turned out to be a multieyes rat's skull.
Jett lowered his orb of light to illuminate the ground and saw that it was littered with many bones.
"A healthy appetite after transformation into ultimate form." He stared at bones.
"Gytrash has got nothing to do with this." Katrina picked up a skull... not animal skull. "These bones are old."
"Is that a real demon skull?" Luz questioned, fascinated and concerned at the same time.
"Yes."
"But why he is dead?"
Jett just shrugged. "It's kind of hard to ask a dead guy what he did wrong."
Luz can't argue with logic like that.
"We'd better get going," Katrina told them, "I don't know what happened here, and I don't want to."
A moment later they started walking down the tunnel, witchlings' orbs of light and Luz's phone only lighting up a small radius around them.
As they plodded along, Luz got the feeling that there's someone watching them. Maybe it was something about this cave, closing in on her with its endless stone and shadows, that made her imagining things. Or maybe someone else was here.
"What's that?" She said after a while, pointing out something ahead.
They all squinted, then they eyes widened as they saw the glint of light on a carved circular hole in the rock, much too perfect to be natural.
"People say 'don't go into the light', but I believe we can make an exception. Come on!" Jett exclaimed, jogging over to the hole in the rock, Katrina and Luz close behind him.
Soon they found themselves in a gigantic room sunken into the ground.
The illumination came from lightstones embedded high in the ceiling, and that was barely enough light to see what looked to be gigantic stone pillars on the other side of the chamber. The surface was covered in a wide range of paintings.
"This is the lair of the Saa." Katrina breathed, looking around in awe.
"The lair of who?" Luz asked. Jett also looked at her deeply puzzled.
"During times of war, Saa were a group of people who preserving the realm's history through paintings." Katrina held her orb of light up to some of the paintings so she could get a better look at some of them.
It was then she saw a painting depicting people dancing around a bonfire. She smiled and touched the stone. The paintings came alive and glistened like glass.
'It's beautiful. And so magical!' Luz ran to the nearest pillar and touched it. The red and the blue dragons started flying on the surface of stone almost immediately.
Before she could got this on her phone, something dripped on her hand. It was very sticky and warm.
Then, feeling there's something wrong, she looked up and saw the monstrous bat hanging from the stalactite.
It's large mouth opened and jumped down with teeth spitting saliva. Frightened, Luz jumped back a few feet, miraculously avoided death by being crushed by a body of gigantic bat.
It leaped out towards where Luz was, making the teen scream as she ran for it.
"Little help?!" Luz shouted, sttill running from four-eyes monster. It fast crawled on its bat-like wings and legs just like a spider from nightmare.
With the creature's focus on the running girl, Jett's feet took him to the bat's and when he was about five feet away from it, his fingers glowed with magic energy.
"I got this."
"Don't hurt it! It's just defending territory!" Katrina screamed to Jett as he get in the way of creature.
"Don't worry, Red. I'll be gentle."
His arms crossed and his fingers glowed brighter with magic sparks before he spun both arms in a circle, connecting them together and forming a large yellowish orange spell circle.
"Sweet dreams Batsy!" Jett proclaimed as he blasted the circle at the bat, washing spell over the demonic creature as it was about to attack and making it fall to the ground in slumber.
The bat collapsed into a heap and fell asleep on the ground.
"See." Jett turned towrd girls, "Fast and painless."
He were smiling a supercilious smirk and he put out his hand for the bat's side. The moment he touched it felt sticky and wet, as if he had put his hand in the beehive, and he pulled it back with a puzzled expresion.
His palm was covered with a red substance. "What is this?"
"Looks like blood to me." Katrina told him as she and Luz came closer.
Jett smelled and licked at red substance on his hand before nodded, "Yep, this is blood... Wait! Why is there blood on my hand?!"
Luz got down on one knee and took a closer look at the sleeping giant bat. "The bat is wounded."
She's familiar with sick or injured animals and can say from first-hand experience that only three of wounds were severe and the rest were less serious, but still bad as blood oozed from the openings.
