Melody of Mana

I couldn't see the state that I was in, and Glen was covered by his armor, but the other three were badly burned. Most of the hits had landed on their backs and limbs, charring skin and muscle and doing who knows what to the internal organs.

Etta was my first target and I needed to work fast. Glen was right and we needed some kind of cover, add to that that there was no way I could get everyone up quickly on my own and I needed to hurry in a bad way. As an added incentive I was still hearing loud explosions and other noises in the distance.

There were lines crisscrossing across the other girl's flesh, looking like the patterns of roots from a tree. I slowly began my work, trying first to make sure that all of her organs were working before hitting her skin. She was still awake, and once I got her fixed up enough she should be able to do the rest on her own, at least that was the hope.

While I worked I tried to look at the still down members of our team. Ean seemed much like Etta and myself, save that he was marginally worse off. Ethbert on the other hand, he seemed to have taken a blast full on. His once handsome face was crisp, with a few bits of bone sticking out here and there. I was unsure if he'd survived, but if he did, he would need significant work to be back to his old self.

It took almost a full minute, but eventually the priestess' breathing slowed down a bit and she seemed to be coming back to her senses.

"Etta, can you hear me?" I asked, continually pumping mana into the healing magic now flowing over her.

"It hurts," she whimpered in response.

"I know, but we need you to get to work."

She nodded and slowly moved her hands up to her own body. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw a faint light start to emanate from them and flow over her. Even a poorly trained priest could do far, far more than I could in the same time, so I left her to it.

I gasped in pain and had to stifle a scream as I tried to rise. I could feel the damage to my back, but hadn't realized how bad my legs currently were. Hot tears flowed down my face as I tried to catch myself from falling, only really able to crawl.

"Glen, help," I pled

The warrior in question had been keeping an eye on things, vigilantly looking this way and that for any threats. At my words he pulled me up and led me over to our other fallen knight apprentice. Each step was another round of intense pain for me, and I could tell by the look on his face that he was hurting bad too.

When I finally got over to Ethbert I basically flopped down beside him. The good news was that he was alive. The bad news was that he was only barely so. As I pushed my magic into him to fix him up I got a sense that several of his organs were currently failing. My first job then was to get him as stable as I could.

I was beginning to flag a bit as I heard noises from behind me. Our actual healer had finished with herself and was now reaching out to heal Ean. I was glad for that, because while I didn't know what he had, he was a wizard, so I would think there was something. He was also likely to be able to function under her ministrations far quicker than under mine.

When I heard said wizard speak the words "I feel like I'm going to die." from behind me, I nearly laughed.

"You aren't just yet, though you will need more healing later." Etta responded.

"For now we need to get out of the big open field and to some form of cover. I'd rather not take a chance with another one of those," Glen said.

"Ethbert is still in no condition to be moved, and I don't think he'll be helpful for quite some time. Anyone got an idea?"

"There's a place where a creek has carved out a little ditch on the far side of the field, we should go there. As for how..." Glen was a wealth of things right now. I had heard more words from him in the last few minutes than the rest of our mission combined.

"I've got it." Ean waved his hands and a soft light flowed around our downed companion, carefully lifting him off the ground. With a few repetitions our casters had the same under them.

Whatever this spell was for, its effects were perfect for this situation as well. The dim light that formed it held me not unlike a couch, soft but supportive as it ferried us across the field. I relaxed, letting my head rest on the magic, breathing a sigh in relief.

The creek bed turned out to be a great place for cover. The little winding trickle had sliced a ragged, but nearly sheer face in the clay nearest the field. The other side was also fairly steep, but not more than about forty-five degrees. As for the drop, it was perhaps five feet, quite well enough for us to hide in while we tried to patch up.

Etta took a look at things, once we were there and decided to change her tactics. She began some kind of large scale healing spell. It wasn't as powerful as the singly targeted one, but as the magic flowed over me and cooled my scorched skin I wanted to hug her.

While she was doing that I switched to putting up the projectile shield around us. It wouldn't stop another lightning bomb, but who knew if there was some other attack that might come. Ean joined in the shielding. From his brief explanation I gathered that he had some that could act against heat and cold. Nothing for electricity, but I'd take what I could get.

Glen gathered a few fist sized stones from the creek. At my quirked eyebrow he simply informed me that while he wasn't fast, he could throw pretty hard. Based on what I'd seen him do to the spinewolf I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of one of those. The shield I'd put up also let things out, so no problem there.