"I don't understand." Jett knelt beside her.
Sleeping bat's little rather painful squeaks and wheezing were making him felt guilty. Not to mention the metallic scent of blood that replaced the air in the cave and slowly saturated ground under the bat.
"I used sleep spell. It's harmless.
"These wounds are the result of brutal fight, it's not your fault." Katrina said as join to them on the ground.
She drew a spell circle, magic matching her eyes glinting into existence, and she pointed it at the cuts. The wounds gleamed blue before began to heal.
"Who could cause so much damage to Batsy?" Jett asked kind of superfluously.
The response was cut off when loud roar echoed through the cave. It come so suddenly in the silence that it ought to startle them, but it doesn't. In some ways, three teenagers has been waiting for it, expecting it ever since they went into this cave.
They turned their heads sharply to the right, to find a angry gytrash charging at them.
Forced into action, Katrina put a spell on the bat to move it to another tunnel, making sure that it will be safe, while Jett spun a big circle with his finger.
The bolt of lightning that was generated from his spell circle looked like a spark which caused no pain to the gytrash, and this only heightened its anger when the teenagers saw gytrash's mouth opened wider, the teeth gleamed, pointy, blood dripping from the tips now.
They all quickly dodged and moved away from the monster's attack. In its new form, gytrash was definitely stronger but less nimble and it's more slow, fortunately for the trio.
Jett and Katrina quickly fired their magic lightnings at the gytrash from the back, but there was no strong effect.
It turned and gave chase after the three teenagers. They quickly dashed and ran away from it.
"Hey Red! Not that I don't enjoy playing with a mutated shadow canine, but you could finally give the signal to get the Dawn Crystals out of bag." Jett shouted.
"We have to get it to stand still first." Katrina quickly drew a spell circle to created glowing chains in her hands and tell Jett to do the same.
"Luz, be a dear and light up this place." Jett told Luz who then sent up a flare.
An unexpected reddish light of flare made the gytrash got disoriented and collided with a large stalagmite.
She lit another to flash in gytrash's face, and it screeched before scurrying back.
As the gytrash used its paw to rub its eyes gently, the two witchlings began wrapping the chains around the monster canine.
"The dragon goes under the bridge." Jett began while rolling under the gytrash's body.
"Through the loop." Katrina added, jumping over gytrash head then running around it.
Jett then said. "And finally..."
They then both reached the center of the gytrash's back, finishing trussing it in glowing chains.
"Into the castle!" The two finished in unison as they both tugged on the chains, and the gytrash, bound in them, was sent tumbling down.
"Hey! My dad used to tie my shoes to that rhyme!" Luz spoke up with a smile.
But they hasn't won yet. The gytrash writhed in anger until the chains began slowly cracking.
"Us three. On the count of three." Katrina said, and the others followed her lead, raised the crystals above their heads.
"One. Two. Three!"
The sound of the Dawn crystal shattering on the ground was only just detectable until it exploded into a blistering bang one second before magnificent flash of gold light.
The three teenagers had look away and shield their eyes. They wouldn't have been so concerned if they hadn't heard the gytrash growling and snarling in the background.
And then there was only silence.
When the light had faded, they looked back to where the gytrash stood. The chains was on the floor, but there was no sign of the monster canine.
"So, did we win?" Luz asked.
ROARRR!
They heard loudly in their ears, forcing them to looked around. But saw nothing.
Suddenly, a great silence filled the place. And the glow of lightstones embedded high in the ceiling was almost completely extinguished.
"That doesn't sound or look like we win." Luz moved closer to the older teens. "Where is the gytrash?"
"It's still here." Katrina said slowly, "I can feel it looking at us."
Jett looked into the darkness and then, in the blink of an eye, he drew a spell circle and shot a sphere of lightning out to random direction. He only made a little hole in the wall.
"Okay this method is not very efficient," he turned his head towards a girls. "Any ideas?"
Katrina summoned her staff, twirling it around and slamming it into the ground, something seemed to twitched in air but nothing more happened. "It's bad. We need something to weakened the gytrash to the point where it couldn't stay in invisible form. Something strong."
"Really bright and loud." Jett added.
"Will this do?" Luz took firecrackers out of her book bag.
Nodding and smiling, Jett said "Oh yeah."
Katrina on the other hand - she blinked, shooting Luz a look that was half full of praise and half 'are-you-kidding-me?'.
"So, not that I'm complaining that you are prepared, but why are you carrying around fireworks?"
"Well, it's kind of a long story." Luz said with a level of calm impossible to achieve when you were observed by the invisible monstrous canine withe the murderous intent.
"Okay, you can tell us later." Jett stuffed two Dawn Crystals in the firecracker and lit the fuse. "Red, where to aim?"
The redhead girl closed her periwinkle eyes, looking around at the cave with the other senses.
And when that didn't work, she decided to use another trick. Her special talent.
Katrina opened her eyes and the pupils in her eyes disappeared in a swirl of onyx black into the pattern of an intricate spiral. Luz couldn't be sure, but for a brief moment, she thought she saw a drop of red crimson red blood falling from Katrina's left eye.
"Here!" The witchling pointed towards a seemingly random direction.
Luz threw a fireworks right at the indicated place.
Three teenagers was crouched down and covered their eyes, so the shock wave hadn't wounded them in the moment of the explosion.
And the firecrackers attached to the Dawn Crystals exploded with the force of a small bomb.
The gytrash became visible almost at the same time that large stalactites began to fall from the ceiling.
"Dadgummit!"
Jett quickly grabbed and held Luz as he rolled to his left while Katrina moved to her right. The gytrash just ran and ran and ran, forgetting about teenagers.
The got up and glared at the ceiling, which looks like it's about to fall down.
"Run!" Katrina shouted.
They were trying to run alongside each other but the falling rocks made it impossible for them.
After the ceiling collapsed, everything happened very quickly.
The gytrash disappearing under falling rocks. Katrina screamed something and headed towards small tunnel. Jett felt a pain in his right leg. And then Luz was standing alone, surrounded by darkness.
"Oh, Dios ten piedad de mí."
Luz hadn't been having the normal day even before this moment, but getting trapped in complete darkness with no one but the bloodlust monster really sealed the deal for her.
She had just stood up when suddenly, there was a movement in the darkness.
"Easy, Luz, it's just me." Jett's voice sounded when she swung her bag toward the sound.
Luz's eyes finally adapted to the darkness around her and she could see Jett standing right beside her.
And when the dust settled, the part of lightstones embedded in the ceiling again started to glowing, so areas lighting up a bit.
"Whe-"
*Rumble... Rumble*
Luz and Jett turned to the rubble, where the gytrash emerged from the ground. It roared in anger. It turned and glared at them. This shocked and scared them.
"Come on!" Jett scowled irritable, "What does it take to knock you out?"
The gytrash just jumped at them. This shocked and scared them.
Jett pusehed Luz behind himself as draw spell circle in record time and summoned a shield to block gytrash's fangs.
He was almost slammed into the ground, clearly not used to such a strong attacks.
Bite. Bite and bite and bite after bite.
Even with the help of his magic staff - the young witch have no chance to hold out long enough so that they can think of something.
The shield started cracking.
Right then, Jett felt a burning sensation in his chest. Exactly where his heart was. He toss a few curse words in his mind. Because he know what happens next.
"Luz, take it and get out of here." He told her, staring at her seriously. And pushed a spare Dawn Crystal into her hands.
"What are y-" Luz just stops in mid-sentence when a gentle, magical aura wrapped around the girl and lifted her up. The moment of bewilderment made Luz's limbs go slack and straighten, before Jett fast threw her back several meters from where they were.
Then he powered her back down on her limbs and released his magical hold on her, the aura around his hand dissipating.
He made it just in time.
The gytrash outstretched its massive paw and smacked it against the shield with the force of two boulders colliding.
The shield shattered into pieces and Jett had only a second to turn his head before a massive dark tail hit him in the side, knocking him into a wall. Then the gytrash pushed him against the ground with its large paw.