Once we were all able to move again, even though doing so hurt, our priestess began working on Ethbert alone. She was pumping spell after spell into him, trying to do all she could for the fallen boy. I personally couldn't see too much of the results, but my guess was that he was getting his insides put back together one piece at a time.

"That's it, I'm out," she panted after a few moments. "He'll live if we can get him more help, but I'm totally dry on mana. So don't get any more hurt."

I briefly considered taking up the cause and doing what I could for him, but my mana reserves weren't in great shape, and I wanted my shield up. I could still hear a few sounds of fighting, and that worried me. Coming to that decision I clenched my teeth and went to keep a lookout.

It wasn't long until there was a crash and a figure flew into our nearby clearing. She was decidedly female, with some kind of head and face covering and a number of glowing ropes of magic floating around her. I could also hear her laughing like some kind of psychopath, giggling happily as her ropes pulled her at a rapid speed into the field.

She was followed quickly by Professor Endel, who looked absolutely livid. He too had some form of flight spell going on that made him look as if he were hovering just above the ground.

"Awww, did I hurt your cute widdle students?" I heard her yell at the enraged instructor as he came nearer to her.

"Perish!" was his only response.

A brilliant red orb flew from our professor, beelining for the woman. One of her many ropes intercepted it. When the two met the ground shook from the explosion, which even sent my hair flying back from my distance.

I didn't see how she'd managed it, but somehow one of her ropes had gotten behind him. As he was a bit distracted it grabbed the teacher by the neck, lifting him up. He responded like most would and lost his concentration for a moment, and that was all she needed. Within a second more ropes had reached out to bind him, looping around limbs and body.

"GOT YOU!" She cheered in a saccharine voice, closing in and saying other things I couldn't make out. She walked up to him, one hand running down her stomach as she did reaching for the area between her...

What the fuck!? I didn't know who this girl was, but she was obviously nuttier than squirrel crap. My mind made up I breathed in, gathering and focusing as much mana as I could. It was time to give her a good screaming at.

Before I could strike Glen moved. His fist sized rock screamed forward like a bullet. Sadly one of the ropes managed to intercept it, almost as if automatically. The resulting explosion reduced the projectile to nothing but dust, but it did distract her for a second, causing her to look our way.

That was when I let loose. I gave all I could to the spell, trying to pump power in and bring it to new heights. She fell for only a second, but it was enough for her ropes to briefly disappear and drop Endel to the ground. They were back a moment later, but small wins.

"Dammit!" she screamed. Pointing at us and sending one of her ropes, only for it to be blocked by Ean with some kinetic spell of his own.

Glen launched a few more stones to keep her on the defensive while I threw some illusory ones towards her. Those were cheap, and while my initial attack didn't seem to do much, if one of his landed the fight was over.

We continued on like that for a few seconds before more figures came from the forest. My heart briefly sank. That is until our enemy began to scream in incoherent rage and launched herself away from them, fleeing back into the woods while dodging and intercepting more attacks from the newcomers. One, which I could only assume was from a priest, barely missed her, instead striking a tree and causing it to wither into a blackened husk in an instant.

As she fled the field several pairs of eyes moved to us. Some of the other instructors seemed to recognize us before any attacked though.

"Students!" one of them yelled.

"I'll take care of them and Endel, the rest of you, after her." the priest said loudly enough for all of us.

The rest of the teachers needed no prompting and rushed after the assailant. While I hoped they got her, I gave it mixed odds at best.

The priest came over to aid us, though he was sparing with magic. He was worried about any more attacks, but made sure all of us were at least going to be okay. That done we kept sheltering in our little divot for awhile.

From that point we didn't see any more direct action. The instructors had chased down crazy girl until she'd fled down some pre-prepared tunnel. Nobody had been stupid enough to follow her into what was obviously a deathtrap. Eventually we were gathered up with the rest of the students, who all looked brutally rough, under the supervision of the combined teaching staff.

Our group had been one of the closest to one of the bombs, and so had taken a rather bad hit. Not the worst, as there were a number of deaths, but bad enough. Most of the students capable of any healing, self included, were soon running on nothing but fumes as we waited for our professors to find us a truly safe way out.

The main entrance was just assumed trapped and after a good bit of discussion a hole was broken through the wall so we could get out and to get support in. We were all hurried back to the city, and into the hospital run by The Shield. As soon as we got there, I found the nearest bed and promptly passed out.