Luz groaned in concern for watching this. Jett told her to run, there's no way she's leaving him in a fix like this.
Jett groaned in pain as he struggled to push and move the gytrash's paw. He grunted, "You're really gonna be sorry, doggy..."
He grimaced as he struggled to reach his staff due to the monster pressed harder on his body and opened its jaws.
"Right after I shove a pack of breath mints down your throat."
Using his staff, Jett fired rather weak ray of energy right at the gytrash face, which annoyed it to push a much harder. Enough to the boy couldn't breathe.
"Okay, not a great idea!" Jett complained in concern. He was light-headed and very afraid that he would lose consciousness soon, and it would end badly for him.
But then suddenly something hit the side of the monster's muzzle. It was so surprised it just stepped back, so Jett can breathe.
"I'm here!" Luz shouted, jumping up and down, "Catch me if you can, mongrel!"
The gytrash roared in anger as it charged right at the human teen, who realized that she could have put more thought into this plan. Because she doesn't know what to do.
She just held the Dawn Crystal, tighter and tighter, and suddenly came up with the idea. Risky and crazy.
The gytrash was very close now. It feels like a nightmare force of déjà vu going on.
The canine roared wildly, its muzzle splitting four ways instead of the normal two, as it jumped on Luz, ready to tear her body to pieces.
For lack of a better option, she tossed her phone at it.
The gytrash was caught off guard by a flash from camera phone that allowed Luz to move to the side and slammed a two last Dawn Crystals to each other.
A blast of pure gold light fire from her hands and hit the gytrash's in the side.
The horrible, nauseating stench of burnt flesh was spreading in the air.
The roar of pain escape the gytrash's muzzle as it turned and ran towards the second tunnel. The monstrous dog entered and disappeared in darkness.
'It worked?' Luz was clearly surprised about this outcome. But she got nothing to complain about.
She trotted towards Jett, who grunted in pain while slowly getting up from the ground.
"You okay, Jett?"
He cracked his back, sending pops all the way up his spine. "I am now. I got to say, that was incredible."
"Honestly, I was not certain that would work." Luz admitted.
"Nothing ventured, nothing win, right?" Jett held out a hand with a cell phone to her.
Luz expected her phone to be totaly damaged. But surprisingly, it only have the cracked screen.
She smiled to the witch boy. He smiled back, but then it turned into painful grimace.
"Are you sure you're all right?" She asked, remembering that he has been thrown against a wall.
"I'm okay. I have my mom tough bones." He lightly knocks on his head for emphasis, "Thanks for saving my butt, by the way."
Luz returned the smile, "You saved me from being a chew toy today, so we're even."
And then something else caught her eye.
"Why your gem turned grey?"
Jett looked at his sternum, where a gem stand out from the boy's clothes. Then he went on to explain why he needs this gem.
"I have a birth defect on my sac of magic - it's just slightly tapered, so magic juice tends to get stuck in the halfway. And in those moments my magic goes dead." he pointed to the gem on his sternum, "The gem alerts me when my magic level goes down so I can try to prepare to a given situation."
Luz can say, that this is a sensitive subject, so she asked, "Where is Katrina?"
Jett looked at a bunch of rocks blocking second tunnel, "If I had to guess, I would say she got stuck on the other side."
When they got closer, they saw the some rocks are the size of pony.
"We could use a bit more light." Jett said. His chest ached a little with the remaining sense of not functional magic.
'Maybe a little light spell will work.'
He proceeded to draw spell circle but this was a bit sloppy and wavy as he drew it. It didn't have the desired effect as it broke into small pieces and fell to the ground.
"Dang it."
Luz's eyes narrowed to tiny slits and her forehead wrinkled into a contemplative frown. As she watched Jett trying to draw another spell circle, his magic flickered and
caused something to be revealed in the spell circle.
"What's this symbol?"
"What symbol?"
"There was a symbol in the circle."
Jett looked supremely unconvinced in that way little children could." You are imagining things. I was trying to cast light spell."
He said as he draw another circle and the effect was the same - a symbol appeared in the circle then it broke into small pieces .
"But I can see the symbol in your spell circle."
"Really?" Jett asked, puzzled.
Luz understood what he wanted and took out a notepad and pen.
"It's like this." she said, drawing a full circle with a cone and smaller circle near the top, a line down the middle from the smaller circle, and a isosceles triangle touching the sides of the circle with two slashes in the middle. "There."
With a tap, the small piece of paper was absorbed forming a bright, glowing ball of light that lifted up.
Luz blinked in surprise before cupping it in her hands. 'It's wonderful. Warm and bright, like a tiny sun.'
"Maybe it's because I hit my head hard enough to start seeing things... But did you just do magic?" Jett asked breaking Luz out of her thoughts.
"I did magic?" Luz said before gasping in realization. "I just did magic, I really did magic!" She exclaimed the last part.
Jett massaged his ears, glaring at happy human girl. "Sheesh. That was loud."
"It was." Katrina's voice agreed with him.
Jett's ears perked up like that of a cat before he and Luz turned around and said "Katrina?" at the same time.
"In the flesh and blood," Katrina said, walking over with a grin, "You two all right?
"No major organs were hit." Jett rubbed his head, "Want to explain how got there through a wall of stones?"
"I teleported."
"You can do that?!" Luz asked, excitement stars filling her eyes.
"I have studied this spell a lot, but it was my first time in practice." the witchling admitted.
"You use S rank spell in this kind of situation. And you call me a reckless person." Jett smiled cheeckly at his cousin.
"I'm just agreeing with everyone who knows you, Jett." the tone was half teasing from Katrin, "But let's not get hung up on the order of things."
Her eyes flick over to a small orb of light in Luz's hands "How you did it, Luz?"
"Jett's magic glitched. That allowed me to see a symbol in the spell circle and I drew it and made light."
Luz drew another symbol on the pad and then tapped the drawing. She let out a soft gasp of joy when a small orb of light replaced the paper.
"I have heard that humans used to use magic, but I never thought someone still can do that." Katrina said with a calm and knowing manner. "I don't know how you did it, but this is amazing. You are amazing, Luz."
The moment was interrupted by soft but clear echo of gytrash's growl, who has not been defeated yet.
They looked up at the tunnel where the gytrash had disappeared.
"How much Dawn Crystals do you have left?" Katrina asked, her purplish azure eyes locked on the tunnel looming ahead.
"Zero." Luz took a look inside the shoulder bag.
Jett sighed, "Same here. Also my magic is disabled."
"What do we do now?" Luz asked.
Katrina hummed thoughtfully, and looked to the box that one last Dawn Crystal was in. "Theoretically, it's possible to bound and sealed gytrash with one crystal."
"Cousin, I'm not questioning your knowledge or anything, but for right now you are the only person here who has magic." Jett piped up. "It's a little low."
"It's enough if you have a plan." Katrina proclaimed, then she surprises her cousin by asking, "Do you have any can of spray with you?"
"I never leave home without this."
"Good." She pointed at the glowing orb which continues to hovering over Luz's hands. "Luz, can you just do that one more time? But bigger."
"Yes."
"Are you two ready to do something crazy?"
The gytrash sniffed around the dark tunnel, its body still ached, but began to heal.
The large demonic creature licked its burned side and then heard the whistle sound from the teen's lips.
Its attention was drawn, to Jett who toss a rock in the air standing in the other tunnel.
"Did you miss me? Admit it; you missed me." He said then tossed rock up, and he swung the staff and hit the rock right in the eye of the monster canine.
The gytrash roared in anger as it charged right at the boy, who quickly dodged and moved to his left. He threw a rock at its eye again. It roared in annoyance. A large canine turned and gave chase after him.
As it was closing in on him, Jett changed direction and he ran into the place that it was an Antechamber of sorts. Many paths crossed through this place.
The teen witch jumped to the side up against a stone wall, as for the gytrash slipped on some small rocks making a crash stop. It slowly got up, growling in annoyance.
"Yoo-hoo, my ugly puppy." Jett was jumping up and down, flailing his arms, hiding Luz from monster's eyes.
"Rrraaagggghhh!" Gytrash growled to itself as it shot off towards the teen, faster than it had ever gone before.
"Now!" Jett shouted and hid next to Katrina.
Luz finished drawing the light symbol on the wall with a spray can. She slammed her hand on the symbol with erupted in a powerful light.
The light was so big and powerful that the Antechamber was bathed in it. The gytrash roared loudly from it.
Jett emerged from his hiding place and seized the opportunity to throw last Dawn Crystal under the gytrash's body.
Katrina stood beside her cousin to summoned her staff, tapping it against the shape drawn on the ground.
The seal for sealing gleamed in the magic glow, and created a five crystal pillars.
All the sudden dozens of vines-like crystals emerged from pillars coming from different angles trapping the gytrash in place.
Luz ran up to pillars and threw a paper with light symbol down on them, causing vines to started glowing.
"Bye-bye, little doggy." Katrina spun a large spell circle into the ground.
The Dawn Crystal opened up like a flower and fired the ray of energy that hit in the heart of gytrash and began drag a shadow monster into crystal.
But the gytrash will not give up without a fight. The monstrous canine struggled to break free from its bindings.
Its eyes pulsed with a black energy. It was icky and almost a vibrant purple, as a gytrash's muzzle splitting four ways.
The three teenagers then saw black-purplish energy start to gather between four parts of its muzzle.
Katrina grit her teeth. She knew what it was and she was shocked at what this creature made.
If gytrash's shadow bomb actually worked, it might have enough force to level the whole place! She had to stop it.
But she doesn't have enough magic to speed up the sealing of the monster. With enormous effort, she called up the all magic she have. The spell get stronger, but still not enough.
Katrina took a breath, feeling her body ping and creak. Her energy began to weaken, her spell to wane.
Then to her surprise a two hands grabbed her staff. She turned her head to looked at Luz and Jett.
Both of them have a determination face, a fire in eyes and inviting smile.
Jett's magic was still in blocked mode. Luz was a non-magical person as a human being.
And yet they still offered to support the witchling.
Luz and Jett wanted to help, with or without magic.
Katrina smiled softly as felt a surge of determination and magic burst forth in her chest.
She focused her mind back into the spell and all of them looked right at the gytrash.
The trio did not blink, they did not waver.
They finish this together.
Gytrash continued to gather energy till it formed into a small ball of compressed shadow energy.
Katrina, Jett and Luz closed their eyes and tried to quiet everything.
The gytrash just hooked its claws into the ground before glaring at trio to aim its attack. A large monster then gathered magic into its whole head before, with a growl of anger heaved the shadow bomb at Luz, Katrina and Jett.
However, the gytrash did not hear the sound of Dawn Crystal magic swirling around it in a cloud of gold.
And suddenly, like pulling the trigger on a gun, there was a huge blast of yellowish white light and when they opened their eyes again, the gytrash was gone, large black quartz in its place.
It's so quiet that a pin dropping in the distance would sound like a drum solo.
After what seemed like an eternity, the adrenaline was slowing down, and everyone in the cave exhaled at the same time.
"We did it!" Luz exclaimed, reflexively punching the air in front of her in celebration. The magic aura from their spell begin to fade, but she just shone with the enthusiasm and joy, like, a ray of sunlight.
"Yes, we did." Jett smirked and gave her the new nickname. "Sunbeam."
"Good. 'Cause I need to sit down." Katrina sat on the ground and rested her forehead on her staff.
Jett and Luz joined her at the ground. Luz offered Katrina a chocolate bar while Jett helped his cousin to lean back on the flowstone.
The three of them looked at the quartz, then at each other. And smiled. And laughed.
They were all so proud of themselves that they sealed the gytrash into the quartz.
There was still the matter of getting out of this cave, but for now this was all they focused on.
Author's Note
Hi again! Show some love and review after reading - my confidence needs the boost.